A lawsuit challenging an unusual practice that has denied bond to many immigrants held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center is likely to succeed “or at least has raised serious questions,” a federal judge has said in a preliminary injunction.
Judge Tiffany Cartwright of the U.S. District Court in Western Washington separately certified the suit as a class action, giving it the potential to help possibly hundreds of detainees avoid spending months in jail-like conditions at the Tacoma facility as President Donald Trump ramps up immigration enforcement.
Despite the initial wins, the suit has provided only minimal help to the undocumented Central Washington farmworker whose name it bears, Ramon Rodriguez Vazquez.
In her late April injunction, Cartwright ordered Rodriguez be given a bond hearing. Judge John Odell of the Tacoma immigration court located inside the detention center — whose judges are the focus of the lawsuit — held that hearing on Monday. He denied Rodriguez bond. Another hearing Thursday determined Rodriguez will leave the country for Mexico by “voluntary departure” in lieu of a deportation flight.
“We’re in a little bit of a weird situation” said Aaron Korthuis of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which brought the suit on behalf of Rodriguez. Korthuis was noting the poor outcome for his client. He nevertheless called Cartwright’s injunction “terrific” and said he is hopeful its reasoning will be applied to others.
One initial test was a bond hearing Thursday for Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, a well known Skagit Valley farmworker activist whose arrest and detention caused a stir among community members and elected officials. Judge Theresa Scala denied bond in an apparent indication that the U.S. District Court’s rulings have not yet influenced her.
Bond denials have become routine in the Tacoma court — making it one of the toughest, if not the toughest, immigration court in the country when it comes to releasing detainees while their cases are pending.
Immigration courts are part of the executive, rather than judicial, branch of government. They fall under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Trump administration has made clear its attempt to detain and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible. The practice in question at Tacoma immigration court, though, predates Trump’s latest rise to power.
Since 2022, according to legal papers, most judges at the Tacoma court have liberally applied a section of immigration law that refers to “an applicant for admission” or someone “seeking admission” to the U.S. without authorization. The section mandates detention in such cases, although U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement retains discretion to release such migrants while their cases are pending.
The Tacoma judges have said they don’t have jurisdiction to issue bonds to immigrants who at any time entered the U.S. without inspection, not just those who are crossing or have just crossed the border. An immigrant could have lived here for more than 15 years, as Rodriguez has, or at least 13 years, as Juarez has, and still be considered “an applicant for admission” according to this interpretation.
This is not the norm, Rodriguez said in his complaint. Cartwright agreed in her preliminary injunction, calling the Tacoma judges’ logic “an outlier to the government’s longstanding interpretation and enforcement of its immigration laws.”
She also pointed to the Tacoma court’s exceptionally low rate of granting bonds as an indicator of its outlier status. The court granted 3% of bond requests in a 12-month period ending in September 2023, a rate that was the lowest in the country, according to a report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The most recent figure, for six months ending in March, stands at 10%, compared with an average 27% for immigration courts nationwide.
Cartwright’s preliminary injunction only applied to Rodriguez because class action lawsuits in certain immigration cases are only actionable for the entire class once a final decision is reached, according to Korthuis.
Delving into Rodriguez’s case, Cartwright called the farmworker a “strong candidate for release on bond.” She noted he has a wife of many years, four adult children and 10 grandchildren. One of those grandchildren, a 6-year-old, has a heart defect and Rodriguez assumed responsibility for taking her to surgeries and other medical appointments in Spokane.
He has never been accused or convicted of a crime, Cartwright also observed.
In a phone interview last month from the detention center, Rodriguez, 61, said he thought the risk to him from Trump’s immigration crackdown was small. “I was being quiet,” he said in Spanish.
But federal agents carrying out a search warrant in February on a trailer he shared with family members found cocaine and a gun. One of the family members said the cocaine and gun were his alone, and that he had a substance use problem.
Rodriguez testified at his bond hearing that he didn’t know the drugs and gun were in his home. That didn’t seem to convince Odell, who like other immigration judges deciding on bond is charged with determining whether someone is a flight risk or danger to the community.
After he was denied bond, Rodriguez said he would not appeal should he be ordered deported, according to lawyer Andrea Lino, who represented him at the hearing. After three months at the detention center, she said, “he’s really suffering.” He been unable to sleep and for a time did not receive blood pressure medication he needed.
While Rodriguez’s subsequent Thursday hearing resulting in the voluntary departure order was underway, Juarez had a bond hearing in a different courtroom at the detention center.
Dozens of farmworker activists, union members and other community members, as well as one of four brothers who are U.S. citizens, showed up to support him. Some gathered outside the facility while as many as the court would allow observed the proceeding inside. At least two dozen people also submitted letters on his behalf, including seven elected officials, according to Juarez’s lawyer, Larkin VanDerhoef.
Before the hearing, VanDerhoef also submitted the preliminary order and class certification in Rodriguez’s case, though he allowed in an interview that the U.S. District Court judge’s reasoning was not yet enforceable.
VanDerhoef said he worried Scala might say she has no jurisdiction to issue a bond. “Otherwise, he’s a great candidate,” the lawyer said of Juarez, 25, arrested in March as he was driving his partner to her job at a tulip bulb company. “He has zero criminal history.”
Scala bought up jurisdiction right away, asking VanDerhoef and ICE attorney Moreno Campbell for their opinions. Both said they believe the judge has authority to issue a bond in this case.
Scala didn’t issue an immediate opinion, instead moving on to the merits of the case. Campbell, who said Juarez entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2008, when he was about 8, argued the farmworker activist is a “high flight risk.”
The ICE lawyer pointed to a 2018 removal order issued at a hearing that Juarez failed to attend. She also said he had failed to comply with a directive from the ICE officers who arrested him to open his car window. The agents were forced to break the window to talk to him, she said.
VanDerhoef took issue with both accounts. Juarez did not receive notice of the 2018 hearing, as a Seattle immigration judge has acknowledged, the lawyer said. At the time of Juarez’s March arrest, the farmworker activist did not flee but asked to see a warrant from the ICE agents, according to VanDerhoef. The agents did not produce one, the lawyer said.
Scala ended the morning hearing without coming to a decision but made one by day’s end. She said she did not have jurisdiction to issue bond, though added that if she did she would set an amount of $5,000, according to VanDerhoef.
The lawyer said he plans to appeal.
Staff reporter Manuel Villa contributed to this report.
An earlier version of the story misstated the year the Tacoma immigration court began an unusual practice. It was 2022.