A federal judge has ruled that a DACA recipient whose detention has been challenged in court must be released from custody.
Late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William P. Johnson of the U.S. District Court of New Mexico granted a petition for a writ of habeas corpus directing the federal government to immediately release 28-year-old Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira from the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, where he had been held for 42 days.
In the petition, Johnson stated that the court found good cause to grant the petition as it relates to Gamez Lira’s release from custody. Alex Flores, an attorney with the Singelton Schreiber law firm, who, along with the ACLU of New Mexico, filed the petition on Gamez Lira’s behalf earlier this month, told New Mexico Political Report that his client was released on Wednesday afternoon, soon after the order was issued and subsequently reunited with his wife and four children.
“Detaining Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira was not only unnecessary, it was unlawful, and it inflicted needless harm on him and his family. Today’s outcome reaffirms that constitutional protections are not optional, and we hope it serves as a warning that such abuses cannot and will not stand,” Flores said in a press release issued by the ACLU of New Mexico soon after Gamez Lira’s release.
Court records indicate that Gamez Lira, who was born in Mexico and brought to the U.S as a child, was detained on Aug. 13, outside his residence on the outskirts of El Paso, Texas. At the time, Gamez Lira was in his vehicle with two of his four children and leaving for a medical appointment when three unmarked vehicles pulled up and blocked Gamez Lira from leaving. Seven men in plainclothes, some masked and at least one armed, emerged from those vehicles and took Gamez Lira into custody. Flores said that the men did not present a warrant or identify themselves.
Gamez Lira was held despite having a valid grant of DACA, which allows him to remain in the U.S. Attorneys who filed the petition argued that what they described as the arbitrary arrest and detention of Gamez Lara violated the due process protections afforded to him under the Constitution and “run afoul of the government’s own regulations governing DACA.”