MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — Around noon on October 19, Milton Saltos Velasquez was told he was being released from immigration detention under a judge's order. He says he did not manage to get a foot outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis before he was immediately re-arrested by immigration officers waiting inside the same building.
Source: MPR News
Saltos told MPR News his worst fear had come true. He said other immigrants held with him in county jail had warned him that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was instantly re-arresting people this way. He was handcuffed and processed again, then loaded into a vehicle with other men he said had also been re-arrested, for the roughly two-hour drive to Kandiyohi County Jail, which contracts with ICE. They were well on their way when, Saltos said, a message came over the agents' radio telling them to turn around — one of the men was to be released again.
Source: MPR News
"I couldn't stop crying"
Saltos, 45, has a pending asylum application. In 2023, an asylum officer in Texas wrote that Saltos had "demonstrated credible fear of persecution or torture," according to court records cited by MPR News. Saltos told MPR News he escaped gangs in his home country of Ecuador after they attacked him and killed his brother. His children and the rest of his family are still in Ecuador, and he oversees the treatment of his comatose father remotely, checking on him over video calls.
Source: MPR News
ICE agents arrested Saltos as he arrived at work on October 6, and he was held at Freeborn County Jail in Albert Lea. Speaking to an MPR News reporter in Spanish, Saltos said the worst part of detention was not being able to help care for his family: "I was getting desperate because I wanted to see my father, I wanted to be there for him."
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Saltos's lawyer immediately alerted the judge presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan, to the re-arrest. In an order, Bryan wrote that ICE "failed to release" Saltos, "thereby violating" his release order, and that ICE must release Saltos "immediately" or the government could face sanctions. The agents driving Saltos toward Kandiyohi County Jail were forced to turn around. Saltos said that when he realised he would truly be released, he cried for the rest of the evening — "from the emotion, joy and sadness at the same time."
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"It's pretty abusive of the system. It's just wasting people's time," said Saltos's lawyer, Sherene Mostaghimi. She said ICE gave no good reason for the re-arrest beyond claiming officers had followed the release order when they first released him around noon. "It's just so ludicrous that to me, the government thinks they can get away with doing whatever they want," she told MPR News.
A pattern, not a single case
Saltos is one of seven instant re-arrest cases confirmed by MPR News, and immigration lawyers suspect there are more. ICE officials previously told an immigration attorney that their lawyers identify good candidates for re-arrest — usually people who were arrested without warrants or probable cause in the first place, according to MPR News. In its earlier reporting on the tactic, MPR News said ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the practice of immediately re-arresting immigrants whose habeas petitions have been granted.
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Judge Bryan, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, has condemned the strategy before. When another man was instantly re-arrested on September 9, Bryan ordered his release for a second time, writing that if such a re-arrest legally counts as a release, that "would render habeas relief meaningless." Federal court records in a separate Minnesota case show Bryan analysing the same question — whether a detainee was "meaningfully released from custody" after a man named in the filings as Pablo was re-arrested within seconds of being released under Bryan's order.
Source: U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota (via GovInfo)
The tactic is spreading as the legal ground under detained immigrants narrows. A habeas petition requires the government to justify to a judge why a person is being held. The number of such petitions filed for immigration detainees has risen sharply in the past year as the federal government changed its interpretation of immigration law and argued it can automatically detain immigrants — even those without criminal records — without a bond hearing until they are deported. In March, an appeals court sided with the Trump administration's policy of holding immigrants in detention instead of giving them bond hearings, making successful challenges harder, MPR News reported.
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Other judges are moving more slowly
Other federal judges have been slower to rule on the tactic, including Chief U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud, a nominee of President Donald Trump. Tostrud is presiding over at least two instant re-arrest cases; both men were re-arrested more than a month ago and are still in ICE custody. In an October 1 order, Tostrud denied one man's request for an expedited decision and wrote that "perhaps" the re-arrest had violated his order, but that he needed more information to decide. "At least in Alejandro's case, I think additional briefing and the production of evidence can make for a good decision," said Daniel Suitor, the lawyer in another of the cases before Tostrud, adding that judges have no appellate guidance on the legal definition of "release" in habeas cases.
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Tostrud has ruled against the federal government in ICE cases before. In February, he held the government in contempt for moving a detainee to Texas after he had ordered ICE to keep him in Minnesota. This summer, he threw out the Justice Department's lawsuits against the state of Minnesota and local jurisdictions that sought to overturn their policies limiting cooperation with ICE. How he rules in the re-arrest cases remains unclear.
Source: MPR News
Why this matters — and what happens next
For immigrant families — including Punjabi and other diaspora families with relatives in detention or in pending cases — the cases turn on a practical question with immediate consequences: does a judge's release order actually open the jail door, or can officers lawfully take the same person back into custody seconds later on the same facts? Attorney Stacey Rogers, who represents one of the men still detained, said the concern is broader than immigration, because many of these cases hinge on warrantless arrests and due process — the right of every person in the country, not only citizens, to be told why they are being detained and to have a hearing before a neutral decision-maker. "If we start to allow the Constitution to slip in one area, it's going to be very easy for the Constitution to slip in other law enforcement arrests," Rogers said.
Source: MPR News
What happens next will be decided case by case in Minnesota's federal court: Judge Tostrud's rulings in the two pending re-arrest cases are awaited, both men in those cases remain in ICE custody in the meantime, and lawyers on both sides say an appeals court will eventually have to define what "release" means when a habeas petition is granted. Until then, attorneys told MPR News, clients are being warned that winning a release order may no longer mean walking out of the building a free person.
Source: MPR News