Civil Liberties Groups Sue Trump Administration for Detaining Green Card Applicants

The New York Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of New Jersey are suing the government for detaining an undocumented father of two during what was supposed to be a routine appointment at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Antonio de Jesus Martinez and his American wife went to ICE's office in Lower Manhattan in April to begin the process of applying for his green card. That's when he was arrested and brought to a detention center in Hudson County, New Jersey. On Friday a judge temporarily blocked ICE from deporting the Queens resident back to El Salvador but he is still being held in detention.

Attorney Paige Austin of the New York Civil Liberties Union said government regulations allow undocumented immigrants to apply for a green card. She said Antonio was doing just that by coming to ICE with his wife and the initial form.

"They came to attend an interview to document that they were married and it turned out to be a bait and switch," she said. "It turned out that this process has been converted into a trap under the Trump administration."

Austin is referring to a policy in which former president Barack Obama's administration allowed undocumented immigrants to apply for green cards without the fear of deportation. This regulation is still on the books, she said, and involves a complicated process to obtain a waiver to leave the country and return. 

But she said the Trump administration appears to be violating this policy. When Martinez and his wife Vivian Martinez went to ICE's office in April, Vivian claims she was shocked and asked an ICE officer what happened. In a sworn statement she gave the court, she said this officer looked up her husband's case and told her, "if we had been there two or three weeks earlier, we would have had no problem, but an internal memo was just circulated.

"The memo stated that anyone who came in for an interview would be deported if they had a removal order."

ICE did not respond to WNYC's request for a comment as of Sunday evening.

Austin said she has not seen anything in writing that the policy has changed under Trump and that this new lawsuit will get to the bottom of things. She said several other cases have made news recently of immigrants being detained at meetings connected to their green card applications, notably a Chinese immigrant father who also lives in Queens. 

Anotonio Martinez, 34, was born in El Salvador. He had an outstanding deportation order from 2003. His attorneys claim this happened when he went to the wrong immigration court while attempting to correct his legal status, and since then he hasn't been able to get the deportation order overturned. 

"He's never been arrested, he's never had any criminal contact," said Austin, noting that he works as a HVAC technician. She said he is now the sole wage earner supporting his wife, two children - one just under three year old, and the other who is four months old - and that he also helps care for his mother, who has legal status.

Austin said a federal judge in New Jersey, Madeline Cox Arleo, asked the government to respond by Thursday to her temporary restraining order preventing Martinez's deportation. Martinez's attorneys will also ask the judge to release him from detention while challenging the Trump administration's apparent change in policy. 

Vivian Martinez welcomed the news that her husband cannot be deported for now. She has said she is suffering from anxiety and wasn't able to continue breastfeeding their baby, and that their older child wakes up with night terrors.

"Finally we see a little bit of light and feel hope that this process will happen like we thought it would and like it was supposed to from the beginning," she said.