Seattle 'Dreamer' not released, but attorneys hail ruling as victory Magistrate judge says case should proceed in federal court

A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday once more denied the release of an undocumented immigrant detained since Feb. 10 despite protections through an Obama-era order.

But Daniel Ramirez Medina’s attorneys are calling the ruling from U.S. Magistrate Judge James Donohue a major victory.

The 46-page report and recommendation also denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case, acknowledging that non-citizens like Ramirez have the right to have their arrest and detention reviewed by the courts.

“(U.S. Magistrate) Judge Donohue’s ruling is an exceptionally important victory and really lays down a marker in these cases that the federal court will step in and review the arrest (and detentions),” said Ted Boutrous, one of Ramirez’s attorneys, during a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon.

Donohue’s recommendation will still need to be adopted by Chief Judge Ricardo Martinez before it has the power of an order. Should Martinez approve it in whole, the U.S. District Court would next hear arguments on whether or not Ramirez, as a DACA recipient, has rights that would protect him from an unlawful arrest and detention -- and then determine whether his arrest and detention violated those rights.

Ramirez, 23, was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents when they raided his father’s Des Moines home. His father told the agents Ramirez was in the country illegally, government attorneys have said.

But Ramirez was protected from deportation and allowed to work in the U.S. through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Since the program took effect in 2012, roughly 750,000 young immigrants have signed up, according to Pew Research Center statistics.

Once he told the ICE agents that he was a DACA recipient, that should have been the end of his interaction with ICE, his attorneys have argued.

ICE agents instead took Ramirez, who has no criminal record, into custody and took him to a processing facility, where they verified his DACA status before further questioning him, according to court filings. It was during that questioning that ICE agents said Ramirez admitted to having contact with gang members, and it was for that reason that agents decided to put him in detention and begin the process to have him deported.

Once that process began -- with a notice to appear -- Ramirez’s DACA benefits were automatically terminated, according to U.S. attorneys.

Because he was then in the hands of an immigration court, his case had no place in federal court, U.S. attorneys argued.

“The government was arguing that ... there could be no judicial review of arrests and detentions that ICE made if they initiated removal proceedings,” said Mark Rosenbaum, another of Ramirez’s attorneys, during the Tuesday afternoon conference call.

The removal process can take years to complete, and only once that process -- conducted in the separate immigration court -- was complete, would Ramirez have the chance to appeal his initial arrest and detention, if at all, Donohue noted in his recommendation.

Because of that, even a non-citizen like Ramirez has a right to have his arrest and detention -- prior to his removal proceedings in the separate court -- reviewed by a federal court, Donohue wrote.

“Moreover, to hold otherwise would be to relegate the so-called Great Writ (the writ of habeas corpus, or right to have an arrest or detention reviewed by a judge) to the museum and history books, as nothing more than a matter of historical interest,” Donohue wrote in the recommendation.

What remains now is the question of whether Ramirez and other DACA recipients have a constitutionally protected liberty interest, or a protection against arrest and interrogation based solely on the fact that they are non-citizens.

Donohue noted that courts have recognized DACA as giving recipients lawful presence in the U.S., but what that means beyond that is still up for debate, Donohue indicated in the recommendation.

“Herein lies the rub: Only individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States may apply for DACA, and DACA does not confer lawful immigration status. Thus, unless DACA provides some form of protection, the regulations governing the interrogation and arrest of individuals believed to be unlawfully present could be understood as authorizing the arrest and interrogation of DACA beneficiaries,” Donohue wrote. “The Napolitano memo (the memo authorizing the DACA program) makes clear, however, that this was not the intent and purpose of the DACA program.”

Donohue denied Ramirez’s release based on this lack of understanding for what benefits follow from DACA, but he also noted that the case should be expedited to answer those questions sooner rather than later as not only Ramirez is anxiously awaiting an answer from a Tacoma detention center, but hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients are wondering how secure their future in the U.S. really is.

Attorneys for Ramirez said they intend to file an objection to that denial by Wednesday.

If a federal judge did decide that Ramirez’s arrest and detention were illegal, it’s likely his deportation proceedings would be dismissed, Boutrous said.

If not, they’ll keep up the fight, they said.

“We’re prepared to take this all the way to the Supreme Court,” Rosenbaum said. “Once you give liberty, you just can’t light a match to it, you can’t just say it’s gone.”

Daniel DeMay covers Seattle culture, business and transportation for seattlepi.com. He can be reached at 206-448-8362 or danieldemay@seattlepi.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Daniel_DeMay.