ICE flew a detained Minneapolis 2-year-old and her father to Texas despite a court order that required the toddler’s release, a lawyer for the family said Friday.
“This is a horror that is a parent’s worst nightmare,” said Irina Vaynerman, the CEO of Groundwork Legal and an attorney for the family. “All they want is for this little toddler and her dad to come home safe after they’ve been unlawfully detained by the government.”
Vaynerman said she expected the child, who flew to Texas Thursday night, to return home to her mother Friday, but had not received confirmation from the government.
According to an affidavit filed by Kira Kelley, another attorney for the family, ICE detained the toddler, identified only as C.R.T.V. in court documents, and her father, Elvis Joel Tipan Echeverria, in their driveway as they returned home from purchasing groceries.
“One agent broke the glass on the window of Mr. Elvis Joel’s vehicle — while his infant daughter was also inside,” Kelley wrote.
C.R.T.V.’s mother was standing outside the home, calling to her husband, who attempted to bring the child to her, Kelley said. As ICE agents approached the mother, she stepped back inside the house.
“ICE agents would not allow Mr. Elvis Joel to bring his daughter to her mother or the other family members waiting terrified inside the home,” Kelley wrote. “The baby and Mr. Elvis Joel were placed inside the back of an ICE vehicle, which needless to say did not have a carseat.”
C.R.T.V.’s family came from Ecuador, lives in south Minneapolis, and has an open and active asylum case, Vaynerman said. She stressed that C.R.T.V. and her father, like many Minnesotans who have been detained in the federal government’s immigration crackdown, have an open asylum case.
The Department of Homeland Security has said its policy is to allow parents detained in the presence of children to choose whether to take their child with them or leave the child with a trusted adult.
“There is no evidence here that they let Dad make that choice, particularly because in this case, there were family members, adults, in the home just mere feet away from where they were forcing this father and his toddler into a vehicle,” Vaynerman said.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kelley filed an emergency habeas corpus petition Thursday asking for the immediate release of the child and her father.
“Respondents have taken a 2-year-old into custody — an escalation of violence that is unspeakable, cruel, and without any legal basis or justification,” she wrote. “Urgent judicial intervention is necessary to protect this baby from being swept up and lost, like so many individuals who in this recent sweep of immigration detentions have been flown across the country in violation of the orders of this Court and of any semblance of human decency.”
According to court documents, the toddler and her father were detained at 1:10 p.m. on Thursday. Kelley filed an emergency habeas petition at 5:37 p.m. Between 6 and 7 p.m., she also filed a motion seeking the immediate release of the child, left a voicemail with government lawyers “requesting immediate escalation of the case and emphasizing the urgent need to release the child to her mother,” and sent an email also reiterating the case’s urgency.
At 8:10 p.m., U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez issued an order prohibiting the government from moving C.R.T.V. out of state, and then ordered her to be released from custody by 9:30 p.m, saying the “risk of irreparable harm” to the child was “overwhelming.”
But the government informed the toddler’s lawyers that it had placed their clients on a commercial flight to Texas at 8:30 p.m., and would not be able to comply with Menendez’s order, Kelley wrote in a court filing.
“They sent her out in direct contravention of a court order,” Vaynerman said. “This is an intentional effort by the government to try to evade the federal court’s jurisdiction here in Minnesota to try to provide the relief that unlawfully detained people, including toddlers, are entitled to.”
Because the habeas petition was filed before her clients were transferred out of state, government lawyers have agreed not to challenge the court’s jurisdiction, and said that C.R.T.V. would be returned to Minnesota on Friday, Kelley said in a court filing. The government has been challenging habeas petitions filed in Minnesota if detainees are moved out of state before those petitions can be filed, she said. She asked the court to stop the practice of interstate transfers of people detained for alleged immigration violations.
Marc Prokosch, who is representing the family of a detained Columbia Heights prekindergartener from Ecuador, who has also been transferred to Texas, expressed similar sentiments in a Thursday news conference. In that case, the child, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, was detained with his father in their driveway while other adults, including school board chair Mary Granlund, were offering to care for the child.
Prokosch said that moving detainees to Texas made it more difficult for them to access legal counsel.
“It makes it a lot harder for lawyers to file habeas petitions in Texas when we’re up here in Minnesota,” he said. “And so that’s presumably the strategy for moving them that quickly.”
As part of their asylum case, the government has determined that C.R.T.V.’s family poses no public safety risk, has no criminal record, and no removal order, Vaynerman said. But they are still being detained — which she described as a “circumvention of the entire statutory and constitutional scheme that underlies how our immigration system works.”
“It’s essential that this little girl make it home to her mom, so that she is safe and out of detention, which is horrific for any child to experience,” she said. But regardless of what happened in this case, she said, the government was still attempting to elude the constitutional framework of the nation’s immigration and judicial systems. “That must be stopped.”
