New York Metropolis’s Regulation Division stated it should stand behind a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant and Queens highschool pupil who was arrested by ICE brokers in a Manhattan courthouse after attending an immigration listening to, arguing in an amicus transient that he’s being “detained without cause and in violation of his right to due process.”
Jose Luis Rojas Figuera, who attended the Pan American Worldwide Excessive Faculty in Elmhurst for roughly a yr after arriving in New York in October 2023, has no legal historical past and was pursuing a inexperienced card, in keeping with the transient filed Tuesday.
Rojas Figuera went to 26 Federal Plaza on June 2, accompanied by his mom, for what he anticipated could be a routine immigration listening to. He had no authorized illustration. In the course of the listening to, a Division of Homeland Safety lawyer moved to dismiss Rojas Figuera’s case — a standard tactic utilized by Homeland Safety to strip people of their pending standing, making them topic to expedited elimination if granted by the choose.
The choose denied the movement to dismiss Rojas Figuera’s case and gave him one other court docket date, however ICE brokers detained Rojas Figuera anyway.
Federal brokers patrol the halls of immigration court docket on the Jacob Ok. Javitz Federal Constructing on June 18, 2025 in New York Metropolis. (Picture by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photos)
“Tactics like those used to detain Jose present many city residents with an impossible choice: risk detention by attending court proceedings or run the same risk by failing to attend. Such tactics undermine the public interest,” metropolis Company Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant wrote within the transient. “Free access to courts is a pillar of the rule of law. Our judicial system cannot work as it should, as it must, if courthouses are treated as convenient places to spring traps.”
The transient, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court docket, stated Rojas Figuera had a pending utility for Particular Immigrant Juvenile Standing (SIJS) — a pathway to lawful everlasting residency standing for these youthful than 21 who receive a state court docket order discovering they have been abused, uncared for or deserted.
Goode-Trufant stated Rojas Figuera’s detention has upended his SIJS court docket proceedings, and despatched the message to different SIJS candidates that displaying as much as court docket might abruptly upend the authorized residency course of “they were otherwise willing to follow.”
“I have always said that our immigrant New Yorkers should be able to go to court, send their children to school, seek medical care at our hospitals, and ask for help from our police officers when they are in need,” Mayor Adams wrote in a press release. “That is what it means to be a safe city, and we will continue to fight to ensure that our public resources are safe, and that people … going through the legal process that we encourage for new arrivals are protected under the law.”
Paige Austin, an lawyer at Make the Street New York who’s now repping Rojas Figuera and preventing for his launch, stated she was “really grateful to the city for weighing in and sharing how harmful this policy is.”
“His dismissal was denied by the immigration judge. At the moment ICE detained him there was absolutely no change in his case, and no grounds to detain him,” Austin stated. “This detention served absolutely no purpose. It was cruel and it has deeply traumatized him and his mother.”
Federal brokers patrol the halls of immigration court docket on the Javitz Federal Constructing on June 18, 2025 in New York Metropolis. (Picture by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photos)
After arriving in 2023, Rojas Figuera visited a metropolis asylum assist middle, in keeping with the transient. He attended public highschool for roughly a yr earlier than leaving to work as a way to assist and take care of his mom, who has extreme diabetes, in keeping with Austin.
Austin stated Rojas Figuera has had “a really hard time in detention,” noting that he’d been first held at 26 Federal Plaza earlier than being shuffled round to a detention facility in Nassau County and one other in Texas. He was then returned to New York, the place he’s being held upstate.
For the primary 5 days he was unable to contact his mom, Austin stated. Since returning to New York 10 days in the past, he has once more been incommunicado, unable to get cellphone entry contained in the jail.
“The communication issues have been really hard for him because he really misses his mom and they’re really close,” Austin stated. “He’s very worried about his mom’s health. She depends on him both economically and when she’s in a period of really poor health.”
“We hope that more New Yorkers don’t have to go through this because it’s been awful for this family,” Austin added.
Final month, the town took comparable motion in a distinct case, submitting an amicus transient in assist of releasing 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant and Bronx public college pupil Dylan Lopez Contreras, who was detained by federal brokers at 26 Federal Plaza after a choose dismissed his asylum case on Might 21.
Initially Revealed: July 2, 2025 at 12:51 PM EDT
