A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking ICE from re-detaining a 66-year-old nanny from Russia, who immigration agents first arrested outside her employer’s Diamond Heights home two weeks ago.
The nanny has an active asylum case and no criminal record, according to immigration attorney Ghassan Shamieh, who was retained by the woman’s employer immediately following her arrest.
That same day, Shamieh filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of her detention – called a “habeas corpus petition” – and ICE was forced to release the nanny within hours in response to a judge’s order, which called the arrest “inexplicable.”
Immigration attorneys across the country have been filing immigration-related habeas petitions in record numbers in response to the wave of ICE arrests since President Donald Trump began his second term.
Shamieh said his client was already being transported to the California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert.
ICE did not respond to NBC Bay Area’s request to discuss the case, but argued in court following the nanny’s release that the agency has the discretion to hold her in detention as her asylum case moves forward.
In Wednesday’s order, however, federal Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley disagreed that the agency could detain the woman absent a bond hearing.
“If the government seeks to re-detain Petitioner, it must provide no less than seven days’ notice and a pre-detention hearing during which a neutral decisionmaker must consider whether Petitioner is either a danger to the community or flight risk such that her physical custody is required,” Corley wrote in her order.
Michael Bott and Hilda Gutierrez
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