NOTE: This story has been updated. Due to a miscommunication, the original version attributed quotes to a lawyer, Daniel Perez, that were actually made by his paralegal, Jay Bar-Levy. Perez declined to comment.
A breastfeeding mother from Colombia living in Florida with a pending asylum application was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Sunday and faces a potential transfer to Texas, according to a filing in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, obtained by Raw Story.
Despite Yury Ussa Polania's claim of “lawful presence” in the U.S. and “irreparable harm” to her young child, a U.S. citizen to whom she provides primary care, immigration lawyers said the 43-year-old, who filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus following her arrest for a "non-violent misdemeanor" on May 5, faces an “uphill battle” to be released — a situation becoming more common under the Trump administration's hardline immigration policy, Hector Diaz, an immigration attorney in Miami, told Raw Story.
Jay Bar-Levy, a paralegal for Daniel Perez, Ussa Polania's lawyer in Gainesville, Fla., said she was being subjected to "diesel therapy" — a prison slang term for inmates being transported and transferred to different facilities. Bar-Levy also said Ussa Polania was being pressured to sign a voluntary deportation agreement and had been in four facilities since her arrest last Friday.
Perez declined to comment.
"When they want a defendant to plead guilty, what they do is they don't let them sleep, and they transfer them from place to place until the person gets tired," Bar-Levy told Raw Story.
"This is un-American to try to force or coerce someone to get tired and voluntarily sign the death penalty, technically … she faces a horrible, horrible fate if she goes back to wherever she came from."
Filing a petition for writ of habeas corpus means Ussa Polania alleges her detention “goes against the Constitution, and for that reason, [she] should be released immediately,” said Nicole Whitaker, founder and managing attorney at Whitaker Legal, an immigration law firm in Maryland.
Whitaker and Diaz reviewed Ussa Polania’s filing, shared by Raw Story. Neither is representing Ussa Polania.
“In my opinion, she's not being treated fairly, but she's being treated just like everybody else is being treated, which is they don't care that she just had a child,” said Diaz, managing partner at Your Immigration Attorney. "Even then, the likelihood of success is very small.”
Ussa Polania is currently more than 100 miles away from Seminole County Jail in Sanford, Fla., where she was first held. Her last known whereabouts is now Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater, Fla, according to a database from the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and and the online detainee locator system from ICE.
In her petition, Ussa Polania said she faces “imminent transfer to Texas.”
Ussa Polania was booked at Seminole County Jail on May 2 for charges related to petty theft with an estimated value between $100 and $750, according to Frances Matos in the booking department at Seminole County Jail and an arrest report from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office shared with Raw Story.
Ussa Polania “left with ICE” on May 4, Matos said.
Bar-Levy, the paralegal for Ussa Polania's lawyer, said there was a "misunderstanding at a Walmart for $34."
Stefany Garcia Izquierdo, 34, a family member of Ussa Polania, shared with Raw Story a receipt that Ussa Polania's husband paid on May 3 for her $500 bond, yet she wasn't released.
Ussa Polania is married to Garcia Izquierdo's cousin and also has an 11-year-old son. Garcia Izquierdo is godmother to Ussa Polania's baby daughter.
Garcia Izquierdo, a preschool teacher, is helping take care of the children with Ussa Polania's sister. That has been challenging, Garcia Izquierdo said, as the baby has been crying and experiencing diarrhea. The girl is being fed with breast milk Ussa Polania had refrigerated.
"For $34, look how hard she's been going. This is a nightmare," Garcia Izquierdo told Raw Story.
The Orange County Corrections Department told Raw Story Ussa Polania was being detained at Pinellas County Jail but did not confirm if she was ever held by the Orange County Corrections Department. The public information officer declined to provide comment from the warden, named as a respondent in Ussa Polania's petition.
The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office’s website shows Ussa Polania was booked on May 6 at 3:37 p.m. and remains in custody.
“I think it's wild that she was detained without having any more serious criminal convictions,” Whitaker said. “It's just a waste of resources, and it's clearly just this intent to inflate their enforcement numbers.”
In her petition, Ussa Polania challenges her “continued detention” and says she is both the mother of a U.S citizen child and holds “valid work authorization through 2029 pursuant to her pending application for asylum and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT).”
The filing names as respondents Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security; Pam Bondi, U.S. Attorney General; Pete R. Flores, Acting Commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection; ICE; the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and the Warden of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
The White House, ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for comment. According to a filing from Judge Carlos E. Mendoza, respondents have until May 27 to respond to the petition.
Megan Mann, chief deputy of operations for the Middle District of Florida, confirmed the case was "pending."
Raw Story attempted to contact Ussa Polania and her husband but did not receive a response.
Bar-Levy said: "Even though I voted for Trump, it doesn't mean that I'm gonna allow these kind of things to happen. This is not normal."
‘Carte blanche’
Whitaker and Diaz said they have worked with clients in similar situations.
Whitaker said she represented a Hondouran national in Baltimore, Md., who lives with his girlfriend and infant child. The man, who has no criminal record, “not even a traffic violation,” had approved special immigrant juvenile status and deferred action, meaning “protection from deportation based on his approved petition,” Whitaker said.
The man made a delivery on a military base. Based on his work permit identifying him as an immigrant, ICE was called, Whitaker said. Without detention facilities in Maryland, the man was transferred to two facilities in Arizona, requiring him to hire three lawyers.
“Procedurally, because there's so many people being detained, because there aren't enough people, there's not enough organization in the detention center,” said Whitaker, who said her client had yet to be processed when she went to the ICE holding facility in Baltimore, meaning a formal bond request wasn’t heard before the man was transferred to Arizona.
“They want to increase how effective their enforcement looks, but in doing so, they're just detaining anyone who is considered low-hanging fruit, including people that are lawfully here, that are eventually going to go before an immigration judge and be released on their own recognizance,” Whitaker said.
Diaz said he appears in Texas “a lot,” typically experiencing “zero tolerance for any arrests.”
He represented a 22-year-old Brazilian man who came to the U.S. with his mother at 10 years old. The family couldn’t afford to return to San Antonio for a hearing, and the man “didn't know he was supposed to go to court,” Diaz said.
Even though the man had “zero, nothing … on his record” and was “taking care of an autistic sister,” judges were hesitant to release him on $7,500 bond, Diaz said.
“Now ICE officers and everybody else thinks that they have carte blanche to do whatever they want, and there's no accountability to anybody because they feel that leadership is going to back them up for whatever they do, so they're just doing whatever they want.”
‘Treated like a number’
Ussa Polania will likely face an “uphill battle if she goes to Texas and goes in front of those judges,” Diaz said.
Especially because Donald Trump signed the hardline Laken Riley Act into law in January, Ussa Polania might face “mandatory detention” for the petty theft charge, Diaz said.
“I know how she's going to be treated. She's going to be treated like a number,” Diaz said. “Immigration obviously doesn't care about your personal circumstances, and now, there's basically zero tolerance for anything.”
Diaz anticipates an ICE attorney will recommend no bond for Ussa Polania and defense against deportation will be “super hard,” even for asylum as Colombians face abuse from militant groups, as detailed by Human Rights Watch and CNN.
“They're going to wear her out, and then, if she has the wherewithal to withstand all that, she can make it to an asylum individual merits hearing, which will probably be four to six months down the line,” Diaz said.
“She'll have to stay in custody. What does that do? It makes you want to give up. ‘I'd rather go home than be incarcerated for six months.’ That's probably what's going to happen if she does not get out on bond.”
Whitaker was more optimistic that Ussa Polania would get to stay in the U.S. for a hearing before an immigration judge, but acknowledged it takes “forever,” even for a non-detained individual — as much as 10 years.
“It’s cases like these that are clogging up the system in general,” Whitaker said. “It’s making it, ironically, hard for her to get this bond hearing that she needs so quickly to be released.”
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