Guatemalan teen who ICE held in Louisiana returns home after judge rules detention unlawful

NEW ORLEANS – An 18-year-old Guatemalan citizen with a legal right to live and work in the U.S., who spent nearly three months in immigration detention in north Louisiana was returned to his home Friday in Spring Valley, New York, following a federal judge’s order for his immediate release.

A day earlier, Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee – who in the past several months has split with the administration on some significant immigration-related cases – ruled that the government’s detention of Carlos Guerra Leon was unlawful because the federal government had previously agreed that he would not be subject to deportation for at least another year.

According to his attorneys, Guerra Leon came to the country at age 10, “after suffering abandonment and neglect at the hands of his father.” Two years later, in absentia and without his knowledge, a judge ordered him deported. But in late 2022, still in the United States, he was granted Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a humanitarian program for undocumented immigrants “who have suffered parental abuse, neglect, abandonment, or similar mistreatment,” offering them a chance at permanent residence, Guerra Leon’s attorneys wrote in a court filing.

Because of a visa backlog, he could not immediately apply for a green card and was granted deferred action status, pausing his removal for four years. His status does not expire until December 2026.

Nevertheless, according to his attorneys, in early August,  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him without a warrant while he was on his way to work in New York and transferred him to the Jackson Parish Correctional Center in Jonesboro, a privately managed immigration lockup where he has since been held.

Though the Trump administration this year stopped restricting deferred action under the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status program, that doesn’t impact people who had already been granted deferred action, Guerra Leon’s attorneys argued. Doughty agreed.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE “fail to cite any authority that allow the removal of Petitioner when deferred action status is still in effect,” Doughty wrote in his decision last week. “This Court holds that without terminating Petitioner’s deferred action status, Petitioner cannot be removed.”

ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

Following Thursday’s order, attorneys at the National Immigration Project and the ACLU of Louisiana rushed to Jonesboro to pick up their client.

In court documents filed early Friday morning, his attorneys said when they arrived at the detention center at about 10 p.m. on Thursday, facility staff refused to release the young man to them outside of the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., despite Doughty’s order for immediate release. Attorneys filed a motion to hold the Trump administration, including New Orleans-based ICE officials, in contempt of court.

Attorneys were finally able to take Guerra Leon with them on Friday morning, making the five-hour drive from Jonesboro to the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, where he caught an evening flight to be reunited with his family in New York.

At the airport, Guerra Leon remained mostly silent, at moments flashing a shy, nervous smile through round cheeks, as attorneys presented travel documents to the airport’s Transportation Security Administration staff. During the screening process, Bridget Pranzatelli, staff attorney at the National Immigration Project, rested a hand on Guerra Leon’s back or whispered encouragement to keep him calm.

Waiting to go through the security checkpoint, Guerra Leon smiled as he took a call from his mother Daysi Guerra Leon. He said he was most looking forward to reuniting with her.

Once attorneys escorted Guerra Leon to the airport gate, Pranzatelli texted Daysi Guerra Leon she would see her son soon.

This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.