A fourth Vermont farmworker, out of the nine detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection last month, was deported to Mexico this week, according to Burlington-based advocacy group Migrant Justice.
Juan Javier Rodriguez-Gomez, 41, could not be found in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement database on Thursday morning.
“We’ll know more once he makes contact on his arrival to Mexico,” Will Lambek, spokesperson for Migrant Justice, wrote in an email.
Five migrant farm workers remain in ICE custody, including four who were transferred to a detention facility in Texas last week. A Massachusetts immigration court granted one of them release on bail Thursday morning.
The deported worker, Rodriguez-Gomez, was previously held at the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana. In early May, three other farmworkers were deported from this facility, all under the same “expedited removal” procedure, according to a Thursday press release from Migrant Justice. Brett Stokes, attorney for the Center for Justice Reform at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, has said that type of deportation is almost impossible to challenge.
The four deported men were among eight detained on April 21 at Pleasant Valley Farms, Vermont’s largest dairy, located a few miles from the Canadian border. Another farmworker, Arbey Lopez-Lopez, 36, was previously detained on the road to the farm while delivering groceries to workers almost two weeks earlier.
Diblaim Maximo Sargento-Morales, a 30-year-old known as Max, could return to his home in Vermont as early as Thursday, according to Lambek. Vermont Freedom Bail Fund, an organization that raises funds to support migrant detainees, plans to pay for his bond release. The $1,500 bond is the lowest possible amount, according to Migrant Justice.
Supporters are still determining how to pay for his flight, Lambek said, adding that Sargento-Morales will remain in Vermont while ICE officials push forward a case to deport him to Mexico.
The geography of these remaining cases is complex.
Sargento-Morales was one of four farmworkers transferred to the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Karnes City, Texas, on May 8.
But his bond hearing happened at an immigration court in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, which has jurisdiction over the prison in Vermont, where he was held on May 7 when he applied for bond. The judge presiding over his case determined that her court still had jurisdiction over him while in Texas.
But a different judge considering a second case in the same immigration court on Thursday came to a different conclusion. In the case of Jose Edilberto Molina-Aguilar, 37, Judge Natalie Smith determined her court did not have jurisdiction over him after he was transferred to Texas. Stokes, his attorney, objected, but the judge upheld her opinion. Stokes must now file a bond motion with the Texas immigration court for Molina-Aguilar.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Stokes said in a statement. He called Smith’s decision “an arbitrary and incorrect interpretation.”
Lopez-Lopez, who is being detained in New Hampshire, had his hearing postponed. Smith said since she received materials related to Lopez-Lopez’s bond motion only on Wednesday, she was not prepared to reach a decision. She rescheduled the hearing for Monday at 1:30 p.m.
“What happened today was procedural,” Lopez-Lopez’s attorney, Enrique Mesa, said in a statement. “We will return to court to continue the fight to reunite Arbey with his 5-year-old daughter and the community.”
None of the three detainees who had hearings scheduled Thursday have formally applied for asylum, according to Lambek.
Materials presented in the bond hearings included evidence that supports the farmworkers’ ties to their community and included a letter from almost 100 state elected officials, including Vermont’s lieutenant governor, the speaker of the House, and the Senate majority and minority leaders. The letter, dated May 7, was written in support of all nine men arrested in April, including the four who have since been deported.
“We’re very pleased that Max will soon be released from immigration detention and will be back with his family and community in Vermont,” Lambek said following the hearings. “We’re very disappointed that the judge did not rule in bond hearings in two other cases, but we’re still optimistic that when those cases are finally heard that they’ll win their release as well.”
