NEW YORK — Federal agents on Tuesday detained a 21-year-old Honduran man at an immigration court in New York City, an action that his attorneys said defied a federal judge who barred such arrests a day earlier.
The arrest was made Tuesday morning at 26 Federal Plaza, one of three immigration courthouses in Manhattan that a judge, P. Kevin Castel, had ruled Monday were off limits for arrests.
Lawyers for the man, Vinely Alexander Castillo-Norales, said the arrest occurred despite an order that allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make courthouse arrests only in extremely limited circumstances, none of which appeared to apply Tuesday.
“His arrest is in direct violation of an order in this court — issued just yesterday,” the man’s lawyers said in a petition filed Tuesday in US District Court in Manhattan.
But on Tuesday evening, after repeated inquiries from The New York Times, the federal government took two seemingly contradictory actions: They released Castillo-Norales from custody while simultaneously claiming he was a dangerous criminal.
Shortly after Castillo-Norales’s lawyers issued a statement Tuesday evening saying he had been released, the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment, claiming Castillo-Norales was an active member of the Bloods street gang and had faced charges for burglary, robbery, larceny, and possession of stolen property.
“ICE did NOT violate any court orders,” the statement read. “Nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them, especially illegal alien gang members.”
The department did not immediately respond when asked why Castillo-Norales had been released, nor did it clarify where he had been charged.
In their petition, lawyers for Castillo-Norales said only that he had never been convicted of a crime. Chloe Chik, a spokesperson for their organization, the New York Legal Assistance Group, said that the department was “obviously grasping.”
“Arresting anyone on unfounded claims subverts the rule of law and could have a lasting impact on everyone’s civil liberties,” she said.
The Manhattan US attorney’s office, which represented DHS in court, declined Tuesday to comment on the arrest.
On Tuesday, before Castillo-Norales was released, Judge John G. Koeltl, also of US court in Manhattan, set a telephone hearing for Wednesday morning. That hearing could provide an opportunity for the government and the Honduran man’s lawyers to air their competing claims.
Since the early days of President Trump’s second term, his administration has taken an unusually belligerent posture toward the federal courts and federal district judges in particular. But open defiance of a judge remains rare.
If the Manhattan federal court were to determine that Castillo-Norales’s arrest violated Castel’s order, it would be another chapter in a remarkable sequence of events: The federal government had acknowledged earlier that ICE had committed a legal error that enabled the arrest of thousands in violation of its own policy. That admission prompted Castel to block the practice, the cornerstone of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in New York City.
The administration had said that courthouse arrests are simply a practicality, allowing agents to avoid the dangerous circumstances that might arise in the field. Their critics have responded that detentions at immigration court have a chilling effect on the entire system, leading immigrants to avoid routine hearings for fear of being arrested.
According to the petition filed Tuesday, Castillo-Norales entered the United States with his father years ago and expressed a desire to apply for asylum. After being held briefly at that time, Castillo-Norales was released on his own recognizance, according to the petition.
It says that he has never been detained previously by immigration courts. “He has simply gone about his business, building a life for himself and his father,” the petition read.
Benjamin Remy, the coordinating senior attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group’s Immigrant Protection Unit, said in a statement Tuesday evening, “We’re thrilled that Alexander is swiftly returning home to his family where he belongs after his egregious and flagrantly illegal arrest.”
He added, “While we, as his attorneys, and his family are relieved that Alexander is no longer unlawfully detained as part of Trump’s horrific immigration dragnet, his arrest demonstrates ICE’s utter contempt for the rule of law.”
A longtime court watcher, Peter Melck Kuttel, said he witnessed the arrest and provided photos he took showing that it had taken place about 9:15 a.m. Tuesday. Kuttel works with an immigration assistance program at St. Peter’s Church in midtown Manhattan.
Kuttel said that he sought to hand a paper copy of Castel’s 15-page order from Monday to a group of ICE agents before the arrest. They refused to accept it, he said, and one told him that the agency did not care.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.