Judge orders UC Berkeley student released from ICE custody

A federal judge has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release a UC Berkeley student and asylum seeker detained at San Francisco International Airport on Oct. 30.

ICE agents arrested Paula Valentina Albornoz Hernandez, a 23-year-old business administration student from Colombia, while she was waiting to board a flight with her boyfriend for a vacation in Oregon.

Her attorneys argued that the detention of Albornoz Hernandez, who had a pending asylum case and current work permit, violated the U.S. Constitution because she was deprived of her liberty without an opportunity to challenge it in court.

The Department of Homeland Security told Berkeleyside last week that Albornoz Hernandez was deportable because she had overstayed a visa in 2023, that her work authorization and pending asylum application did not confer legal status, and that “being in detention is a choice” because immigrants have the opportunity to self-deport.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Dena Coggins agreed with Albornoz Hernandez, writing that “due process forbids the government from detaining the noncitizen unless they are first provided with adequate notice and a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral arbiter.”

She ordered that Albornoz Hernandez be released immediately, and forbade the agency from requiring her to wear an electronic monitor unless it proves in a future court hearing that it is necessary.

ICE had placed Albornoz Hernandez in deportation proceedings and her asylum case will continue to make its way through immigration court, said Lizzie Fulton, the attorney representing her in that case.

In a statement Monday, DHS called Coggins “a Biden-appointed activist judge” before saying the agency “complies with all lawful court orders.” The department also defended its policy of detaining immigrants at airports, saying, “This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”

UC Berkeley mounted an all-out effort to obtain Albornoz Hernandez’s release in the week since she was detained, with administrators rallying support from elected officials and students demonstrating on Sproul Plaza.

“I feel relieved, happy, so many positive emotions,” Liliana Iglesias, the director of UC Berkeley’s Undocumented Students Program, wrote to Berkeleyside Monday morning upon hearing the news.

Attorney Niko De Bremaeker of Centro Legal de la Raza, which filed the petition challenging Albornoz Hernandez’s detention, said Monday morning he expected it to take between a few hours and a day for her to be released. She has been held at ICE’s California City detention center, a facility in the Southern California desert.

“Federal judges have overwhelmingly found these arrests unlawful, and ICE keeps making them,” De Bremaeker said. “They need to stop, and Congress needs to investigate.”

While Albornoz Hernandez’s immigration case is still pending, Fulton said it will now be easier to pursue because she will be able to meet privately with her lawyers and prepare evidence, something that’s difficult to do while detained. Besides reuniting with her family and boyfriend, she is eager to return to her schoolwork, Fulton said.

“One of her big concerns while she was detained was missing classes,” Fulton said. “She called her graduate student instructor and asked how she can jump right back in when she’s released.”

Albornoz Hernandez’s boyfriend, Anthony, said he hit the road as soon as he heard the news, and was on his way to Bakersfield late Monday morning, where he hoped to reunite with his girlfriend after a weeklong separation that, he said, “felt like months.”

“I didn’t doubt for a second that she was going to get released,” he said. “I was ready at any time to hop in the car and just go.”

Berkeleyside partners with the nonprofit newsroom Open Campus on higher education coverage.

This story was originally published by Berkeleyside and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.