Arrest of toddler and father by US immigration agents draws legal challenge

By Fatma Zehra Solmaz

ISTANBUL - US immigration authorities arrested a 2-year-old girl and her father in Minneapolis and transferred them to Texas despite a court order directing the child’s release, according to court filings, lawyers and media reports.

The father, identified in court records as Elvis Joel TE, was stopped by immigration officers with his daughter around noon while they were returning home from a store, the Guardian reported Saturday. Later that evening, a federal judge ordered the child’s release, but authorities instead placed both on a flight to a detention center in Texas.

Irina Vaynerman, the family’s lawyer, said immigration officials later flew the pair back to Minnesota and released the toddler into her mother’s custody. The father remains in detention in Minnesota.

“The horror is truly unimaginable,” Vaynerman said. “The depravity of all of this is beyond words.”

Another family lawyer, Kira Kelley, said agents entered the family’s backyard and driveway without a warrant as the father and daughter arrived home Thursday. Kelley said one officer smashed a car window while the child was inside.

As the mother stepped back into the house, agents refused to allow the father to hand his daughter to her or other relatives “waiting terrified inside the home,” before placing both into an immigration vehicle, Kelley said.

The father, originally from Ecuador, has a pending asylum claim and no final removal order, his lawyers said. They added that the child has lived in Minneapolis since arriving in the United States as a newborn.

Lawyers filed an emergency petition seeking the release of both the father and daughter. A federal judge in Minnesota ordered that they not be transferred out of state and later directed the immediate release of the child into Kelley’s custody.

The judge said the toddler had to be released because of the “risk of irreparable harm,” noting that the petition was likely to succeed and adding: “Needless to say, she has no criminal history.”

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said agents were conducting a “targeted enforcement operation” when they identified Elvis Joel TE, describing him as an “illegal immigrant” who had allegedly reentered the US unlawfully and was “driving erratically with a child.”

DHS said he refused to open his door or lower his window and claimed agents “attempted to give the child to the mother who was in the area, but she refused,” adding that DHS officers “took care of the child who the mother would not take.”

A lawyer for the family rejected that account, saying the claim that the mother refused to take her daughter was false and that agents prevented the father from returning the child to the home to be with her mother.

The family’s lawyers are asking the court to issue a broader order barring transfers out of Minnesota for at least seven days after detainees gain access to legal counsel and to block out-of-state transfers for people with pending habeas petitions challenging their detention.