Migrants detained despite court wins

Attorneys observe an escalating trend of the government holding people indefinitely.

- BY ANDREA CASTILLO

OLGA FEDOROVA Associated Press AN ICE agent peers through a door while waiting to detain people inside the waiting room of a New York immigration courtroom in July.

R.V. already had spent six months detained at a facility in California when he won his case in immigration court in June.

He testified that he had fled his native Cuba last year after protesting against the government, for which he was jailed, surveilled and persecuted. So, after being kidnapped in Mexico, he entered the U.S. illegally and told border agents he was afraid for his life.

An immigration court judge granted him protection against deportation to Cuba, and R.V., 21, was looking forward to reuniting with family in Florida.

But R.V., who asked that his full name not be used for fear of retaliation from the government, hasn’t been released. At the detention center, he said, agents have told him they'll still find a way to deport him — if not to Cuba, then maybe Panama or Costa Rica.

“The wait is so hard,” he said in an interview. “It’s as if they don’t want to accept that I won.”

R.V. is among what immigration attorneys describe as an escalating trend: Some immigrants who win protection from deportation to their home countries are being detained indefinitely.

Often, the person has been held while the federal government appealed their win or sought another country willing to accept them.

The government has long had the ability to make such appeals or to seek another country where it could deport someone; the Department of Homeland Security generally has 90 days to find somewhere else to send them.

But, in practice, such third-country removals were rare, so the person typically was released and allowed to remain in the U.S.