A federal judge ruled Friday that ICE agents legally detained a 25-year-old Guatemalan man who was in a van of farmworkers stopped in Marion County as they headed to harvest blueberries.
The Department of Homeland Security had discretion to reinstate a previous deportation order, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut found.
Immigration officials ordered the man, identified in court records as L.J.P.L., to leave the U.S. in 2009 and 2014. He returned to the U.S. last year but was released on his own recognizance and eventually told to go to court next year for a new removal hearing. In the meantime, he was allowed to remain in the country and had sought asylum.
Once DHS decided to reinstate a 2009 removal order for L.J.P.L, detention is mandatory, the judge found.
“Until Congress enacts long-overdue changes to our Nation’s immigration laws, this Court is bound to apply existing immigration laws to the facts and circumstances of this case,” Immergut wrote.
But Immergut also ordered the government to “immediately” refer L.J.P.L. to an asylum officer to interview him on whether his fear of persecution if returned to Guatemala is reasonable.
L.J.P.L. identifies as Mam — indigenous Mayan people – and speaks mostly the Mam language. He fled Guatemala to escape from people who killed his brother, according to his lawyers.
Immergut rejected arguments by his lawyers that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers couldn’t arrest him unless an immigration judge made an administrative decision to dismiss L.J.P.L’s current case and he had a chance to appeal.
L.J.P.L. was taken into custody Aug.7 when ICE officers stopped a van he was riding in about 5:30 a.m. in Hubbard as it took him and six other fieldworkers to a farm to harvest blueberries.
L.J.P.L. was among four people detained that morning in what is believed to be the first publicly known ICE arrests of fieldworkers in Oregon since President Donald Trump took office for his second term.
L.J.P.L. most recently entered the U.S. on Feb. 15, 2024, near Nogales, Arizona, and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol released him with instructions to report to ICE on various dates. He was later given a notice to appear in Immigration Court for a removal proceeding in November 2026. He did as instructed, provided his Woodburn address and applied for asylum this past February, according to the court record.
ICE agents have detained L.J.P.L. in the Northwest Immigration Processing Center in Tacoma.
On Aug. 12, five days after he was taken into custody, the Department of Homeland Security filed a motion to dismiss his notice to appear in Immigration Court next year, finding it was improperly issued when he entered the country in 2024. The government instead said he should be subject to immediate deportation under his initial 2009 removal order.
The judge agreed. While ICE doesn’t have “unfettered discretion,” immigration officials in this case acted lawfully, Immergut said.
She found no legal authority supporting L.J.P.L.’s lawyers’ position that an immigration judge had to grant a motion to dismiss L.J.P.L.’s current proceedings before the government could reinstate the 2009 removal order.
It appeared L.J.P.L. was allowed to remain in the United States last year based on ICE’s “ignorance” of his prior deportation orders, according to Immergut’s opinion.
“No one in this case disputes that Petitioner’s prior order of removal from 2009 is administratively final,” Immergut wrote.
Immergut ordered the government to alert her within one week of the date of L.J.P.L.’s scheduled interview with an asylum officer.
Innovation Law Lab attorney Nelly Garcia Orjuela, who represented L.J.P.L , said she’s disappointed in the judge’s decision, calling the right to due process a “cornerstone of our democracy.”
“The government chose to place L.J.P.L. in removal proceedings, then collaterally arrested him, and later tried to justify the detention by reinstating an order of removal, yet this is not possible under existing immigration law unless and until his other pending case is administratively final,” she said in a statement. “Farmworkers make sure we have food on our tables and our economy depends on their labor. We will continue to fight to make sure every Oregonian, regardless of their immigration status, can exercise their right to due process.”
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