When federal immigration agents detained Lisandro Pantaleon Pacheco on his way to work April 29, his girlfriend tracked him first to West Valley City, Utah.
Then Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred the Park City High School graduate to a county jail in Evanston, Wyoming.
Immigration attorney Kendall Moriarty with Teter Legal said that’s a common situation. ICE’s main Enforcement and Removal Operations office in Utah is in West Valley.
ICE checks in detainees at EROs and then transfers them to temporary holding facilities. Moriarty explained ICE has contracts with county jails in Wyoming, among other places.
“Bacially, where there's bed space,” she told KPCW. “So they can hold people there for several days at a time, until a place opens up in Vegas or Aurora or Tacoma … one of these other, larger detention facilities.”
From there, she said some people can be deported in as quickly as two days if they’re willing to go back to their home country.
Others request what’s called “relief from removal,” which prolongs the process. Pacheco’s attorney Adam Crayk has indicated that’s what he’ll do.
But Moriarty said options are often limited because, by design, “the law is written very narrowly.”
“And so someone like [Pacheco], who is a contributing member of the community, has no significant criminal issues,” she said. “It's possible that he doesn't have a lot of options for fighting it.”
One of the first options is a habeas corpus petition, which challenges whether Pacheco’s detention is legal. If successful, a federal court could order immigration agents to release him, often on bail.
Attorneys say habeas writs have been easier to obtain since the Trump administration has expanded detentions and deportations.
But detainees still must go through removal procedures after they’re released. That happens in immigration court, which is part of the executive branch, under the Department of Justice — not the judiciary.
That’s where Moriarty says the odds are often stacked against people like Pacheco, who doesn’t have legal status since he was brought to the U.S. as a 1-year-old.
“You can appeal within the DOJ to the Board of Immigration Appeals,” she said.
The appeals board’s decision is final and can mean someone is immediately deported.
Moriarty told KPCW that, in rare circumstances, someone facing removal can still appeal that decision in federal court, back into the judicial branch. Federal judges may pause the deportation, but they don’t have to.
“In which case you can be deported while your appeal pends,” she said. “And then, if your case is overturned or changed on appeal, they would be required to bring you back.”
The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to KPCW’s request for comment on ICE’s actions in the Park City area April 29.
DHS told FOX 13 that Pacheco admitted to being in the U.S. “illegally” and that he will remain in custody pending immigration proceedings.
Pacheco is not known to have a criminal record other than a single traffic violation.
Crayk has said he’s aware of ICE detaining seven or eight people in and around Park City April 29. He said another detainee was a Deer Valley Resort employee, also with no known criminal record beyond traffic violations.
In both cases, Crayk said they were “detained for being brown while driving.”
