A federal judge has ordered that Yakima County must remove the immigration hold it placed on a criminal immigrant defendant after federal authorities designated him for deportation. The US District Judge, Salvador Mendoza, gave his ruling on Tuesday, to grant a temporary restraining order that enabled the defendant, Antonio Sanchez-Ochoa, to gain release from Yakima County Jail via bail as he awaits his trial for assault.
Filed case documents show Sanchez-Ochoa was able to post his bail, which was set at $50,000, only to find that the jail would not process it – this was on the grounds that an administrative warrant was signed by an officer of the Department of Homeland Security requesting Sanchez-Ochoa’s detention for immigration violations.
Last week, both Columbia Legal Services and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, sued on behalf of Sanchez-Ochoa. They claimed that a judge had not reviewed the administrative warrant and it was unsupported by probable cause. This meant that Yakima County local officials had no legal authority to continue holding Sanchez-Ochoa in detention. Attorney, Bernardo Rafael Cruz, says that the decision could affect jails over the US.
Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement usually fill out a document giving the name of the suspected immigration violator held, and jail officials then place them on a federal hold. Cruz says that Yakima County was exceeding its authority and the judge’s ruling could have wider nationwide implications.