Plaintiff in Immigration Raid Suit Re-Arrested By ICE Agents (1)

One of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging racial profiling in immigration raids was re-arrested Thursday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, his attorneys said in a news release.

The arrest was a “shocking act of retaliation,” said attorney Mohammad Tajsar of the ACLU of Southern California.

Isaac Villegas’s apprehension and detention seems to have violated an immigration judge’s previous order releasing him, according to the news release from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which also represents Villegas.

In a statement that repeatedly referred to Villegas as a “criminal illegal alien,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said he had been arrested in Los Angeles after violating the terms of his supervised release, including by “missing required check-ins.”

Villegas had previously been arrested at a bus stop in June, according to the lawsuit. He was subsequently released from immigration detention “because a judge determined he was not a danger or flight risk,” attorney Stacy Tolchin of Pasadena, Calif., said in the news release.

“ICE’s redetention of Mr. Villegas without notice, explanation, or indication that he did anything wrong violates his constitutional right to due process,” Tolchin said.

Tolchin has filed a habeas corpus petition on Villegas’ behalf in the US District Court for the Central District of California, records show. Such petitions, alleging immigrants are being unlawfully detained, have flooded federal courts as the Trump administration ramps up its mass-deportation efforts.

Villegas is among the day laborers who sued the Trump administration in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, a case that made national headlines when the US Supreme Court paused a judge’s order preventing agents from detaining people based solely on factors such as their ethnicity or language.

The case is still pending in the US District Court for the Central District of California. A judge in February threw out one count of the amended complaint but left the suit otherwise intact, rejecting most of the government’s motion to dismiss. Plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint last week, records show.