BOSTON, Mass. (AP) — A man living in Massachusetts who U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained in April after smashing his car window with a hammer has been released, his lawyer said Friday.
Juan Francisco Mendez was released Thursday on a $1,500 bond after a month of being held at Strafford County Corrections in Dover, New Hampshire. He will also be required to wear a GPS ankle monitor while the U.S. government continues to pursue his deportation, said one of Mendez’s attorneys, Ryan Sullivan.
Mendez, 29, was taken into custody by agents on April 14 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as he drove to a dental appointment. The agents claimed they were looking for another man with a different name who lived in the same neighborhood before they dragged him and his wife out of the car.
The lawyers for Mendez, who is from Guatemala, said he was detained while in the process of applying for asylum status — something he is still pursuing. Mendez started the proceedings to gain asylum status last October, according to his attorneys.
He has no criminal record, and the government held him for weeks without initiating deportation proceedings against him, leading to his case being dismissed by an immigration judge on May 8. After that hearing, the U.S. government charged Mendez with being in the country illegally before a judge ordered his release on a minimum bond Thursday.
“They decided he was brown, so they stopped him, and because he couldn’t prove he had status, they detained him,” Sullivan told The Associated Press on Friday.
The incident, recorded on video by Mendez’s wife, Marilu Domingo Ortiz, shows ICE agents using a hammer to smash the car window and then seize Ortiz.
Ortiz and her 9-year-old son have already been given protection under an asylum status over fears of facing persecution if they returned home to Guatemala. Mendez was in the process of applying for what is called derivative asylum, where you can get asylum if a family member already has it.
Another lawyer for Mendez’s family, Ondine Galvez-Sniffin, told The Associated Press last month that when she arrived at the scene, Mendez’s wife was crying and shaking, yelling “Help Me” in Spanish as he was driven away in handcuffs. The lawyer said last month that in almost 30 years of immigration work, the case was the first time she had seen “such violent drastic measures being taken.”
A spokesperson for ICE did not return a phone or email message requesting comment on Friday afternoon.
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