"Even if you win, you stay locked up": How ICE uses appeals to keep immigrants in detention

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : Then ICE appealed the decision.
53% : Still, ICE continued to appeal, and he remained detained in the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield, California, for more than three and a half years as his case bounced between the BIA and immigration judges.
52% : ICE immediately picked her up, and she lost her freedom once again.
51% : In the spring, the Butler County Sheriff's Department terminated its 17-year-contract with ICE to detain immigrants, and Mendez-Morales was transferred to the Geauga County Safety Center, also in Ohio.
49% : Data obtained by a public records request with the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review, which presides over immigration courts, shows that ICE was responsible for more than half of the 4,252 immigration cases -- of asylum, withholding of removal, or CAT -- that were brought to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) between October 2015 and June 2021, fighting to overturn a grant of deportation relief in about 2,700 individual cases.
48% : ICE holds the power to appeal any decision with which it disagrees (in both detained and non-detained cases), and it often does -- which, for those in detention, can mean extra months or years of being locked up after having made a successful claim.
48% : "I have evidence that I deserve asylum
47% : ICE is under no obligation to keep immigrants in custody.
47% : Still, ICE enjoys enormous discretion, so exceptions may apply to people the agency considers a national security threat or a danger to the community.
47% : Danya Contractor, a coordinator with the local advocacy group Ohio Immigrant Visitation, says she has seen multiple women at Butler County Jail who have won deportation relief and could have been released to the community but stayed detained while ICE filed appeals.
46% : But ICE continued to deny Mendez-Morales' request for release.
45% : In fact, under a 2004 policy, ICE is supposed to release noncitizens who have been granted asylum, withholding of removal, or CAT while an appeal is pending.
44% : To be clear, ICE isn't obligated to pursue any appeal.
43% : When her sentence came to an end in early August, Mendez-Morales was released -- and that's when she was immediately transferred by ICE to Butler County Jail in Hamilton, Ohio.
42% : It was a cold stretch in early February, and she had spent nearly six months in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Butler County Jail, a notorious detention center about 35 miles north of Cincinnati.
42% : Proving fear of persecution or the likelihood of torture back home to win asylum and other protections such as CAT in a US immigration court is never easy.
42% : " The scope of targets for enforcement under President Joe Biden is more limited, focusing on national security and public safety threat categories as well as recent arrivals at the border.
42% : Moreno won asylum about halfway through her 15-month detention, but ICE appealed the case.
37% : But there's a catch: The criminal conviction for a serious crime barred her from qualifying for asylum and an alternative form of relief known as withholding of removal, which is available, for example, for people who have been previously deported and are ineligible for asylum.
36% : Last November, Mendez-Morales had applied for asylum and two other forms of deportation relief with the help of an attorney who argued she was part of a larger group of at-risk "Indigenous Guatemalan women who have reported their abusive ex-partner to the police."
30% : Investigators also relied on testimony from the traumatized 10-year-old to accuse Mendez-Morales of having known about the abuse for a year -- which she has disputed in court -- and failing to report to law enforcement.

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