KENNEWICk — Immigration attorneys in Washington say undocumented residents without serious criminal backgrounds are being arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) around the state.
It’s already happening in the Tri-Cities.
While much of the information around ICE arrests is never made public, families are coming forward and sharing their stories.
A Pasco mechanic and father of three was recently arrested by a federal immigration agent on his way to work.
Now the man’s family is trying to get him out of detention and move forward.
Being undocumented in the U.S. is not a crime under local, state or federal law. It is, however, a civil violation.
Entering the U.S. without being inspected and admitted, or improper entry, is a misdemeanor. But if someone re-enters after being deported, that’s a felony.
Everyone in the U.S., documented or not, is constitutionally protected by the right to due process when accused of a crime.
In a recent court filing, involving hundreds of people being deported and taken to a Central American prison, the Trump administration said they are deporting some immigrants with no criminal records and who have not been charged with a crime.
Arrest in Pasco
Alejandra Guzman-Mercado told the Tri-City Herald that her father was stopped by a federal immigration agent in Pasco around 11 a.m. on Feb. 23. He was driving a work truck when he was pulled over by an unmarked vehicle, one block away from his home.
The Herald is withholding the names of Guzman-Mercado’s father and family members because they worry speaking out may jeopardize his immigration case. The Herald used public documents and interviewed an attorney familiar with his case to confirm his arrest, detention and background.
The man was born in Mexico and was working with an immigration attorney at Quiroga Law Office in Kennewick to establish legal status and apply for a work permit.
He was arrested by the ICE agent at the intersection of 5th Avenue and Agate Street, and checked in at the Richland ICE office.
After a brief phone call with his family, he was taken to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, where he’s remained detained since Feb. 23.
ICE Public Affairs Officer David Yost wrote in a statement that the agency could provide no information about the specific case.
Guzman-Mercado, the man’s 23-year-old daughter, said that the ICE agent who pulled over her father asked him to show his immigration documents.
He was honest and admitted he is undocumented when the agent asked him about his immigration status.
He may have been targeted because of a DUI charge in 2020 and minor traffic violations that had been resolved.
If ICE knows that a person is living in the U.S. without legal status based on documents or the person admitting they are without status, then federal agents can arrest, detain and attempt to deport them.
Guzman-Mercado said the ICE agent who arrested her father did not have a warrant.
Immigration officers must have authorization from a judge in order to enter a home, vehicle or workplace without consent.
There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., according to estimates by the Pew Research Center based on census data. Data from the Migrant Policy Institute in 2019 shows more than 246,000 undocumented immigrants live in Washington state and 139,000 are from Mexico.
The Pew Research Center estimated that Washington’s population of undocumented immigrants was about 325,000 in 2022.
Family torn apart
Guzman-Mercado remembers an emotional phone call with a family member when she found out about her father’s arrest. She quickly packed up items in her college apartment in Cheney and left for Pasco. That was more than three weeks ago.
She is a student at Eastern Washington University. It’s her final semester before she graduates in June with her bachelor’s in music with plans to be a high school band teacher.
Guzman-Mercado, who is a U.S. citizen, is still attending classes and working but also trying to help her family and meeting weekly with her father’s attorney.
“(My parents’) biggest goal was giving us a better life than they had,” she said.
Her family has lived in Washington for more than 20 years.
Her father is self-taught mechanic who has worked for years on agricultural machinery in orchards and farms in southeastern Washington.
“He’s the most hardworking man I know,” she said. “Immigrants are taking the hardest jobs that no one else would think of doing.”
Without her father’s income, Guzman-Mercado said her family is now depending on her and her siblings to work and support them financially. She organized a GoFundMe fundraiser to help pay for an immigration bond, legal fees, bills and other immediate needs.
Next steps for Pasco family
Some immigration cases can be resolved through bonds, based on the discretion of an immigration judge.
If approved, immigration bonds paid to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security release the person from detention and give assurance that they will attend future immigration court hearings and any other government obligations.
A longtime Grandview resident detained at the federal immigration detention center in Tacoma recently filed a class-action that challenges what the lawsuit calls the Tacoma Immigration Court’s policy of refusing to consider releasing people on bond who have lived in the country for years.
Guzman-Mercado is still hoping her father will be eligible for bond.
While he is in detention, she and her family have been able to make 30-minute video calls with him and send him approved messages that he receives on a tablet that he shares with several other people.
Guzman-Mercado encourages her family members not to cry when they call, and tries to stay calm, strong and focused on getting her father home.
‘Low-hanging fruit’
Many of the initial targets for Trump’s mass deportation efforts are people who have standing deportation orders. Immigration officials already have their addresses on file.
“Currently, the Trump administration is going after the ‘low-hanging fruit,’” Pasco immigration attorney Eamonn Roach said in a statement.
“(ICE) can’t possibly know where every person is located. But they do know where some people are and those are the people they are starting with.”
ICE is targeting people without legal status who are arrested, charged, convicted of or admit to certain crimes, including theft and assault. The first piece of legislation that Trump signed into law in January was the Laken Riley Act, mandating they be detained.
But other immigrants are getting caught up in the broad federal immigration enforcement.
That includes people who have recently entered the U.S. with current or pending immigration cases, people who’ve lived in the U.S. for decades who’ve been found to be overstaying a visa, or those who confess to immigration officials that they entered the U.S. illegally.
Experts say the goal is to ramp up numbers of arrests, detentions and deportations.
A recent court filing highlighted how the administration is targeting immigrants lacking criminal records, following the deportations of hundreds of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Venezuelan officials say they have no information linking any of the men deported to that gang.
‘Default to detention’
Vanessa Gutierrez is the deputy director and former directing attorney of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP). The Seattle-based nonprofit provides legal services to immigrants, as well as advocacy and community education.
Gutierrez said that she and other staff at NWIRP are seeing federal immigration agents “default to detention” in order for ICE to arrest and detain as many people as possible.
“I’ve never seen this level of harsh enforcement before,” she said.
Gutierrez explained that ICE is targeting immigrants with minor criminal convictions — charges that wouldn’t be considered serious or violent offenses.
“Painting this picture of immigrants as criminals and that they are only deporting criminals is so far from the truth that we’re seeing.”
Immigration attorney Hector Quiroga, a partner at Quiroga Law Office, confirmed that his staff is providing legal services to the Pasco man who is now detained.
Quiroga declined to discuss specifics of the case, but said that there needs to be a reason for ICE agents to target someone and they must have probable cause to arrest them.
He said resolved cases for misdemeanor charges such as DUIs were likely putting some undocumented immigrants on ICE’s radar.
“None of (these types of charges) used to be a problem because they were so old and (the individual) had shown good character,” Quiroga said.
“Now we’re seeing that (federal agents) are picking these things that they didn’t used to.”
Quiroga said that it also is possible that some arrests are cases of “mistaken identity” when a person with the same name or a similar name is arrested, instead of the individual being targeted.
‘Collateral arrests’
There also have been reports of undocumented immigrants who are arrested in “collateral arrests” if they are nearby at the same time.
“Right now, ICE is doing ‘targeted enforcement operations’ to find specific people,” Roach said.
“But if there are other people present when ICE finds this person and those people talk with ICE and answer questions regarding their own status, then they might also end up being detained based on Trump’s executive order regarding priorities.”
Unlike criminal defendants, people facing deportation do not have a right to government-appointed counsel. Their options are to hire and pay for an attorney themselves or seek out free legal help to navigate immigration court proceedings.
Though in some cases, undocumented immigrants may choose to “self deport” through voluntary departure, rather than wait for a court date while they are in detention.
The Trump administration also has revoked several legal pathways for immigrants to stay in the U.S., including temporary protected status, and humanitarian parole for Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Haitians. Ukrainians who came to the U.S. during the war may be next to lose temporary legal status.
Asylum-seekers also may be subject to deportation.
Roach explained that if someone has a pending asylum case, they are allowed to remain in the U.S., but it is possible that they would be detained while waiting for an immigration court date.
“The U.S. has the ability to detain you while you await your court date in front of the judge,” Roach said. “A person can only be deported if they lose their court case.”
