An immigration judge on Monday denied bond to a Venezuelan City Council staffer being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention upstate. 

Immigration Judge Charles Conroy, who has one of the lowest asylum grant rates in New York City held a 20-minute hearing Monday morning at the Varick Street immigration court. He then denied Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez, a personnel services data analyst for the city’s legislative body, the opportunity to post bond.

Bohorquez, whose arrest last month provoked widespread uproar among New York elected officials, appeared virtually in a yellow jumpsuit, from a white cinderblock room in the Orange County Jail upstate. 

ICE has detained him since he was arrested last month at an asylum interview at an immigration services office in Bethpage, Long Island.

“I agree with the government,” Judge Conroy said. “He didn’t prove to me he’s not a danger to society going forward.”

The basis for DHS’s assertion was a 2023 arrest for an altercation between Bohorquez and a roommate, who alleged Bohorquez punched him in the face and broke his nose. The harassment and assault charges were later dismissed and sealed, but “police came to his apartment,” the DHS attorney said at the hearing, adding it was “likely they did observe a broken nose.”

Bohorquez later checked boxes saying he’d never been arrested when filing paperwork for asylum and Temporary Protected Status, the DHS attorney added. 

“He lied to immigration about his criminal history,” the government attorney told Judge Conroy. 

Roger Asmar, an attorney representing Bohorquez, argued that because the charges were sealed, Bohorquez didn’t believe he had to disclose the arrest. He also said a video of the altercation showed Bohorquez had not punched his roommate, and the roommate was also arrested in the incident along with Bohorquez.

“My client has no criminal record. My client is still protected under TPS,” he said, pointing out his employment by the city council, and the many coworkers who submitted letters in his defense. “I don’t see any reason my client shouldn’t be released.”

Judge Conroy disagreed. 

“He’s failed to demonstrate he’s not a danger,” the judge said.

A spokesperson for the City Council didn’t return a request for comment right away. The Council had previously said that Bohorquez, who has worked for the Council for about a year, passed a routine background check required in order to work for city government. 

Bohorquez’ detainment at an asylum interview on Long Island on Jan. 12 was thrust into the spotlight when City Council Speaker Julie Menin hosted an impromptu press conference about it at City Hall that same day. 

Though those officials didn’t mention Bohorquez’s name, the Department of Homeland Security swiftly identified him by name in statements sent out to media outlets, also referring to him as a “Criminal Illegal Alien.”

“There’s pressure in this case to not release my client because he works for the City Council,” Asmar told THE CITY after the hearing Monday. “My guy is clean, it’s all political.” 

While Judge Conroy’s decision Monday meant Bohorquez will remain in detention for now, a habeas corpus lawsuit is still pending before a federal judge, who could still grant him release. 

A Precariously Uncertain Status

Bohorquez entered the country back in 2017 on a tourist visa and later applied for and was then granted Temporary Protected Status, according to documents submitted to the federal court in his habeas application. 

When the Biden Administration extended Venezuelan TPS in the last president’s final days in office, Bohorquez quickly applied for an extension that should have shielded him from arrest and deportation through at least this October.

But the Trump administration has sought to end TPS for people from many countries including Venezuela, though that decision is still making its way through the federal court system.

The Trump administration is appealing a federal appeals court ruling that it had unlawfully ended TPS for Venezuelans. But the federal government has repeatedly taken the position that the program has already ended, as the DHS attorney argued before Controy, the immigration judge, on Monday. 

“We believe that he does not have TPS,” the DHS attorney said. 

A Miami Herald investigation last fall identified 30 Venezuelan TPS holders who had been arrested by ICE since the Trump administration announced it was ending the program. 

As the future of TPS became uncertain, Bohorquez began the process of applying for asylum, which is what he was working towards when he was at the USCIS office in Bethpage at the time of his ICE arrest. 

Jessica Bansal, a lawyer with the National TPS Alliance, which has sued over the Trump administration’s efforts to end the protection, told THE CITY that ICE arrests of TPS holders are now commonplace. 

“Every day I get a call from someone saying that they are a TPS holder from that country or their family member, and they’ve been detained,” she said.

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