![\""Orange](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/orange_county_correctional_facility.jpg\")
Immigration, Customs and Border Patrol were holding detained people in the Orange County Correctional Facility. Credit: Mazin Sidahmed for Documented<\/p>\nA Venezuelan man from The Bronx told THE CITY that he has begun a hunger strike to protest that immigration authorities have jailed him for more than seven months, despite multiple court rulings ordering his release.<\/p>\n
Several judges have pointedly rejected government claims that the man, whom THE CITY will identify as Jose H., due to concerns about retaliation, was a member of the Tren de Aragua gang \u2014 the basis for the Trump administration\u2019s claim that he would pose a danger to the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are denying me my rights. I already posted two bails,\u201d he said Wednesday in a telephone interview from the Orange County Jail in Goshen, N.Y. \u201cThey are treating me like the worst criminal in the United States, and I have never committed a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immigration, Customs and Border Patrol were holding detained people in the Orange County Correctional Facility. Credit: Mazin Sidahmed for Documented<\/p>\n
Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Jose H., age 32, and eight other Venezuelan men into custody after raiding The Bronx rooming house where they lived \u2014 in 10 bedrooms rented out singly \u2014 on Jan. 30. Eleven agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the ICE unit that handles major crimes, were looking for an alleged Tren de Aragua member who was wanted on state weapons possession and larceny charges, but the man wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when ICE chose to detain Jose H.<\/p>\n
Although he has no criminal record, ICE deemed him a danger to the community, asserting without evidence that he was a member of the Tren de Aragua gang.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On March 18, New York immigration judge Dara Reid forcefully rejected this claim, calling it \u201centirely premised upon an unsubstantiated assertion,\u201d and ordered Jose\u2019s release on a $5,000 bond,<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been held since then, mostly under a federal regulation<\/a> that was once invoked sparingly but is used increasingly in the second Trump administration. It empowers the Department of Homeland Security to block a detainee\u2019s release automatically, simply by filing a form (EOIR-43, in bureaucratic jargon) with the court, while it appeals a bond decision. It doesn\u2019t require DHS to offer any justification.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s frequent use of the \u201cautomatic stay\u201d to keep immigration detainees locked up has prompted a spate of habeas corpus lawsuits \u2014 the legal remedy for detention without due process\u2013 in federal courts across the country.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the beginning of August, federal judges issued decisions finding in at least 11 cases that ICE\u2019s use of the regulation violated the Fifth Amendment right to due process. Six cases concerned workers arrested in a June 10 ICE raid on an Omaha, Neb., meat processing plant \u2014 Yania Garcia Jiminez<\/a>, Floribertha Mayo Anicasio<\/a>, Maria Reynosa Jacinto<\/a>, Sabina Carmona-Lorenzo<\/a>, Ernesto Cortes Fernandez<\/a> and Diego Palma Perez<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another ruled<\/a> in favor of a Minnesota woman<\/a> who was released and reunited with her children, aged 6 and 22 months. Antonia Aguilar Maldonado, a 25-year-old native of El Salvador, had been unable to nurse the younger one, who was breastfed because of problems taking other milk. Maldonado had continued to pump her breast milk in jail,\u00a0 and lamented in court papers that \u201cIt breaks my heart to know that my baby needs my breast milk, and that I just have to dump it out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A federal judge in Maryland likewise found on Aug. 24 that ICE had violated the Fifth Amendment rights of Fidel Leal-Hernandez<\/a>, a Mexican immigrant who has been in the United States for more than 20 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a Sept. 2 ruling<\/a> in federal court in Las Vegas, Judge Richard F. Boulware II similarly rejected the \u201cautomatic stay\u201d rule in favor of two men, finding that \u201cthe regulation allows an agency official who has lost in an adversarial process to unilaterally and automatically override an immigration judge\u2019s decision with no meaningful procedural protections.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And in Boston on Sept. 7, a judge found in favor of Elizaldo Sampiao<\/a>, a Brazilian man who\u2019d emigrated as a child and had no criminal record. He had been separated from his week-old son.<\/p>\n Jose H. said he started his hunger strike on Monday. When he spoke with THE CITY on Wednesday afternoon, he said he\u2019d passed up five meals, all of which were delivered to his cell \u201cto see if I take it.\u201d He complained of a bad headache and a stomach ache.<\/p>\n Held Seven Months<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite such rulings, Jose H. finds that after more than seven months of incarceration, he hasn\u2019t been able to extricate himself from the procedural web federal authorities have woven around him in the immigration court.<\/p>\n His case illustrates the lengths the Trump administration is going to detain people who likely would have been released in the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n And it points to the devastating impact immigration detention has on people who, like Jose H., have never been incarcerated. Court records in this and similar cases reflect a despair deepened by the seemingly arbitrary way ICE can continue jailing someone in spite of a judge\u2019s order for release.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn the time that I have been here in prison, I\u2019ve had thoughts of killing myself,\u201d he concluded his interview with THE CITY, speaking in Spanish through a translator. \u201cI\u2019ve never had thoughts about that in my whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the American Psychological Association, there is a serious risk of suicide in immigration detention. \u201cGiven the existing trauma many immigrants already carry, detainees are vulnerable to developing chronic medical conditions, and the longer they spend in detention, the more likely they are to be at risk of mental health problems, including PTSD and suicide,\u201d it said in a recent publication<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n A New York City detainee from China, being held in Pennsylvania, died by hanging<\/a> last month, The Intercept reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n Requests for comment THE CITY sent Wednesday to the ICE media offices in New York and Washington, to the agency\u2019s chief counsel in New York and to the DHS media staff in Washington were not returned.<\/p>\n Jose\u2019s Ordeal<\/strong><\/p>\n For Jose H., the trauma has included an excruciatingly long journey to an immigration lockup in Texas \u2014 where he was plagued with fear that he would be transported to El Salvador \u2014 and back again to the jail in Goshen.<\/p>\n He has struggled since and\u00a0 is unable to support his 10-year-old daughter in Venezuela, and he thinks about giving up, his lawsuit says. He has received mental health counseling in Orange County, but \u201cThe only thing they do is ask stupid questions, things you already know.\u201d<\/p>\n Since ICE acknowledges that he has no known criminal record, Jose H.\u2019s incarceration continues to rest on the rejected allegation that he is a member of the Tren de Aragua gang \u2014 the basis for the government\u2019s claim that his release would pose a danger to the community.<\/p>\n Jose H.\u2019s \u201dcredible\u201d testimony on March 18, along with the weakness of the government\u2019s evidence, convinced Judge Reid to release him. Since the burden was on Jose H. to prove he was not a danger, the judge\u2019s decision meant she found that his testimony was more convincing than ICE\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n In her ruling, the judge noted that ICE <\/strong>insisted its accusation of a gang connection should be accepted because it was submitted to the court in a form, called an I-213, that is supposed to be presumed reliable. The judge rejected that argument.<\/p>\n DHS then invoked the automatic stay of Jose H.\u2019s release and appealed the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals.<\/p>\n ICE\u2019s attorney tried another way of getting around the lack of evidence connecting Jose H. to Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration designated on Feb. 20 as a foreign terrorist organization. She argued that since Jose H. was a terrorist, in the government\u2019s view, he should have been held in mandatory detention.<\/p>\n The board rejected that and upheld Reid\u2019s original ruling, with the exception that it returned the case to her \u201cto determine a higher amount of bond.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She set a new bond of $9,500 on May 30 \u2014 but the government invoked the automatic stay on the same day. ICE based its second appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals on a complaint that the judge didn\u2019t re-open the case to accept new evidence it offered at a June 26 hearing.<\/p>\n That evidence, according to court papers, consisted of photos of tattoos on Jose H. showing a tiger, a nautical compass and a rose, and social media posts in which he and his partner had used emojis depicting trains and ninjas \u2014 all alleged to be signs of gang membership. There was also a claim, unexplained, that there was Tren de Aragua \u201caffiliated paraphernalia\u201d in the rooming house where Jose H. lived.<\/p>\n In the interview, Jose H. scoffed at it. \u201cIt\u2019s stupid that they are accusing me because of some emojis on Tik Tok and some tattoos.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/061725_lander_arrest-4.jpg\")
Federal agents stand watch outside immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, June 17, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/THE CITY<\/p>\n