Federal judge rules detained UC Berkeley student must be released

ICE must prove an electronic monitor is necessary at a future hearing

U.S. District Court Judge Dena Coggins ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday to immediately release Paula Valentina Albornoz Hernandez from custody. The 23-year-old business administration student at UC Berkeley is from Colombia and had a current work permit and a pending asylum case when she was detained. The order directs her release but does not resolve her immigration case.

Attorneys for Albornoz Hernandez argued that her detention violated the U.S. Constitution because she had been deprived of liberty without an opportunity to challenge it in court. Coggins agreed with the lawyers and wrote that “due process forbids the government from detaining the noncitizen unless they are first provided with adequate notice and a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral arbiter.”

Coggins also ordered ICE not to require an electronic monitor unless the agency proves at a future court hearing that one is necessary.

Albornoz Hernandez’s detention began Oct. 30 at San Francisco International Airport, where ICE agents arrested her while she waited with her boyfriend to board a flight for a vacation in Oregon. The Department of Homeland Security told Berkeleyside last week that Albornoz Hernandez was deportable because she had overstayed a visa in 2023. The department said her work authorization and pending asylum application did not confer legal status and that “being in detention is a choice” because immigrants have the opportunity to self-deport.

In Monday’s statement, DHS called Coggins “a Biden-appointed activist judge” before saying the agency “complies with all lawful court orders.” The department also defended its policy of detaining immigrants at airports, saying, “This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”

ICE had placed Albornoz Hernandez in deportation proceedings, and her asylum case will continue to make its way through immigration court, said Lizzie Fulton, the attorney representing her in that case. Fulton said the release would allow Albornoz Hernandez to meet privately with her lawyers and prepare evidence, something that was difficult while she was detained.

UC Berkeley organized efforts to obtain Albornoz Hernandez’s release during the week after her detention. Administrators rallied support from elected officials, and students demonstrated on Sproul Plaza. Liliana Iglesias, the director of UC Berkeley’s Undocumented Students Program, wrote to Berkeleyside Monday morning upon hearing the news: “I feel relieved, happy, so many positive emotions.”

Attorney Niko De Bremaeker of Centro Legal de la Raza, which filed the petition challenging Albornoz Hernandez’s detention, said Monday morning he expected it would take between a few hours and a day for her release. She was being held at ICE’s California City detention center, a facility in the Southern California desert. De Bremaeker said, “Federal judges have overwhelmingly found these arrests unlawful, and ICE keeps making them.” He added, “They need to stop, and Congress needs to investigate.”

Fulton said Albornoz Hernandez also wanted to reunite with her family and boyfriend and was eager to return to her schoolwork. “One of her big concerns while she was detained was missing classes,” Fulton said. “She called her graduate student instructor and asked how she can jump right back in when she’s released.”

Her boyfriend, identified as Anthony, said he hit the road as soon as he heard the news and was on his way to Bakersfield late Monday morning, where he hoped to reunite with his girlfriend. He described their weeklong separation as feeling like “months.” “I didn’t doubt for a second that she was going to get released,” he said. “I was ready at any time to hop in the car and just go.”