Jose Ignacio “Nacho” De La Cruz and his stepdaughter, Heidi Perez, were granted bond during hearings in a Massachusetts immigration court on Thursday.
Chelmsford Immigration Court judge Natalie Smith granted De La Cruz bond for $10,000 and Perez for $4,000. Both are set to be paid through the Vermont Freedom Fund, an independent nonprofit set up during the first Trump administration by Migrant Justice, an advocacy organization for immigrant rights, according to the group’s spokesperson, Will Lambek.
“Bond is being posted now in both cases,” Lambek said Thursday. “We don’t know exactly when they’ll be released. Probably not today, but shortly.”
The amount of bond is discretionary, according to Brett Stokes, an attorney at the Center for Justice Reform at Vermont Law and Graduate School who represents De La Cruz and Perez.
“It’s undeniable that Heidi’s case is sympathetic,” Stokes said in a text message Thursday. “The fact that she is 18, just graduated high school, really played with the judge.”
To receive bond during an immigration court hearing, the attorney for a detained immigrant must convince the judge that the person is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. The federal government, on the other hand, seeks to prove that one or both of those risks warrants keeping them behind bars.
The Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency that oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which held De La Cruz and Perez in detainment since their apprehension almost a month ago, didn’t convince the judge that Perez should be kept in custody, according to Stokes.
“Nacho’s was higher because [the] judge indicated that she believed that Nacho posed a greater flight risk,” Stokes said.
When considering De La Cruz’s flight risk, the judge weighed the amount of time De La Cruz spent in the U.S. without taking substantial steps toward applying for relief for his potential removal from the country, Stokes said.
Neither the judge nor the Department of Homeland Security argued that De La Cruz or Perez posed a danger to their community. Stokes called the granting of bonds the right outcome.
“My heart breaks thinking of the toll that getting to this point took on both of them,” Stokes said.
Both De La Cruz, 29, and Perez had cases pending in both federal court and immigration court.
In federal court, both filed habeas corpus petitions alleging their initial apprehension on June 14 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection was unlawful and the result of racial profiling.
The pair were pulled over in De La Cruz’s Ford Transit van on a Saturday around noon after delivering food to local farmworkers who have been apprehensive about leaving their farm in the midst of an ongoing immigration crackdown under the Trump administration, according to court records. Both allege in filings in that case that Border Patrol agents did not give them a valid reason for the stop.
In a declaration filed in support of his habeas corpus petition, De La Cruz stated that Border Patrol Agent Arnold Parent, who initially pulled them over, told him in broken Spanish “that the fact that I spoke Spanish and did not understand English was enough for the stop.”
In a separate affidavit filed by Parent’s colleague, Parent said he had reasonable suspicion for the stop: He noticed through the van’s windows that both De La Cruz and Perez appeared evasive to law enforcement, with darting eyes, hands clenched on the steering wheel, and the fact that they did not smile or wave when driving past the agent. Parent said he had not seen either on the rural road previously and they were not wearing the typical clothes of farmworkers.
De La Cruz and Perez allege that they were physically harmed by the interaction. De La Cruz’s face was injured when a Border Patrol agent bashed in the driver’s side window, shattering glass, De La Cruz said in his declaration. Agents also twisted Perez’s arm behind her back and injured her nail, she and De La Cruz attested.
Border Patrol agents threatened further harm to Perez, De La Cruz alleged in his declaration, if he did not cooperate with providing information, such as his fingerprints and DNA. He said an interpreter told him “that they did not want to hurt her again but would do so if it became necessary. He also said that they had children and would not want anyone to harm their own children.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Michael Niezgoda told VTDigger on Tuesday that matters around De La Cruz’s and Perez’s cases “all relate to an ongoing criminal prosecution, court proceeding, or immigration hearing currently being litigated in the District of Vermont District Court or Immigration Court,” and therefore would not comment.
Their cases were heard in Massachusetts because Vermont does not have an immigration court that hears ICE cases.
Both De La Cruz and Perez had bail hearings scheduled this week for their federal petition in Vermont Federal District Court in Burlington. Perez’s hearing was delayed after the judge asked for more information from both sides, and De La Cruz’s was postponed. They had a temporary restraining order, which prevented their removal from Vermont by the federal government, until July 31.
Those bail hearings and that restraining order will be nullified. But while De La Cruz and Perez return home from ICE detention, their cases aren’t over. Both their habeas petition and their deportation proceedings will move forward.
