A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday ordered the release of one Vermont farmworker who was arrested and detained by immigration authorities last month.
In a virtual hearing from a federal immigration courtroom in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Judge Yul-mi Cho set a $1,500 bond for Diblaim Maximo Sargento-Morales, who was being held in Texas.
Rossy Alfaro, a spokesperson for immigrant farmworker advocacy group Migrant Justice, said in a statement that the organization was “excited” that Sargento-Morales would be home soon.
“We remain hopeful that all the detained members of our community will soon be freed,” Alfaro said.
Sargento-Morales is one of the eight men who U.S. Customs and Border Protection “determined to be illegally present in the United States” and arrested at Pleasant Valley Farms, a dairy in Berkshire, on April 21.
Migrant Justice has called the incident “the largest single immigration enforcement [action] against farmworkers … in recent Vermont history.”
State and federal officials have condemned the arrests, and more than 6,000 people have signed a petition calling for the farmworkers’ release.
All the farmworkers were initially detained at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has since moved the eight men. Three of them, Luis Enrique Gomez-Aguilar, 28, Urillas Sargento, 32, and Dani Alvarez-Perez, 22, were transferred to a facility in Louisiana, and then deported to Mexico last week.
Migrant Justice said Thursday that a fourth farmworker arrested at Pleasant Valley Farms, Juan Javier Rodriguez-Gomez, 41, has now also been deported to Mexico.
In the past week, Sargento-Morales — as well as Jesús Mendez Hernandez, 25, Adrian Zunun-Joachin, 22, and José Edilberto Molina-Aguilar, 37 — were moved from the St. Albans prison to Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Texas.
Molina-Aguilar went before a different Chelmsford Immigration Court judge Thursday for a scheduled bond hearing. But in that case, Judge Natalie Smith determined the case should be heard in Texas, where Molina-Aguilar is now detained.
Attorney Brett Stokes, who is the director of the Vermont Law and Graduate School Center for Justice Reform, objected to the decision and told Vermont Public it was an “abuse of discretion.”
Stokes, in an interview Thursday, said that a different judge in the same courthouse — Judge Yul-mi Cho — did find they had the authority to hear Sargento-Morales’ case, even though he was also moved to Texas.
“The deck is stacked against noncitizens,” Stokes said. “Because while I can sit there and tell the judge that they're making an error and know exactly what regulations to point to to tell them that they're making an error, they're still going to make the decision that they want to make.”
The final two farmworkers arrested at Pleasant Valley Farms, Hernandez and Zunun-Joachin, are still awaiting bond hearings, according to Migrant Justice.
In a separate case, Judge Natalie Smith on Thursday decided to postpone a bond hearing for Arbey Lopez-Lopez. He’s a member of the Vermont immigrant farmworker community who federal authorities also detained last month.
Migrant Justice said Border Patrol arrested the 35-year-old on April 9, as he was delivering groceries to workers at Pleasant Valley Farms. He’s since been detained at a prison in Berlin, New Hampshire.
But Lopez-Lopez’s bond hearing got pushed until next week, because the judge needed more time to review the case.
“We will … continue the fight to reunite Arbey with his 5-year-old daughter and the community," attorney Enrique Mesa, who is representing Lopez-Lopez, wrote in a statement.
That rescheduled hearing is set for 1 p.m. on Monday.
A group of about 30 people gathered at the Migrant Justice headquarters in Burlington on Thursday to remotely watch all of the court hearings.
Will Lambek, another Migrant Justice spokesperson, told the group that their support could play an important legal role in the proceedings.
“The arguments that the lawyers for the farmworkers will be making are that these guys should be released — they aren't a danger to public safety and they're not a flight risk,” Lambek said. “And the key piece of evidence around that latter one is, ‘Do they have ties to their community or not?’ … This room is part of that demonstration of community ties.”
Essex resident Su Ughetti, 33, said as a Spanish-speaking immigrant, showing up to support the farmworker community members was personal.
“I'm a white-passing person, and I know from my lived experience with people who are darker than me that I have such different treatment than they receive,” Ughetti said. “It feels reassuring to see people come together and want to support the people that keep us fed, the people that keep building the houses in which we live.”
Last week, advocates announced the creation of an immigration legal defense fund for noncitizen Vermonters going through federal removal proceedings.
