Kary Diaz Martinez walked out of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Burlington just after 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Her husband, Wiliz de Leon, was there to meet her.
It had been just over two weeks since Diaz Martinez, 29, had been arrested by federal agents inside Boston Immigration Court and taken into detention.
In a video recorded by de Leon’s daughter and shared with WBUR, de Leon is seen from the back, holding a bouquet of flowers and several balloons. He kisses his wife and wraps his arms around her. She has tears in her eyes.
Then the two turn their backs on the building where she’d been held for most of her detention, in conditions several lawyers have called “abysmal” and “unsanitary.”
Diaz Martinez is one of the thousands of immigrants nationwide taken into federal custody in recent weeks amid a surge in immigration enforcement activity. During the month of May, alone, ICE said agents arrested nearly 1,500 people just in Massachusetts. Some of them, like Diaz Martinez, were arrested outside of scheduled immigration hearings about remaining in the country lawfully.
Diaz Martinez’s ordeal ended, for now, after a judge ruled that her detainment was unlawful. But even that judge’s order doesn’t guarantee she won’t be arrested by ICE again.
“She is incredibly relieved to be home with her family where she belongs, but she’s also terrified,” said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, Diaz Martinez’s lawyer.
Sherman-Stokes said she spoke to her client Tuesday night and to de Leon, a naturalized U.S. citizen, Wednesday morning.
“Her husband says that she’s scared to leave the house,” she said. “She worries [because] there’s nothing guaranteeing that ICE doesn’t pick her up again.”
Sherman-Stokes, who is also associate director of Boston University’s Immigrants’ Rights & Human Trafficking clinic, said her client, a mother of two, “escaped an abusive relationship in the Dominican Republic” and crossed the southern border into the U.S. in April 2024 to start a new life with de Leon in Rhode Island.
In a sworn affidavit, Wiliz said the two met several years earlier while he was visiting family in the Dominican Republic. They fell in love and maintained a long-distance relationship.
Upon entering the U.S., Sherman-Stokes said, Diaz Martinez spent a night in an immigration holding facility but was released the following day.
Customs and Border Protection “decided that she was neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and so they could release her on her own recognizance — that’s with no conditions, no bail, no nothing,” Sherman-Stokes said. “The only requirement was that she attend her future immigration court hearing on June 3, 2025.”
And that’s what Diaz Martinez did.
During the hearing in Boston earlier this month, the federal government filed a motion to dismiss the case — something immigration lawyers like Sherman-Stokes say they’re seeing more often lately ahead of ICE arrests. With no active court case underway, it’s easier for the federal government to quickly deport people.
Sherman-Stokes said Diaz Martinez knew all of this and declined the federal government’s offer; she planned to apply for asylum or a green card. The judge continued the case and scheduled a new hearing.
But when Diaz Martinez left the courtroom, several plain-clothed ICE agents were waiting to take her into custody. Sherman-Stokes said her client began to have “a mental health crisis” in the hallway.
“She was shaking and sobbing,” Sherman-Stokes said. “Eventually medics had to come and she was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital in the custody of ICE.”
A few hours later, Diaz Martinez was taken to the ICE field office in Burlington, an administrative office that many lawyers say has become a de facto holding facility for arrested immigrants.
As WBUR has previously reported, the facility was not designed to hold people for more than a handful of hours. But amid a surge in immigration arrests, federal agents have increasingly detained people there, often for a week or more.
Lawyers with clients who have been detained there say there are at least four large holding rooms where the lights are always on. The temperature is either too hot or cold. There are no beds, so those in custody sleep on concrete floors. Each holding room has a single toilet that offers very little privacy, and those who have spent time inside the facility — including 18-year-old Milton high schooler Marcelo Gomes Da Silva — have said they’re not given enough to eat.
At a press conference earlier this month after his release from the facility, Gomes Da Silva told reporters that meals were often just crackers and water.
An ICE spokesperson said in a statement that the facility in Burlington is “equipped to facilitate a short-term stay when necessary,” and asserted that “detainees pending processing are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.”
But Sherman-Stokes said that during the nine days Diaz Martinez spent in Burlington, she never showered and was often hungry. In a court filing challenging her detention, Diaz Martinez’s lawyers called the conditions in Burlington “inhumane and cruel.”
After Burlington, Diaz Martinez was transferred to a federal detention center in Vermont — one of the few in New England that can accommodate women. She spent a little less than a week there, and according to Sherman-Stokes, reported that the conditions were better: She had a bed, she was able to shower and she got a change of clothes.
On Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge, Brian E. Murphy, ordered Diaz Martinez’s release. In his decision, the judge wrote, “the Court finds the Petitioner’s detention is unlawful” because, in essence, the federal government couldn’t explain why she was being held. Meanwhile she continues to pursue lawful ways to stay in the country.
Diaz Martinez was transported from the Vermont detention center back to Burlington Tuesday night and released to her family around 8 p.m.
“She’s home, she’s with her family, she’s with her loved ones. She’s so relieved,” Sherman-Stokes said. “And yet, her husband is telling me she’s terrified. And [he’s asking] ‘What if there’s a raid? What if they come to our house? What if they stop her on the street? Isn’t there, like something you can give her that she can carry around that protects her from this happening again.’ ”
But there is nothing to prevent ICE from picking her up again, Sherman-Stokes said.
“She can carry around the judge’s federal court order, saying that there was no lawful basis for her detention,” she said. “ But I can’t guarantee her that will protect her from further ICE enforcement because this is a completely unprecedented time.”
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated which entity determined Diaz Martinez was “neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk” after she entered the U.S. It was Customs and Border Protection, not a judge.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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