A Queens high school student detained by federal immigration authorities in Texas for more than a month is expected to be released on bond in the coming days, his lawyers announced Tuesday.
Derlis Snaider Chusin Toaquiza, an 11th grader at Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood, was granted release on bond by a Texas immigration judge after being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Livingston, Texas, since June 8.
His arrest came four days earlier at a scheduled immigration court appearance, making him the second NYC public school student detained by ICE following an immigration hearing this year.
Derlis is represented by the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG), which secured the bond hearing after filing an amended habeas corpus petition last week. The high schooler’s case was also aided by an amicus brief in support of his release filed by the city’s Law Department.
“We are beyond thrilled that Derlis will soon be returning home to New York to be with his family where he belongs,” said Rebecca Rubin, senior staff attorney for NYLAG’s Immigrant Protection Unit. “At the same time, our happiness does not erase the fact that Derlis was unjustly detained at his immigration court hearing, torn away from his family and community, and detained in a prison with adult male strangers for over a month.”
On Monday, the Envision Freedom Fund, formerly the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, posted a $20,000 bond to secure his freedom, according to NYLAG, which said it is now working with Derlis and his family to coordinate his return home to Queens.
Derlis Snaider is one of several NYLAG clients arrested by ICE despite having active asylum applications and no criminal records, as previously reported by amNewYork.
One of them, Edwin Velasquez Munoz, a 31-year-old Peruvian asylum-seeker with developmental and auditory disabilities, was held in immigration detention for more than a week without contact with his attorneys or family.
NYLAG also confirmed Tuesday that the Envision Freedom Fund will be paying the bail of Edwin, who is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
“We are overjoyed to be bringing Edwin and Derlis home to their families this week, thanks to the hard work of NYLAG’s immigration attorneys and the generous support of Envision Freedom Fund to post bond for two of our neighbors who had been doing everything right, and yet were still violently ripped away from their loved ones,” said Melissa Chua, co-director of NYLAG’s Immigrant Protection Unit. “We will not stand for this kind of state-sanctioned violence that ICE and DHS continue to perpetrate against our fellow New Yorkers on a daily basis through extrajudicial kidnappings, disappearances, wrongful imprisonments, and denials of due process.”
Chua added that they are continuing their fight to release other clients recently highlighted by amNewYork, including Dylan Lopez Contreras, a 20-year-old senior at Ellis Preparatory Academy in the Bronx, and Alcivar De La Cruz, a 28-year-old Ecuadorian asylum-seeker whose U.S. citizen wife miscarried their first child in the weeks following his detention.
