Adriana Gavilan Sanchez could be on her way back to her family.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox ordered the mother, who was detained on a Baltimore school campus last month, to be released from immigration custody before 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Gavilan Sanchez, who’d been held at the Caroline Detention Facility in Virginia, no longer appears in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator system.
Her attorney Rachel Girod declined to comment.
Gavilan Sanchez and her long-term partner, Jesus Acevedo Sanchez, were detained on June 11 while dropping off their daughter at Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School. ICE agents took Acevedo Sanchez to the ground while Gavilan Sanchez screamed out of the broken window of their battered SUV. Their children and other students arriving for the school day witnessed the incident.
ICE officials initially claimed Gavilan Sanchez punched officers at the school, leading to her detention. The agency’s latest court filings, though, make no mention of an assault, saying agents met “minimal physical resistance” when they ordered her out of the car.
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The federal government is seeking to deport both parents, who are from Mexico and don’t have legal immigration status. Their daughters are U.S. citizens, according to the couple’s lawyers.
In an affidavit, Acevedo Sanchez said men who weren’t wearing ICE or police insignia pointed guns at the family and struck their SUV from behind with unmarked vehicles.
Gavilan Sanchez said in the affidavit that when she went to pick up her partner’s phone off the ground, an officer told her: “Put your hands behind your back so we don’t do to you what we’re doing to your husband or worse.”
“I am terrified for my husband and myself, and I am desperate to see my little girls,” she said in the affidavit.
Maddox directed the attorneys to file a joint status report by Monday.
Acevedo Sanchez is set to appear in court July 23. He’s being held at the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia.
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