Immigrant mothers of infants not being deported
By Liz Mineo/Daily News staff
MetroWest Daily News
Posted Dec 14, 2008
Two women who were arrested on Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrants nearly two weeks ago and then released on court supervision may be examples of new guidelines by the agency for identifying humanitarian concerns when arresting illegal immigrants.
The women, Flaviane Aldria Levindo-Morais, 23, and Estael Fernandes Gomes, 29, are mothers of infant children, according to sources close to them. Neither Levindo-Morais nor Gomes could be reached for comment. Nobody answered when a visitor knocked on their residences' doors in downtown Framingham Wednesday afternoon.
Both women were released from ICE custody on orders of supervision a few hours after their arrests, said Paula Grenier, a spokesman with ICE in Boston. In most cases, people arrested on ICE warrants are taken into ICE custody and placed in detention centers while they wait to be deported.
Citing confidentiality issues, Grenier said she couldn't comment on the reasons or the conditions of the release of both Levindo-Morais and Gomes. They are not wearing electronic monitoring devices, she said, but they have to abide by conditions set by ICE.
"It'd be inappropriate for ICE to give specific details on the conditions that allowed them to be released from ICE custody," said Grenier. "But they're required to abide by those conditions."
Both Levindo-Morais and Gomes had been ordered deported by an immigration judge and had stayed in the country in violation of those order of removals, said Grenier. Because they had already been deported, they don't face deportation proceedings, but impending removal.
"The next step is removal," she said. "The bottom line is that they were ordered removed, and ICE's job is to carry out the judge's orders."
As to whether the women were released on humanitarian concerns, Grenier declined to comment.
Everybody who is taken into custody has the opportunity to raise those concerns to ICE officers, she said, and ICE officers take those concerns seriously regardless of the gender of those arrested, she said.
According to immigrant advocates, that wasn't always the case.
"Before the New Bedford raids, ICE agents would arrest people without checking on whether they had young children," said Fausto da Rocha, who runs the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Allston. "After the New Bedford raids, ICE agents became more human."
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x433389159/Immigrant-mothers-of-infants-not-being-deported
