After being held for more than seven months in the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC) in Tacoma, Spokane resident Joswar Rodriguez Torres has been released on parole and is coming home to Spokane. Western District of Washington Court Judge James Robart ruled on Thursday, January 29 that Torres had been unlawfully detained, in violation of the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Late last week, Torres’ chosen Spokane family — a romantic partner and the family of Shelly O’Quinn, a former Republican County Commissioner who had been in the process of applying to sponsor Torres when he was detained — brought him back home to Spokane.
Torres, who came to the United States legally in September of 2024 through the humanitarian parole program alongside 21-year-old Cesar Alexander Alvarez, was detained along with Alvarez following a routine check-in at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office in Spokane on June 11. Their detainment sparked the anti-ICE protests that resulted in the arrests of dozens of local protestors and the federal arrests of nine protesters, including former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, who was Alvarez’ legal guardian at the time.
Photo courtesy of Stuckart, left to right: Ann Stuckart, Ben Stuckart, Torres and his partner.
With no criminal background and an asylum petition submitted to the courts, Torres’ detainment came as a shock to he and his community. For the last seven months, lawyers hired by O’Quinn and Stuckart have been fighting to free Torres, who they believed was illegally detained.
O’Quinn and Alvarez could not be reached for comment by publication, but we will update this story if we hear back.
“Ann [Stuckart] and I are so glad to have Joswar out of detention and back in Spokane. The judge was clear that he never should have been detained on June 11th,” Stuckart told RANGE in a written statement. “We want to thank those that contributed to his legal defense, protested and advocated for his release. Without a strong community, Joswar would still be wrongfully detained.”
This week, the courts granted them a victory.
“All persons, regardless of their immigration status, are entitled to due process under the Fifth Amendment,” the judgement reads. “Thus, even when the government believes it has a lawful basis for detaining a noncitizen, it remains subject to the requirement to effectuate that detention in a manner that comports with due process.”
Because Torres was granted parole status prior to his detainment, any DHS decision to revoke that must be “made on an individualized basis and carried out only after the purposes of the parole have been served.” By revoking Torres’ parole and re-detaining him without any legal justification for the revocation — like criminal conduct or flight risk — DHS had violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process, the judge ruled.
Unfortunately, the ruling came too late for Alvarez.
At the Tacoma detention facility, both young men faced inhumane conditions, Stuckart told RANGE. On Facebook, he posted that Alvarez and Torres, among other immigrants held at the facility, were “being fed dinner at 1 am and woken up everyday with the words ‘Wake up! Today is self-deportation day.’”
In August, it became too much for Alvarez, who was miserable in the facility.
Stuckart said the young men’s first lawyer had advised Alvarez that if he chose self-deportation, he could choose to be sent to Colombia, where his brothers lived.
But when Alvarez went to court for his self-deportation hearing on August 9, the lawyer didn’t show, Stuckart said. The court informed Alvarez that he had no option: he was being sent back to Venezuela, the country he had escaped and received humanitarian parole from.
Frustrated and feeling like their ward had been misled, resulting in a deportation to a country where he wasn’t safe, Stuckart and O’Quinn fired the first lawyer. They hoped to save Torres from the same fate.
Under new legal guidance, on December 24, Torres filed the instant petition for writ of habeas corpus, asserting his due process rights had been violated. The judge’s favorable ruling on the writ allowed him to be released from custody less than a month later. A habeas petition may have been an option available for Alvarez, as well, since he was detained under identical circumstances, had he not been advised to self-deport.
Despite being deported to Venezuela, Alvarez is now safe with family and checks in with Ann Stuckart daily over WhatsApp.
Torres isn’t out of the woods yet. His initial petition for asylum was denied in October by the Tacoma Immigration Court. He appealed the denial in November and is awaiting a court date for his appeal to be heard, but he will now wait with his community instead of in the detainment facility.
