One of three immigrants taken by ICE agents from a South Burlington home last week was released from custody on Monday after a federal judge ruled there was no good reason for her detention.
Jisella Johana Patin Patin, a 31-year-old woman from Ecuador, walked into her husband’s arms following the hearing at the U.S. District Court in Burlington, then through a crowd of hundreds of supporters who were gathered outside the courthouse.
“This is not really contestable,” District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said of her petition for release, speaking from the bench.
Later Monday, another judge postponed a similar hearing for one of the other people detained in the raid, Christian Humberto Jerez Andrade, because Immigrations and Customs Enforcement had no one available to transport him to court.
ICE agents raided Patin Patin’s Dorset Street home last Wednesday in search of a Mexican man who they believed had fled them earlier in the day. But after obtaining a search warrant and pushing through activists who had blockaded the front door, agents did not find the man inside. Instead, they arrested Jerez Andrade, Patin Patin, and her sister, Daysi Camila Patin Patin, for entering the country illegally.
The sisters entered the U.S. through the southern border in 2023 and have pending asylum claims. Jerez Andrade, who came to the country from Honduras in 2015, is facing removal proceedings in a Boston immigration court. Following last week’s arrests, attorneys for all three quickly filed court petitions in federal court in Vermont for their release.
Johana Patin Patin’s was the first to be heard. She arrived in court wearing a fleece zip-up with a teddy bear pattern and her reddish-brown hair in a bun.
Her attorney, Kristen Connors, called three witnesses to testify to her ties to the community – and to her two daughters, ages 4 and 8, who go to school in South Burlington. A South Burlington School District administrator testified, as did two people who work at The Janet S. Munt Family Room, a Burlington center that serves parents and children, many of whom are immigrants. The Family Room staffers each described Johana Patin Patin as an engaged and nurturing mother.
Johana Patin Patin served on an advisory committee for the organization and helped translate materials for Spanish-speaking families, the witnesses said.
“She is beloved by our community,” staffer Emma Gonzalez told the judge.
ICE has not explained why it detained the three people who were not the targets of its search warrant. The agency issued its first statement on the raid Monday morning, saying only that it had conducted a “targeted vehicle stop” to arrest Deyvi Daniel Corona-Sanchez, of Mexico, who had re-entered the country after previously being deported in 2022.
The statement claimed that Corona-Sanchez rammed an agent’s vehicle and fled to the Dorset Street residence but was no longer inside by the time ICE entered the home.
The advocacy group Migrant Justice has said Corona-Sanchez was never at the property that day, and that the men the agents pursued were driving a car that Corona-Sanchez previously owned.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Greer represented the government during Johana Patin Patin’s hearing on Monday. He did not speak to the circumstances surrounding her detention or why it was necessary. Greer reiterated the government’s position that people living in the U.S. who illegally crossed the border are subject to detention. He also acknowledged that judges have repeatedly disagreed.
Crawford elected to release Johana Patin Patin immediately, in what he said was a shift from his approach in previous cases. Her case was so “clear,” he said, that there was no need to wait for a separate bond hearing at an immigration court.
“Ms. Patin Patin has done nothing of concern to us and has done much to deserve her community’s support,” Crawford said.
Later Monday, District Judge William K. Sessions III said he was also considering whether to grant an immediate release from custody to Jerez Andrade. The judge noted that Jerez Andrade has a separate immigration hearing in Massachusetts scheduled for Thursday.
But Sessions said he needed to speak directly to Jerez Andrade to assess whether his release would endanger others or allow him to flee.
He couldn’t do that because Jerez Andrade was still in prison at Northwest State Correctional Facility, 45 minutes north.
The judge said ICE hadn’t picked him up. “They don’t have enough people here to be able to transport,” he said.
Sessions paused the hearing so Assistant U.S. Attorney Kaitlin Hazard could try to arrange for ICE to bring him to Burlington. The agency couldn’t, she reported. Sessions instead rescheduled the hearing for 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Neither hearing addressed whether the original detentions of Johana Patin Patin and Jerez Andrade were illegal, as their attorneys contend.
Connors said she would discuss with Johana Patin Patin whether to pursue a ruling on what the attorney considers to be a violation of her client’s constitutional rights.
“The fact that someone broke down the door to her home and detained her using a warrant that did not have her name on it – that’s a big constitutional violation,” she said. “That can’t keep happening to people.”
Johana Patin Patin had more immediate concerns. She and her husband cried together in the hallway after her hearing. Johana Patin Patin then approached her sister’s attorney to ask when she might be released.
As of Monday evening, her sister’s hearing had not yet been scheduled.
