A U.S. District Court judge on Wednesday ordered the immediate release of a Venezuelan national who had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following a Jan. 13 traffic stop on Interstate 77 in West Virginia.
Judge Joseph Goodwin ruled that the federal government failed to justify the detention of Antony Segundo Larrazabal-Gonzalez and violated his Fifth Amendment due process rights. Larrazabal-Gonzalez had filed a civil complaint challenging his detention as unlawful, seeking either release or a custody hearing before a neutral decision-maker.
“Immigrants illegally in this country enjoy protections guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment,” Goodwin wrote.
Court records show Larrazabal-Gonzalez, a Venezuelan citizen who came to the U.S. in 2023, lives in Atlanta and has immigration proceedings scheduled for October. He was detained by ICE during the traffic stop and held in a state jail for nine days before obtaining legal counsel. At the time of his filing, no hearings had been scheduled.
During a hearing Monday, Goodwin said the government could not answer basic questions about the arrest and detention, repeatedly responding, “I don’t know.” The government referenced two immigration forms from 2023 but declined to submit them as evidence.
“Even under the most favorable view of the Government’s position,” Goodwin wrote, “the record shows only that at some time, for some reason, an immigration officer checked boxes on a form indicating unlawful presence”—insufficient, he said, to justify detention or defeat a habeas challenge.
Goodwin compared the delay to holding a U.S. citizen on criminal charges without arraignment or bail, stating the Constitution does not permit such treatment simply because a person is subject to immigration law. He also rejected what he called a “detention-first and hearing-sometime-later” approach as unconstitutional.
The judge ordered Larrazabal-Gonzalez’s release and said he cannot be re-arrested or detained absent a significant change in circumstances.