When federal immigration policy collides with Minnesota criminal cases

An Olmsted County detention deputy was released on bond on sexual assault charges, only to be arrested by ICE and brought to Freeborn County jail.

Immigration authorities then followed a court order to shuttle him to Mower County for his criminal hearing last Monday, when he pleaded guilty to one count of fifth-degree sexual conduct. The defendant, Jose Hector Contreras-Paredes, will be sentenced next month — and days later is scheduled for an immigration hearing and could be deported.

Confusion over which case takes precedence prompted Contreras-Paredes to ask Fort Snelling Immigration Judge Sarah Mazzie last month: Would he be able to finish his state criminal case first?

It’s a longstanding practice for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to put a hold on noncitizens who are sent to prison and then take them into custody after they serve their time. But a series of people like Contreras-Paredes also wind up in removal proceedings after posting bond to get out of jail for lower-degree offenses, posing an array of challenges for victims, prosecutors, attorneys and immigrant detainees.

ICE takes precedence when noncitizens wind up in state criminal proceedings that don’t involve prison time, causing complications in how cases are resolved. People can be brought to immigration detention and not transported to criminal court for hearings, ordered deported before their cases are completed or flown out of the country shortly after sentences ordering a lengthy probation in Minnesota.

The judge explained to Contreras-Paredes that it depended on several factors, but that federal custody trumped the criminal case. She noted that he could request a writ, or order, to have the Department of Homeland Security transport him to the Mower County Courthouse for his criminal proceedings, though the agency was not required to comply.

Contreras-Paredes was accused of sexually assaulting a former partner in her Grand Meadow home about a half-hour south of Rochester. He told Mazzie that he was drunk when he went to the alleged victim’s house and didn’t remember what happened. He said he lost his job at the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office, along with his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status that provided deportation protections. The 31-year-old father of four was brought here from Mexico as a child by his family in 2007, when they overstayed their tourist visa.

He will be sentenced on April 10. Contreras-Paredes is expected to avoid prison time and instead face some type of deferred sentence and probation. But he may never have to comply with those terms if he is removed from the United States.

A similar case recently played out when a German legal permanent resident named Joel Diekmann pleaded guilty to second-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a 13-year-old in Fergus Falls, Minn. He had to serve 120 days in jail with credit for time served and was sentenced to supervised probation for up to 25 years, with a long list of requirements to avoid detention. But it was practically a moot point: Diekmann was ordered deported to Germany in late February.

In fact, his guilty plea acknowledged that the conviction would disqualify him from renewing his green card status and that he would be deported. Diekmann acknowledged that he desired to “voluntarily avail himself to immigration ... in order to jump start [his] deportation, and removal, from the United States.” The plea stated that once he is deported, “the state agrees that probation will be discharged and this case will be closed.”

University of Minnesota law professor Linus Chan, who is director of the Detainee Rights Clinic, voiced concerns about ICE taking over when people have criminal sentences that don’t involve prison.

When the state issues a deferred adjudication or probation and doesn’t require a prison sentence, Chan said, “what they’re trying to do is say, ‘We are trying to rehabilitate you because we think that this is going to be a better result than just putting you in prison,’ and when the federal deportation process comes in it completely upends that.”

In 2012, Jose Alfredo Ojeda-Garcia pleaded guilty in Faribault County to third-degree criminal sexual conduct. He received credit for serving three months in jail and was sentenced to 36 months in prison, with a stay of 15 years provided he met a series of conditions that included attending a sex offender and outpatient program, refraining from alcohol and drugs, and registering as a predatory offender.

But the plea also included an acknowledgment that the prosecutor would release him to ICE afterward, and Ojeda-Garcia was sent back to Mexico days after his sentencing.

Last month, a federal jury indicted him on charges of illegally returning to the United States after being deported two more times, and he was brought into federal custody. Faribault County issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to appear for a hearing on his probation violation, apparently unaware he was detained.

Some lower-level criminal cases are left hanging after ICE grabbed people who were released on bond in Anoka County.

For example, an Ecuadorian man arrested on a DWI charge posted a $12,000 bond in February. ICE detained him in Minnesota, but his attorney, Gloria Contreras-Edin, said he was moved to immigration detention in Texas. Records show that after the man didn’t show up for a hearing, a warrant was issued for his arrest and the bond was forfeited.

“I’ve seen this play out many times,” she said in an email. “Folks can’t adjudicate their state matter unless they can also bond out of detention.” She often sees people being deported before their state court case is finished and “state court matters are not resolved.”

In Anoka County, the court recently issued a notice scheduling an omnibus hearing on May 12 for a defendant accused of hitting and strangling his wife in Fridley. “If you fail to appear a warrant may be issued for your arrest,” the notice reads. But the Tajikistan national was detained by ICE and an immigration judge has already ordered that he be deported after he said he wanted to forgo his pending asylum claim and be removed.

Noncitizens who complete their criminal case are in a better position to handle their immigration case and seek asylum or a stay of deportation, according to Hennepin County Chief Public Defender Michael Berger.

“We are seeing people at lower-level offenses picked up before their case is resolved, and that’s a big change,” said Berger. “Because what we would see in the past is typically folks would get picked up, they would be afforded the presumption of innocence and due process to handle their criminal case, and then upon completion of that they may be taken into immigration detention.”

Some cases left hanging are DWIs in which no one was hurt, Berger added, “but when you look at a domestic assault, there’s an alleged victim in that case — there’s someone who wanted that case addressed, and wanted that case heard, and that’s not happening from a victim perspective and … we know that those have a lot of nuance to them and those resolve in many different ways that fall short of a domestic assault."

“He’s in Mower County on a writ, is that right?” she asked.

Mazzie said she would put him on the docket for April 16.