I am one of the clergy members who has been holding vigil outside the Dallas ICE field office since May. After a gunman opened fire at the back of the facility in September, our weekly prayer vigil transformed into a daily presence.
These days, we maintain an onsite comfort and care station manned by clergy and community volunteers to support those showing up for appointments between 5:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. six days a week — Monday through Saturday.
I pray with individuals before they go in for their check-ins, and if they are not detained, I pray with them again when they exit the building. More often than not, I am there to comfort family members when we learn their loved one has been detained — not for any criminal charge, but simply because the Dallas field office has a quota of detaining 75 people per day. That’s more than 500 people per week.
“The Dallas field office has a quota of detaining 75 people per day.”
Our group was not there the morning that the gunman opened fire, killing two men and injuring a third, but members of our group have remained in contact with the families of the men killed.
One of those killed was Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez. He was was shot multiple times while shackled in a government transit van during the attack. He used his body to shield another detainee, who survived.
His case took an especially heartbreaking turn this week when his widow, a U.S. citizen, received a letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granting Garcia-Hernandez the ability to begin applying for a visa or Green Card. Except he’s dead now.
His tragic case highlights what those of us who are intimately involved in the crisis the president and his Department of Homeland Security are creating have been saying over and over and over again: A majority of the individuals being violently detained have followed the rules laid out by our government and should not be subjected to the cruelty federal agents are so gleefully inflicting upon them.
In the case of Garcia-Hernandez, he was married to a U.S. citizen and was in the process of having his status adjusted. He came to the country as a child and had lived in the Dallas area for 20 years. He worked as a house painter, and he and his wife, Stephany Gauffeny, had just purchased their first home. They were expecting their fifth child at the time of his death.
“In the case of Garcia-Hernandez, he was married to a U.S. citizen and was in the process of having his status adjusted.”
So, why was he in the custody of ICE?
As the New York Times noted at the time of the shooting:
Mr. García-Hernández landed in the federal immigration system in August after he was picked up on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and evading arrest in Tarrant County, according to court records. He pleaded guilty and served his time for the first charge, and the second charge was dropped, his family said. He had a previous charge of providing false information.
The previous charge of providing false information had to do with his not giving police his name.
After serving his time, but before he could be released by Arlington City Police Department, ICE picked him up.
While Arlington Police don’t have a partnership agreement with ICE, Tarrant County does. The agreement’s objective, per Tarrant County’s website is:
To work with federal agencies to identify criminals in the Tarrant County Jail that have been charged with high misdemeanor and felonies, that are also in the United States illegally. Both issues must be present in order for an ICE detainer and warrant to be placed upon the suspect. The goal is for criminals not to be released back into our community without being held fully accountable.
A snapshot of the types of crimes these individuals have been charged with include murder, aggravated sexual assault of a child, kidnapping, human trafficking, robbery, theft and DWI.
No one would disagree that “aggravated sexual assault of a child, kidnapping, human trafficking, robbery” are violent crimes (and felonies), but do theft and DWI — which are misdemeanors — belong in the same category when considering transferring someone to ICE detainment?
More troubling, given that Garcia-Hernandez was in the process of having his status adjusted and applying for a Green Card, should he have been transferred to ICE custody at all?
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have thus far declined to comment on how someone married to a U.S. citizen and in the process of applying for a Green Card could end up in their custody. But Garcia-Hernandez isn’t the only one whose detainment raises serious legal and moral questions.
In October, ProPublica published a story about more than 170 U.S. citizens they identified as having been detained by ICE. Twenty of those were held incommunicado — unable to contact family or attorneys — for more than a day.
U.S. citizens whose skin isn’t white have taken to carrying their birth certificates and passports wherever they go in case they are caught in the mass raids by immigration officers even though Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh assured U.S. citizens of color they shouldn’t be concerned. Writing in the court’s concurring opinion staying a lower court’s ruling that barred immigration agents in Los Angeles from detaining people based on nothing more than skin color, clothing, language spoken or vocation, Kavanaugh said: “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”
Tell that to Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales, a 22-year-old woman born in the U.S. Díaz Morales holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Mexico and has lived in both countries. She was detained by ICE Dec. 14 in Baltimore and has been transferred to a detention center in Louisiana. Despite her attorney submitting copies of her American birth certificate and immunization records, she continues to be detained under threat of deportation.
Equally troubling is the detention of Green Card applicants who are married to U.S. citizens. These detentions of individuals “following the rules” and doing things “the right way” should alarm everyone regardless of political party affiliation.
While it is too late for Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez, it isn’t too late for others being held illegally by our government.
Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and as the first Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas where she recently was ordained to the gospel ministry. She earned the master of divinity degree and a certificate in spiritual direction from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company, which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.