A Columbus man was removed to Mexico while his immigration appeal was still pending, according to his attorney, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now working to bring him back to the United States. The attorney says the removal was improper, given that the man's case had not yet been resolved through the appeals process.
The case was first reported by 10TV, which detailed the attorney's account that the man had a pending immigration appeal at the time ICE carried out the deportation. Under U.S. immigration law and Fifth Amendment due process protections, ICE is generally barred from executing a removal without a final order — pending appeals or court stays are supposed to pause the process, according to the Law Office of Immigration. Board of Immigration Appeals decisions and stay orders are also meant to carry binding authority over Department of Homeland Security officers in the field unless a federal court or the U.S. Attorney General says otherwise, per the U.S. Department of Justice.
A Federal Directive Meant to Fix Exactly This
If ICE did remove someone while a stay or ameliorative relief was in place, the agency has a formal process for correcting it. ICE Policy Directive 11061.1 requires the agency to facilitate the return and re-entry of people deported while a court order or pending judicial review warranted their continued presence in the country, according to Justia Law. That is the mechanism ICE now appears to be relying on as it works to bring the Columbus man home, per the attorney's account relayed to 10TV.
The 10TV report does not specify what broke down internally — whether a stay hold was never logged, or whether detention officers were not informed of the pending appeal. That detail remains unresolved.
Where Central Ohio Cases Move Through the System
Central Ohio ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations processes residents and mandatory check-ins on the fourth floor of the LeVeque Tower in downtown Columbus, an office serving 27 central and southeastern Ohio counties, according to ICE. That office, along with the rest of Ohio and Michigan, falls under the administrative jurisdiction of the ICE ERO Detroit Field Office. Central Ohio detainees are routinely transferred to the Butler County Jail in Hamilton, one of six Ohio county facilities holding federal immigration detainees under contract with the federal government, the Marietta Times reports. By late August, that jail held 1,111 total inmates, well above its general housing capacity of 844 and the state-recommended capacity of 756, a strain the Ohio Capital Journal attributes in part to the surge in federal ICE detentions.
Not an Isolated Breakdown
This is not the only recent case of ICE removing someone while their legal challenge was still active. On August 27, a federal judge ordered ICE to retrieve a man deported to Nigeria while his habeas corpus petition remained pending, after the agency admitted its agents failed to place a stay hold on his file — a case Hoodline covered in a similar Colorado ruling. In that case, U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang found ICE had violated a federal injunction.
The Columbus case also lands amid a broader enforcement surge. U.S. immigration enforcement recorded a national record of 49,571 monthly ICE arrests in July, a 15 percent jump from June and a 70 percent increase from February, according to data from UC Berkeley's Deportation Data Project reported by Hoodline. Central Ohio has already seen friction between ICE operations and local families and courts this year, including a February incident in which a Columbus mother said ICE agents pepper-sprayed her children during a drive-by enforcement action, and reports that check-in detentions at LeVeque Tower have swamped local legal resources.
Legal Limits on ICE Detention in Ohio
Ohio's ICE detention practices have also faced recent judicial pushback. On May 11, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in Lopez-Campos v. Raycraft that ICE cannot subject long-term non-citizen residents living in Ohio to mandatory detention without an individualized bond hearing before an immigration judge, according to the law firm Brennan, Manna & Diamond. The Sixth Circuit's jurisdiction covers federal appeals across Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
It remains unclear exactly when the Columbus man will be returned to the United States. His attorney has said only that ICE is working to bring him back, and no timeline has been made public.
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