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A Seattle resident who came to the U.S. illegally as a child may have been the first arrest under President Donald Trump of an immigrant protected by an Obama-era order.
Reuters reported Tuesday afternoon that 23-year-old Daniel Ramirez Medina was arrested last week in his father’s Seattle home by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. He had no criminal record, according to the report.
Ramirez had a work permit and protection from deportation under former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, established in 2012, according to documents filed in the U.S. District Court.
He had been approved twice under DACA, according to the documents.
Those protected under the program, often called Dreamers, gives them at least temporary rights to work in the U.S. and can help them eventually seek legal status. About 750,000 people in the U.S. are protected under DACA.
Ramirez was being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma as of Tuesday afternoon.
The officers had arrived at the home to arrest Ramirez’s father, though it was unclear why, according to the Reuters report.
Ramirez on Monday filed a challenge to his detention — a writ of habeas corpus — arguing the arrest was a violation of his constitutional rights.
“The agents who arrested and questioned Mr. Ramirez were aware that he was a DACA recipient, yet they informed him that he would be arrested, detained, and deported anyway, because he was not ‘born in this country,'” attorneys wrote in the petition, filed in U.S. District Court.
A hearing is set for Friday at U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Trump has promised an end to the DACA program, created by executive order, but has only vaguely indicated that he might allow Dreamers to remain in the U.S. after the program is gone.
Those who have obtained a work permit through the program have filed personal information with the federal government, including addresses and other information that could be used to find them. Obama had promised to use the information only for issuing the work permits and social security cards.
The arrests of hundreds of immigrants last week marked the first large-scale raid under the Trump administration — but the crackdown was, by all indications, just the start of much more to come. The expansive executive order signed by Donald Trump last month allows a significantly broader population of immigrants to be picked up for deportation.
“But now, maybe Trump could use that information to track us down,” said Dulce Siguenza, who works with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and is also protected by DACA, in a recent interview.
A regional spokesperson for ICE did not immediately return requests for comment.
Seattlepi.com reporter Lynsi Burton contributed to this report.
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