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A federal judge Monday ordered a Bronx 11th-grader to be immediately released from ICE custody as the Trump administration continues its alleged “Orwellian” bid to try to deport the kid.
District Judge Cathy Seibel said at the hearing in White Plains that 16-year-old Joel Camas’ legal team successfully showed his “immediate release is necessary.
“We are talking about a minor who will suffer irreparable harm by being removed from the school part way through the year,” Seibel said.
The obviously irked judge ripped the legal posture of the office of US Attorney for the Southern District Jay Clayton as “Orwellian or Kafkaesque.
“Your clients are dead-set on pursuing this particular case?” she asked Assistant US Attorney Rachel Kroll, who is repping Clayton’s office. “They don’t see any need to avoid the resources being put into it and work something out?”
Kroll reaffirmed that the feds still want to boot the boy.
The teen sat calmly inside the courtroom wearing a hooded sweatshirt as the judge read her ruling ordering his release “right now.”
Joel, a junior at Gotham Collaborative High School in The Bronx, had a 100 percent attendance record before he was taken into custody by ICE at his routine check-in with immigration authorities Oct. 23, according to a court filing.
He and his mother fled Ecuador in December 2022 because of gang violence but had a US removal order against them since losing their asylum case in 2024, where they appeared unrepresented, according to the teen’s lawsuit seeking permanent residency. Joel’s mother self-deported earlier this year.
The Trump administration had actually granted Joel “Special Immigrant Juvenile” status in April, meaning a court already found that it is not in his best interest to return to Ecuador. Joe’s suit claims this protects him from deportation.
But federal officials say he can still be deported, and the two sides made their case to Seibel for more than an hour in court Monday, but no decision has been released.
The teen can now leave the youth shelter at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, where he has been staying as ICE tries to continue to remove him from the country, as long as he remains in the custody of his uncle, the judge said.
“While it’s a huge relief that Joel can finally go home, ICE should have never detained him in the first place,” said Elizabeth Gyori, senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, who is repping the teen.
“By arresting a child with legal status at a routine check-in, ICE acted with brazen cruelty, broke US law, and violated the Constitution,” she said. “The Trump administration should expect to keep seeing us in court if they continue to punish people for following the rules.”
Representatives for federal prosecutors did not respond to a request for comment.
Last week, the city filed a supportive legal brief in his federal case fighting his ICE detention and deportation.
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