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A Honduran immigrant living in Raleigh who was deported earlier this year has returned to the U.S., his attorney confirmed, nearly two months after a judge ordered the federal government to bring him back.
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Jose Eliezer Martinez-Andino, 20, flew into Texas on Aug. 5 after about five months in Honduras — a country he said he was “afraid” to be in after his father physically abused him as a child, court documents state. He was placed in Customs & Border Protection custody before being transferred to ICE custody at the Port Isabel Processing Center in Cameron County in Texas, according to one of his attorneys.
There, he will await a bond hearing next week, where a judge will assess whether he can return to Raleigh to continue legal proceedings closer to home.
“They finally did return him, not to Raleigh as we had hoped,” said Derrik Hensley, an immigration attorney serving as Martinez-Andino’s co-counsel. “But it was still a step in the right direction.”
The return comes almost two months after Judge Beryl Howell found Martinez-Andino was likely denied due process in his removal earlier this year and ordered his return.
Martinez-Andino was detained by immigration agents on March 18 while traveling through Montana, and he says he was barred from communicating with his family or attorneys for about 10 days and signed a voluntary deportation agreement without understanding its contents, The News & Observer previously reported.
“The coercive nature of these circumstances is only compounded by the rushed timing of presenting plaintiff with the forms on the day of or the morning immediately following his arrest and detention, without much, if any, opportunity to consult with counsel,” Howell, an Obama-appointed judge, wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security has disputed Martinez-Andino’s grounds to remain in the country and his claims that he had been denied from contacting Legal Aid.
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“He entered the country illegally on an unknown date through Mexico,” a spokesperson wrote in an email in June. “In September 2020, Border Patrol encountered him, and he was RELEASED into the country by the Biden administration. He was issued a voluntary return and departed the country on April 13. Any claims that he was not allowed access to an attorney are FALSE.”
But Hensley said the Trump administration doesn’t have grounds for removal, given Martinez-Andino’s protections under a “Special Immigrant Juvenile” visa — a form of protection for individuals under 21 who are unable to be returned to their parents in their home country due to abuse.
Martinez-Andino entered the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor in 2020 by crossing the southern border into Texas. But an immigration court dismissed removal proceedings against him in 2023 after finding he had a valid application for the special status visa.
“He has this status and is not subject to deportation unless they have new grounds, like criminal basis, to deport him,” Hensley said. “But he has no criminal charges or convictions. So there is no basis for him to be removed.”
Howell granted a preliminary injunction last month, finding Martinez-Andino was likely to succeed on his due process appeal and setting a two-week deadline for the government to facilitate his return to the U.S.
But an uphill battle remains in the 20-year-old’s case, Hensley said, as his legal team continues its fight to prove that arguments for Martinez-Andino’s removal are unfounded.
“We just don’t know if we can trust the government to view the world the same way it pretty clearly is,” he said. “We are hesitant to stop fighting.”
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