Man detained by ICE outside Baltimore school must be released, judge says

A federal judge ordered the release of a man who was taken into custody by immigration agents last month outside a Baltimore elementary school.

The order to release 39-year-old Jesus Acevedo Sanchez by 11:59 p.m. Thursday followed another ruling last week to free his long-term partner, who was in the same vehicle and also detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the morning of June 11.

Unpersuaded by a Department of Justice attorney’s explanation of what probable cause immigration authorities were relying on when they initiated the “targeted enforcement” operation, U.S. District Judge Julie Rebecca Rubin said release was the “proper and only appropriate remedy” for violating Acevedo Sanchez’s rights.

The couple was represented by Rachel Girod and Rachael Savage of Eldridge Crandell LLC.  Leaving the courtroom, Girod said she and Savage were pleased their client would be able to come back home to his daughters.

Acevedo Sanchez, his two daughters and their mother, Adriana Gavilan Sanchez, were leaving a Dunkin’ location on the way to drop the children off at Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School when ICE agents attempted to stop their vehicle.

The Baltimore couple’s attorneys said in court that the father drove off because the man who approached him did not identify himself as an immigration agent before he pulled out a gun.

“He thought he was fleeing from a carjacker,” Girod told Rubin.

Acevedo Sanchez then continued to the school, where bystander videos show agents taking him into custody while students were being dropped off. The footage caused uproar among local officials, who said that schools are sensitive spaces where immigration enforcement should not occur.

In the aftermath of the couple’s arrest, Department of Homeland Security said on social media that Acevedo Sanchez “violently resisted arrest and used his vehicle to evade law enforcement” before fleeing to the school.

Asked Thursday to comment, the department referred back to that post. A spokesperson for ICE’s Baltimore field office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The couple’s attorneys said ICE did not issue an administrative warrant for Acevedo Sanchez until hours after his arrest, when he was taken to the Baltimore holding facility.

Rubin prodded Justice Department attorney Beatrice C. Thomas, who argued that immigration laws allow agents to interrogate people regardless of “how they approach the individual” on why agents had reason to believe Acevedo Sanchez was illegally in the U.S.

Thomas said that because searches on immigration and criminal databases had come back negative, agents needed to interrogate him to determine his immigration status. Rubin concluded that reasoning was “unpersuasive.”

“I too would have a negative hit on each of these databases,” said Rubin, a former Baltimore City Circuit Court judge who was appointed to the federal bench in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden.

The Department of Homeland Security said last month that Acevedo Sanchez and another person in the car had been charged with federal crimes, though no such charges could be located in court records against him or Gavilan Sanchez, 37. Thomas did not mention any criminal charges during the hearing and declined to comment afterward.