HOUSTON (AP) A U.S.-born 18-year-old was released from immigration custody Tuesday after wrongfully being detained for more than three weeks.
Francisco Erwin Galicia left a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Pearsall, Texas, on Tuesday. His lawyer, Claudia Galan, confirmed he had been released, less than a day after The Dallas Morning News reporting about his case drew national attention.
ICE did not immediately comment. Nor did U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, the agency that first detained Galicia.
Galicia lives in the border city of Edinburg, Texas, and was traveling north with a group of friends when they were stopped at a Border Patrol inland checkpoint. According to Galan and the Morning News, agents apprehended Galicia on suspicion that he was in the U.S. illegally even though he had a Texas state ID.
Galicia was detained for three weeks by the Border Patrol, then transferred to the ICE detention center.
Galan said she believes Galicia was absolutely a victim of racial profiling.
Im so thankful Francisco is free and he can sleep at home tonight and see his mom, she said.
Galicia was detained by the Border Patrol for well above the 72 hours that CBP says it is supposed to hold detainees. But in South Texas Rio Grande Valley, where Galicia was arrested, the Border Patrol is holding hundreds of adult men and women accused of entering the country illegally for longer than 72 hours. In McAllen, Texas, adult men are being held in fenced-in pens.
Vice President Mike Pence visited those pens this month, and reports and video of conditions there sparked outrage.
The Morning News reported that Galicia wasnt transferred out of Border Patrol custody to ICE until Saturday. Thats when he was able to make collect calls to his mother. Galan drove Tuesday to the detention center in Pearsall to secure his release.
