Martin Soto, the Peruvian immigrant whose wife became the face of protests outside Delaney Hall last summer, was released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention late Tuesday night, following a federal judge’s order.
Dramatic video showed Gabriela Soto and her two young children racing to Martin as he emerged from the Elizabeth Detention Center. Reunited eight months after his initial arrest, the family broke down in a tearful embrace.
“It was an eternity,” Soto told a crowd of supporters and reporters in Spanish outside the facility. “Thanks to all the people who supported us during this time.”
“I don’t have words,” he added.
“I can’t be more thankful,” Gabriela said.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said, “ICE complies with all court orders when it receives sufficient notice to do so.”
The agency went on to call Soto a “criminal illegal alien currently charged with assault in Kearny, New Jersey, and his wife is an anti-ICE agitator who helped lead the protests that turned violent outside the Delaney Hall facility.”
In legal filings submitted in federal court, Soto’s attorneys said the only interaction he had with local police was when they responded to a domestic dispute between him and his wife, but she soon withdrew the complaint and the matter didn’t proceed.
Face of Protest
A U.S. citizen, Gabriela Soto became the face of protests outside Delaney Hall in late May, when she sat vigil in solidarity with detainees who had announced a labor and hunger strike inside, demanding the release of elderly, young and medically vulnerable detainees. She was pregnant when the protests began, but lost her baby after an emergency C-section in July, when she was seven months pregnant.
The City Reporter documented dozens of cases of detainees describing medical neglect inside the facility, including lack of access to life-saving medications and missed treatments for serious conditions, such as leukemia and thyroid cancer.
In May, as the protest entered its third day, activists outside Delaney Hall got word ICE agents were trying to move Martin and formed a blockade outside the facility’s gates. Early the next morning, as the crowd of protesters dwindled, ICE agents burst through and moved Soto to the Elizabeth Detention Center, where he remained in solitary confinement for more than 100 days, his wife and attorneys alleged.
After that initial confrontation at the gates, masked ICE agents remained guarding the perimeter of Delaney Hall for days, pummeling protesters with batons and pepper spray. The crowds of demonstrators grew until the New Jersey state and Newark police stepped in.
Soto’s transfer from Delaney Hall was one of hundreds ICE conducted as protests raged outside the gates, The City Reporter previously reported. Advocates saw it as an attempt to break up the protests inside the facility and the connections to those demonstrating outside.
Initially, Soto’s attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition in March, and federal judge Jamel K. Semper ordered a bond hearing. But before Immigration Judge Shana Chen — who has one of the lowest asylum grant rates of any immigration judge in Newark — Soto was denied bond and remained in detention, with no prospect of release, immigration court records show.
Bond denials by immigration judges have soared during Trump’s second term.
Soto’s attorneys filed another habeas petition in September, court records show, charging Soto’s prolonged detention for more than 200 days violated his Fifth Amendment rights to due process. His attorneys further contended he was being held in “restrictive housing at the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility for 113 of those days, resulting in near-continuous isolation and recurrent suicidal thoughts.”
For a second time, Semper sided with Soto, ordering his immediate release in an order Tuesday.
Considering “the evidence concerning the conditions under which he has been confined, the evidence concerning his current mental health condition and reported risk of self-harm, and the absence of a sufficient showing at this juncture that continued detention is constitutionally permissible,” Semper wrote, “the court concludes that petitioner’s continued detention warrants immediate judicial relief.”
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