A federal judge in Oregon will decide this week whether to release a farm worker from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody even though he’s already been deported twice before.

The man — “L-J-P-L” in court filings — was again slated to be removed, pending an immigration court hearing that won’t occur until November 2026. He’s currently seeking asylum from his home country of Guatemala.

Whether he’s deported immediately or kept on his current path will depend on whether U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut believes his past deportations empower ICE to unilaterally send him back home.

Immergut gave little hint at a hearing on Wednesday of how she will weigh in on the case after hearing arguments from the man’s attorneys and the federal government. A decision could come Thursday or Friday, Immergut said in court.

During the two-hour session, the Trump-appointed judge pressed L-J-P-L’s attorneys about whether immigration authorities in 2024 failed to notice he had been deported in 2009 and 2014. Crossing back into the U.S. after being removed can result in mandatory detention.

But immigration authorities were aware of his history, his attorneys argue. They said agents did a full background check and would have been able to see his past deportations.

Attorneys with Innovation Law Lab presented the immigration authorities’ own forms showing that they released L-J-P-L under the condition that he make frequent check-ins at ICE’s field office in Eugene. His attorneys said he never missed a date.

“In order to bring someone back in detention — under an order of release — they have to have a violation of the condition,” attorney Stephen Manning said.

Immergut quizzed federal attorneys, too. Attorneys for the government said his past deportations make him deportable straight away, regardless of his impending court hearing. Immergut questioned how that didn’t violate L-J-P-L’s due process rights.

“You’re saying it’s just discretionary, ‘we can just take them into custody without any due process if we want to?’” Immergut asked.

“Correct, your honor, but that’s because the [previous order to deport],” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ariana Garousi. “He was already afforded the due process to fight that order in the underlying proceedings.”

L-J-P-L was among those arrested near Woodburn earlier this month. Farm worker advocacy groups said the arrests have panicked the agricultural industry in the mid-Willamette Valley.

According to court records, he was among six farmworkers in a van around 5:30 a.m. heading to a blueberry farm. His attorneys allege ICE was looking for someone else who wasn’t in the van.

After they pulled the van over in an unmarked car with police lights, court records show, they confronted the van and broke the driver’s window.

L-J-P-L and his partner allege in court filings that the ICE agents then “dragged the driver out of the car.”

“They forcibly grabbed him and threw him on the ground, after that they took him behind one of their vans,” L-J-P-L’s partner said, according to the documents. “I had legal immigration papers and so did my partner, so I thought we would be okay and that the immigration agents would not hurt us.”

One agent, they said, asked the van’s occupants, “who had any immigration processes going.” When the couple both said they did, agents detained L-J-P-L but let her go. L-J-P-L’s partner said she “walked by the side of the highway until a lady stopped to help me.”

L-J-P-L has been lodged at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, since the day of his arrest. Innovation Law Lab attorneys argue he should be freed immediately and allowed to continue on his current track.

L-J-P-L crossed back into the U.S. near Nogales, Arizona, in 2024. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he came in through a legal port of entry. Federal government attorneys contend he crossed illegally before border agents grabbed him and his six-year-old daughter.

His interviews with immigration agents near the border included a “comprehensive records check,” his attorneys wrote, and then agents chose to release him.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/08/20/oregon-immigration-asylum-seeker-guatemala-farmworker-deportation/