Taking on a new immigration beat that looks at how state and local police work with ICE, Ryan J. Foley focused on how crime victims and witnesses without legal status are affected. He soon found a striking case near his Iowa City base: Felipe de Jesus Hernandez Marcelo, who entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico, nearly died in a Muscatine shooting. After surviving, he was detained over unpaid traffic tickets and quickly turned over to ICE.
Foley gained rare access to Marcelo’s case through hundreds of pages of records and a court hearing where Hernandez testified about being denied medicine, missing doctors’ appointments, losing work, and being separated from his son as a single father. The case illustrated the impact of ICE’s rollback of victim protections and expanded detention policies.
An online petition followed, calling on ICE to stop detaining Hernandez and other crime victims. But several days later, an immigration judge denied Hernandez’s release on bond.
Related articles
