LISTEN: North Georgia college student Ximena Arias-Cristobal, who had been in immigration detention for over two weeks, has been granted bond and will go home. GPB's Grant Blankenship reports.
Ximena Arias-Cristobal, the19-year-old North Georgia college student who had been in immigration detention for over two weeks, has been granted bond and will go home.
Arias-Cristobal was detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement after she landed in the Whitfield County Jail but before the Dalton Police Department dropped the traffic charge against her for driving without a license.
Now she will be released by ICE on $1,500 bond.
“It was a very quick hearing; we were called fifth in the group,” attorney Dustin Baxter said. “I did explain to the judge that her dad had been given a bond and that she wanted bragging rights in the family and to get a lower bond than he did.”
Baxter said attorneys for the government said little in the hearing and offered no explanation for why it took 16 days to set what is the minimum bond allowed in immigration proceedings.
“So now it's a matter of how quickly the family can pay the bond, and get Ximena out and breathing fresh air again,” Baxter said.
Hannah Jones said posting bond won’t be a problem.
“Ximena actually called me a few minutes after we got the news that she was granted bond and we both were jumping up and down,” Jones said.
The Gofundme that Jones set up for Arias-Cristobal, whose younger sister is a friend of Jones’ daughter and who babysits for the Jones family, is sitting at around $90,000. Jones, a Dalton native, said the money came first from home, Whitfield County.
“It started in our community, but it has reached out all over the world,” Jones said. “Her story is so compelling because everybody recognizes the humanity in this story and that this was a child. She'd never had any say when she immigrated to the U.S. There's no pathway to citizenship for her. So it's just it was so obviously wrong to most of the world to lock up this 19-year-old girl.”
Ximena’s father, Jose Arias-Tovar, was detained a few weeks before she was and spent about a month in ICE detention before being released about a week ago. He was arrested and detained in April for driving over the speed limit.
On Wednesday, he said the family was planning to have someone drive to the ICE office in Atlanta to deliver a check for Ximena’s bail — he said lawyers told the family that’s the quickest way to get payment processed. They hope to have Ximena home by Thursday morning.
“Now we need to schedule a meeting with her lawyer to see what path we take,” Arias-Tovar said.
Before her detention, Arias-Cristobal had no path to legal immigration status at all. Family attorney Dustin Baxter said that, ironically, her father’s detention may have changed that.
“In the absence of any meaningful legislative action on the DREAM Act or anything that would give her status through DACA, she's going to be attaching her case to her dad,” Baxter said.
Baxter said Arias-Tovar will apply for something called “Cancelation of Removal.”
“If he can prove to a judge that he's been here for more than 10 years, he's a person of good moral character, and he's got U.S. citizen children, who would suffer exceptional and extremely unusual hardship if he was removed, then he could be granted permanent resident status,” Baxter said.
And then, his eldest daughter would, too.
After living in the U.S. for 15 years without legal status, Arias-Tovar said he had never had an interaction with law enforcement until his arrest and detainment by ICE in April.
Upon his release, Arias-Tovar said his lawyer is aiming to get him a work permit that will allow him to stay in the country for five years.
“For me, it was a miracle, because now the law is very strict with the new administration — they're practically not forgiving anything,” he said. “The words of the judge were that I did not pose a danger to the United States, and that I could get out on bail.”
He is hopeful that his daughter will have a similar chance, and wishes for her to have a “brilliant future, which is what we came here for.”
But first there will be a party to welcome his daughter home.
