UPDATE ― 6:32 p.m. EDT July 23: Francisco Erwin Galicia, an 18-year-old born in the U.S., was released Tuesday from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, his lawyer told The Associated Press. The teen had been wrongfully held in custody, first by Customs and Border Protection, then by ICE, since late June. His case drew national media attention this week after a report in The Dallas Morning News.
ICE and CBP told HuffPost they did not yet have a statement about the case.
Previously:
An 18-year-old born in Texas has been wrongfully held in an immigration detention center for more than three weeks, according to his attorney.
Francisco Erwin Galicia, a rising high school senior in Edinburg, Texas, was traveling across the state for a college soccer tryout with his younger brother and friends on June 27 when he was taken into custody at a border patrol checkpoint, his attorney, Claudia Galan, told The Dallas Morning News.
Galan said Galicia had proper identification with him, including a wallet-sized Texas birth certificate, a Texas identification card and a Social Security card. Customs and Border Protection agents grew suspicious when they discovered that Galicia’s 17-year-old brother, who was born in Mexico, didn’t have any legal status to be in the U.S.
During a deeper probe, CBP discovered that Galicia had a U.S. tourist visa that his mother, who is undocumented, took out for him when he was a child, Galan told The Washington Post.
Galan said Galicia was born in a Dallas hospital. However, Galan said, Galicia’s mother used a different name on his birth certificate and said he was born in Mexico because of her immigration status. This name change meant she wasn’t able to request a U.S. passport for him. She applied for a tourist visa with inaccurate information so Galicia could travel between Mexico and the U.S. to visit family.
“He’s been here all his life,” Galan told the Post, but “when Border Patrol checked his documents, they just didn’t believe they were real. They kept telling him they were fake.”
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Galicia’s brother, Marlon Galicia, was taken into custody and deported to Mexico two days later. He told the Morning News he is living with his grandmother there.
“I didn’t imagine this could happen, and now I’m so sad that I’m not with my family,” he told the publication in a phone interview from Reynosa, just south of McAllen, Texas.
Galan said she has presented CBP with Francisco Galicia’s birth certificate and other documents. She plans to present the same information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents this week in hopes of securing his release. Galicia is listed online as held at the South Texas Detention Facility in Pearsall, Texas.
ICE, CBP and Galan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
News of Galicia’s detention caught the attention of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who tweeted about the situation on Monday.
“How would you feel trapped in a border camp, where guards wear face masks because the human odor is so strong?” she asked. “When we allow the rights of some to be violated, the rights of all are not far behind.”