A University of California, Berkeley student was arrested by immigration agents at San Francisco International Airport as she prepared to fly to Oregon for a weekend getaway with her boyfriend. Paula Hernandez, 23, a Colombian asylum seeker, was detained by ICE agents on October 30 while waiting to board a flight to Portland. Her attorney said she had overstayed her visa but had a pending asylum application and a valid work permit.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said she had no legal immigration status and would remain in custody pending removal proceedings. Hernandez is being held at the California City Detention Center in Kern County, California, while her lawyers seek her release. Her boyfriend, identified only as Anthony, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had arranged the trip to give her a break from her studies.
The couple planned to visit waterfalls in Oregon before she returned to Berkeley for her midterm exams. But while they were waiting at the airport, plainclothes immigration agents approached Hernandez and asked her name before arresting her, according to her attorney, Nikolas De Bremaeker. De Bremaeker said the agents did not identify themselves as immigration officers or police, an account disputed by DHS.
Anthony said he was unable to speak to his girlfriend until the following day, when she had been taken to an immigration detention facility in Stockton. She was subsequently moved to Sacramento, back to Stockton and then to California City, about five hours from San Francisco. Anthony told the Chronicle that she was coping with her detention.
He said: "She's been moving around a lot. She said she's doing okay; she's calm, a little more calm than we are." Hernandez entered the US from Colombia on September 6, 2022, with permission to remain until March 6, 2023, according to DHS. Her attorney said she had fled gender-based violence in Colombia and applied for asylum within a year of arriving in the US.
He said she had attended her immigration appointments, submitted biometric information and received a work permit. She also had no criminal record or previous arrests, according to De Bremaeker. However, DHS said she had remained in the country after her permission to stay expired.
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