MINNEAPOLIS – A Venezuelan national was approaching the courthouse in Faribault for a hearing on his pending criminal case on Jan. 28 when ICE agents arrested him.
Immigration authorities brought the man, Hernando Fidel Avila Gamez, to the Freeborn County Jail to join a growing number of noncitizens facing deportation proceedings. He missed his appearance before a Rice County judge on charges of felony burglary and gross misdemeanor criminal sexual conduct. He also didn’t get to make his case in front of an immigration judge before ICE transported him across the country.
Now Avila Gamez is a thousand miles away at an immigration detention center in Texas – among a series of ICE detainees transferred from rural Minnesota jails…