Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last month detained a man in Lakewood who legally entered the U.S., despite being on an operation targeting someone else — a move a federal magistrate judge called “egregious.”
The agents were actually looking to detain a Mexican national who had a final deportation order, according to court documents. Instead, they arrested 23-year-old Venezuelan citizen Moises Velasquez, who reportedly was driving the same make and model car as their target.
U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kate Vaughan wrote in an order granting Velasquez’s habeas corpus petition — which challenges the government’s detention of someone — that officers demonstrated “a complete lack of procedures,” heightening the risk Velasquez would be deprived of his due process rights. Velasquez was released from the Tacoma ICE detention facility on Wednesday evening, his attorney Bart Klein said.
Klein said ICE agents merely “saw some Hispanic guy,” decided to go after him and forced him out of the vehicle. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a lower court ban preventing ICE agents from stopping, questioning or detaining people based on appearance, language or accent.
Velasquez has no criminal convictions, according to court documents.
Velasquez and his partner, who is now eight months pregnant, entered the U.S. through Brownsville, Texas, in 2023 after using a Customs and Border Protection processing app to make an appointment with the Department of Homeland Security at an entry point. He was paroled, later obtained employment authorization, applied for asylum and was waiting for a December 2026 appearance before an immigration judge in Seattle.
The original target of the ICE arrest was a Mexican citizen known to drive a gray Volkswagen GTI, according to Homeland Security, and agents observed Velasquez sitting in his gray Volkswagen GTI outside the barber shop he works at on July 17.
Velasquez had arrived early for an appointment with a client, according to the petition. Homeland Security wrote that Velasquez “refused and started to aggressively reach around in the vehicle,” when officers approached, so they broke his window, according to the court filings.
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s court filings, officials wrote that ICE had an immigration warrant for Velasquez. His petition stated ICE arrested him without presenting a warrant, and he was never told why he was being detained. An administrative warrant was written by a deportation official after his arrest, the petition claims, violating his due process rights, which are extended to all people in the U.S. regardless of citizenship status.
Homeland Security officials claimed Velasquez had not advised the U.S. government of a change in address, but conceded the agency could find no terms that were part of his conditions of release.
Velasquez “could not have violated conditions that were never imposed,” wrote Vaughan, the magistrate judge.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Collins argued Velasquez was “subject to mandatory detention … as an arriving alien” and that there was no basis for his release.
Klein, Velasquez’s attorney, said ICE has frequently been redetaining people who had been detained at the U.S. border and then released without granting them an opportunity to be heard, violating the Fifth Amendment.
“It’s becoming lawlessness,” Klein said. “We have got to have some standards.”
Vaughan wrote there was no indication ICE officials ran the license plates on Velasquez’s car to verify whether the Volkswagen belonged to the target of their operation. Reviewing his identification documents would have revealed he was Venezuelan, not Mexican, and therefore not the person they were looking for.
Since entering the U.S., Velasquez “established community roots by residing at a single residence and … started a family with his partner,” the judge’s order states. The facts, Vaughan wrote, “indicate an egregious level of carelessness by arresting officers that led to an unlawful redetention and irreparable harm.”
ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
