ICE detained U-visa crime-victim Kevin Ramirez Mancia for four months despite approved work permit and deferred action

On April 4, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Kevin Ramirez Mancia, a 20-year-old who had come to Willmar, Minnesota from Honduras with his father as a teenager, immediately after local police released him from a traffic-stop arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence of cannabis and possessing a pistol without a permit. Ramirez Mancia held an ICE-approved U-visa work permit and deferred action from deportation, granted in 2023 after he cooperated with police as the victim of a knife assault at his Willmar high school. Rather than honoring that grant, an ICE officer approached him as he waited for his release paperwork and took him into immigration custody; he was transferred to the Freeborn County Jail, which holds immigration detainees under contract with ICE.

Ramirez Mancia's detention followed a memo issued in late January 2025 by ICE's acting director that reversed decades of agency policy instructing officers not to detain immigrants with pending U visas — a program Congress created, as part of the Violence Against Women Act, to encourage crime victims and witnesses to cooperate with police without fear of deportation. A Minnesota Reformer investigation reviewing more than 1,100 habeas corpus petitions filed in Minnesota between December 2025 and mid-March 2026 identified at least 75 people, including Ramirez Mancia, who were detained by immigration authorities during Operation Metro Surge despite holding approved work permits and deportation protections as crime victims.

Ramirez Mancia filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus on June 26, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, naming Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and other federal officials as respondents and challenging the legality of his continued detention. He remained in ICE custody for exactly four months while the case proceeded.

Updates

2026-08-03 — Federal judge granted habeas petition and ordered release [1]

U.S. District Judge Katherine M. Menendez accepted a magistrate judge's report and recommendation, granted Ramirez Mancia's petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and ordered federal respondents to release him immediately. He remains free while he appeals the separate deportation order against him.