A Wisconsin state patrol trooper, whom federal immigration agents detained on Thursday at an airport, has been released from their custody.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents approached Carel Aaron Van Der Merwe, a South African national, as he waited to board a domestic flight, according to his law firm Christopher & De León.
Van Der Merwe, who immigrated to the US when he was 14, has been waiting seven years for his asylum case to be heard, his attorneys said in social media posts. In the meantime, he received work authorization, valid through 2030, to serve in Wisconsin’s law enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defended Van Der Merwe’s detention in a statement this week, saying he had overstayed a 2019 visa. “Work authorization or a pending application do not confer legal status in the US,” an agency spokesperson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Van Der Merwe’s lawyers rejected that claim, noting that another DHS agency, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, “authorized him to work”.
“We don’t think ICE even believes its own statement,” the law firm added.
The agency did not immediately respond to an inquiry about what prompted the state trooper’s release.
In a social media update on Friday, Van Der Merwe’s law firm shared that their client would be released, but subject to electronic monitoring and regular check-ins with immigration authorities.
“His release is welcome news. But our fight is not over. Carel will still have to defend his immigration case before an immigration judge,” the attorneys wrote.
“USCIS, an agency within DHS, authorized Carel to work. He used that authorization to serve and protect Wisconsin communities. ICE, another agency within DHS, then detained him. DHS owes this family more than silence,” they continued.
Video of Van Der Merwe’s graduation ceremony last year showed that his badge was pinned on by his father in front of Wisconsin’s governor.
Van Der Merwe’s family of white South Africans arrived during Donald Trump’s first term, but they had good reason to expect that they would be granted asylum after Trump returned to office last year and signed an executive order saying the US would “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees”, based on the false claim that they would be “escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination” at home.
In addition to a series of highly public, contentious and in some cases deadly ICE raids across several US cities, the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda has played out more furtively at domestic and international airports. Travelers with visas, green-card holders and pending asylum cases have been detained in what some experts say is an effort to meet arrest quotas imposed on the agency by the White House.
Van Der Merwe’s law firm advised noncitizens with unresolved immigration paperwork to consult immigration attorneys before traveling by air.
“Even if you have flown without problems before, do not assume the same will happen now,” they said.
