Working alongside the Human Trafficking Legal Center and Rozas Law, a Jenner & Block team secured the release of a Venezuelan woman trafficked to the United States from Colombia, held under abusive conditions, and subsequently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the same day she reported her trafficking to law enforcement. Our client, a mother of two, was separated from her children, one of whom was nursing, when ICE detained her and transferred her over 1,000 miles from her home.
After significant litigation on the unlawfulness of her detention, and just hours prior to a scheduled hearing before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, ICE voluntarily released our client on April 2, allowing her to be reunited with her four-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter.
Our client’s release followed our filing of a habeas petition challenging the lawfulness of her confinement. When the Judge in the case ordered a hearing requiring the government to show why our client’s continued detention was not unlawful, ICE agreed to release her.
A native and citizen of Venezuela with no criminal history, our client was lured to the United States by a human trafficker and subjected to forced labor, involuntary servitude, and sexual servitude upon her arrival at the trafficker’s home. For over a year, she was repeatedly raped, forced to perform unpaid domestic and commercial labor, and subjected to severe physical violence, threats, isolation, food deprivation, and other abuse.
In 2025, our client and her children escaped with the help of police and a social service agency. She sought to rebuild her life and began the process to file an application for a T Visa, a visa reserved for trafficking survivors, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. On January 30 at a routine immigration-related check-in appointment, she was arrested by ICE officers and transferred more than 1,000 miles away from her children to a detention facility in Monroe, Louisiana.
Her story was the subject of articles in The Guardian and New York magazine.
The Jenner team included Partner Samuel Feder, and Associates Samuel White, Katharine Garcia, Mackenzie Gettel, and Pro Bono Counsel Nura Maznavi.
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