The men arrested during the immigration raids at Corso’s Flower and Garden Center and a Fresh Mark meatpacking facility this month were sent to a medium security prison in Youngstown. About 130 detainees there may have a long wait in prison before a judge considers their cases.
Brian Hoffman, an immigration attorney with the International Institute of Akron, was working one day a week at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center when male detainees from this month’s raids arrived. The women were sent to other facilities, including Geauga County Jail and a prison in Michigan.
Hoffman says no one from Corso’s has appeared in front of an immigration judge yet, two weeks after their arrest, partly because there was a conference for immigration judges the week of those raids.
“I think even absent the conference, it would be fair to say an inmate in Youngstown could wait three to four weeks for an initial hearing,” Hoffman said. “We have no reason to think that’s going to change in the short term.”
Hoffman says there’s only one judge at the immigration court in Cleveland handling the Youngstown cases.
After the arrests this week at Fresh Mark’s meat processing plant in Salem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement released about 60 people who were sole parents or for health reasons. Hoffman says he not aware of any detainees sent to Youngstown who have been released.
