A federal judge in Washington state ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pay more than $16,900 in sanctions and legal fees after the agency twice defied a court order by secretly transferring a detained immigrant to facilities in Arizona and New Mexico — chaining him for hours each time.
U.S. District Judge Tiffany Cartwright ruled that ICE willfully violated her earlier order requiring at least 48 hours’ notice before moving detainee Armando Benitez Chavez out of Washington’s Northwest ICE Processing Center. Just one day after the order was issued in October, ICE shipped Benitez to Arizona anyway, with agency lawyers admitting they simply sat on the court order for more than 24 hours before passing it along internally.
After Benitez was returned to Washington, ICE began planning a second transfer to New Mexico within days — despite already having violated the same order once. The agency finalized that second move on November 5, even after a judge had granted Benitez’s habeas petition and ordered his release on bond.
Benitez described the toll of being shuttled between facilities in restraints, unable to sleep for hours at a time.
“It is a lot of time without sleep and in chains,” Benitez said, describing the ordeal in a sworn declaration.
He was ultimately released in New Mexico on November 10 once his family posted bond, forcing him to pay $498 out of pocket just to fly home. Judge Cartwright awarded him that amount, plus $5,000 for the physical and emotional suffering caused by the unlawful transfers, along with $11,455 in attorneys’ fees for the legal work required to hold ICE accountable.
The ruling adds to a growing list of court findings against ICE’s detention and transfer practices under President Trump’s immigration crackdown, with judges increasingly stepping in to penalize the agency when it ignores its own legal obligations to detainees and their attorneys.
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