Perla Morales-Luna, the undocumented immigrant and single mom violently arrested by plainclothes Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in a viral video earlier this month, has been released by an immigration judge. Officials had accused her of being "a human smuggling facilitator,” and dragged her into a waiting SUV as her three daughters, all U.S. citizens, screamed. But saying Morales-Luna posed “neither a danger to society nor a flight risk,” the judge released her this week, and without any human smuggling charges. “Her case never even went to prosecutors”:
Immigration judge Zsa Zsa Depaolo said Tuesday it was not her place to consider the smuggling claims, and she "noted that three other people accused of ties to the trafficking claims were exonerated," according to the AP.
In the days following her arrest, an attorney representing Morales-Luna said, "She's never been arrested for anything as far as we can tell, so we're at bit of a loss as to why they're alleging the alien smuggling issue."
Judith Castro-Rangel, the woman who recorded the arrest, posted a video to her Facebook page Tuesday afternoon that reads: "Perla is free! Glory be to God!"
“I’m really excited,” said her eldest daughter, Jessica, “and I’m grateful to God because I knew that there would be justice, and I would be able to see her again soon.” Morales-Luna’s attorney said the mom has been in the United States since she was 14 and has no criminal record. Under previous administrations, Morales-Luna would have been low priority for deportation, but she now faces a future court hearing where she could still be torn from her girls.
While these sort of arrests have been playing out all over the country since Donald Trump unleashed his immigration agents, what stuck out about this case was the shocking and horrifying video. Still, it shouldn’t take another video of another family being torn apart to know what Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are doing. They lie all the time, they are destroying communities, and they don’t need to be beefed up any more. What they need is to be reined in, and if today’s Congress won’t do it, it’s time to get a new Congress that will.