Family members say that Claudio Rojas, an immigrant who appeared in The Infiltrators, a documentary about abuses at a detention center in Broward County, Florida, was deported to Argentina Tuesday night. “Rojas, 53, was arrested last month during a routine check-in with immigration authorities,” the Miami Herald reports. He had lived in the U.S. for nearly two decades:
Rojas played a major role in the film, which [homed] in on “injustices and abuse” at a immigrant detention center in Pompano Beach. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah before showing at the Miami Film Festival. Rojas was an inside source for the film, the filmmakers said. Records show his attorneys filed a civil rights lawsuit with a federal court in Florida after his arrest but the court denied his request to stay in the U.S. while the court reviewed his case.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Rojas despite his having a pending T visa, which is “issued to victims of human and labor trafficking. His attorneys say Rojas became an applicant after being victimized by an employer, a case under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor.” Under ICE policy, the Miami Herald continues, “people with pending T Visas are granted protection from deportation.”
Both advocates and members of Congress called out ICE’s vindictive action. “This act is inhumane, cruel and seems politically motivated, tweeted Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. “If this administration truly cared about enforcing our laws, they would allow Claudio to speak out against the labor trafficking crimes he suffered & not use deportation as retaliation for freely expressing & criticizing our gov’t.”
It would not be the first time ICE has targeted critics. Just weeks into Trump’s administration, unshackled ICE agents stalked a Dreamer who had spoken out against mass deportation. ICE even tracked an anti-white supremacy rally led by New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Rojas’ “deportation was an act of political retaliation by ICE,” tweeted immigrant rights leader Tomas Kennedy, “after he appeared on a film highlighting injustices at a South Florida for-profit immigration detention center. He lived in the United States for 19 years.”