By: Suzanne Gamboa ~ NBC News ~ March 22, 2019
The flight attendant put Mexico and Canada on her “no fly” list “very intentionally” when she was hired by Mesa Airlines, her husband said.
AUSTIN, Texas — A Mesa Airlines flight attendant, who as a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipient is barred from traveling outside the United States under the Trump administration's rules, was released from immigration detention Friday after being taken into custody when she returned to the U.S. on a flight from Mexico that she had worked.
Selene Saavedra Roman, 28, who works for the regional airline based in Phoenix, walked out of the immigration facility Friday evening dragging her Mesa-issued flight bags, according to a representative for the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA who went to meet her and her attorney. She had been held for more than a month.
"Being released is an incredible feeling. I cried and hugged my husband and never wanted to let go," Saavedra Roman said in a statement sent by her attorney Belinda Arroyo to NBC News. "I am thankful and grateful for the amazing people that came to fight for me, and it fills my heart. Thank you everyone that has supported. I am just so happy to have my freedom back."
Mesa erroneously reassured Roman that she could fly to Mexico. But she was taken into custody Feb. 12, upon landing at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston and placed in immigration detention in Conroe, Texas, Arroyo told NBC News.
Shortly after NBC News reported Saavedra Roman’s detention, news came of her pending release. Her husband, David Watkins, said in a phone call with reporters that Saavedra Roman had contacted him Friday afternoon as news of her detention spread.
“I got the call. She was crying and she said, ‘Please come get me. They are going to release me,'" Watkins said. He was still on his way to pick her up when she was released.
Saavedra Roman's detention was first reported by The Points Guytravel site.
Originally from Peru, Saavedra Roman is enrolled in DACA, the Obama administration program that allows her to remain legally in the country and work.
“We are deeply sorry Selene and her husband have had to endure this situation. It is patently unfair for someone to be detained for six weeks over something that is nothing more than an administrative error and a misunderstanding,” Mesa Chairman and CEO Jonathan Ornstein said. "We are doing everything in our power to ask the administration to release Selene, and drop all charges stemming from this horrible situation."
Saavedra Roman is married to a U.S. citizen and is in the process of applying for legal residency status, but Arroyo said the federal government had threatened to revoke her DACA status while she was in custody.
Under the Obama administration, DACA recipients could apply to travel outside the country. But when President Donald Trump ended the program, such travel was canceled. While court injunctions have prevented the Trump administration from ending DACA for now, the ban on its recipients traveling outside the United States has not been lifted.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it cannot comment on specific cases and cited its January 2018 memo that states that it will not accept or approve "advance parole" requests from DACA recipients. Advance parole is the permission that DACA recipients must get to travel outside the country.
Saavedra Roman has had DACA since 2012, when it first became available to young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children and who met certain criteria.
In a statement issued Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is holding Saavedra Roman, verified her arrest and said she was "processed" as a refused crew member, which refers to members of airlines and ship crews who do not have proper documentation to enter the country when they arrive at ports and airports.
Saavedra Roman had told the airline when she was hired about her DACA status, Arroyo said. When she was assigned the Mexico flight, she exchanged several emails with her employer questioning whether she could work the flight because of her status, her attorney added.
The airline told her it was permissible, Arroyo said. Hired in January, Saavedra Roman was still on probation with her employer. She was concerned about losing her job if she rejected the assignment, her attorney said. Arroyo said her client has provided her with emails of her conversations with her supervisors.
“I can’t believe this case has gone on as it has. I thought, 'When they see she has DACA status, that it was a mistake, they are going to parole her and let her out,'" Arroyo said.
Source: Suzanne Gamboa ~ NBC News ~ March 22, 2019
