Filipino Immigrant Lewelyn Dixon Released from ICE Detention After Community and Legal Advocacy

LOS ANGELES - A Tacoma immigration court judge has ordered the release Lewelyn Dixon from ICE detention after three months following a merit hearing today May 29.

Tanggol Migrante made the announcement during a rally in front of the Northwest Detention Center where of its members and members of the Service International Employees Union (SEIU), which Dixon belongs to, have gathered awaiting for her release later Thursday or Friday.

Dixon, 64,  worked as a lab technician at the University of Washington Medical Center for nearly a decade after having moved from Hawaii where she graduated from high school.

Hours before the hearing, Dixon had issued a statement saying: “I’m going in hopeful and thankful. Finally the day I’ve been waiting for has arrived. I’m praying everything goes well and that I’ll be out.”

Dixon also expressed thanks to everyone “for being there” and for the encouragement, prayers and visits. At one point, though, Dixon had expressed her desperate situation saying, “We’re dying herein they’re doing nothing.”

Tanggol Migrante had organized regular visits and her niece Lani Cristobal reveleed in a press conference Wednesday that some commented she doesn’t seem to be affected by the way she looks considering she is detained that she doesn’t seem sad nor worried.

However, Cristobal said her aunt had told them she is sad, anxious and fearful, and she stays strong because she has her family supporting her but also a community that hardly knows her yet cares for her deeply.

Today’s hearing determined what her family called as s “the fate of her life” after she was held by ICE at the Seattle Tacoma International Airport on February 28 upon her return from the Philippines with her niece Madonna Cristobal.

In the days following her ICE detention, Lani Cristobal said they felt  “lost and a little overwhelmed, with nowhere to turn. She added that driven by the urgency of the situation, their family mobilized all available resources, using credit cards and retained Benjamin Ossorio on March 4, realizing the importance of critical and immediate legal intervention.

With Atty Ossorio’s help, Cristobal said they quickly identified the reason for Dixon’s detention which was a decades old embezzlement conviction from 2001, an information previously unknown to our family.

Ossorio immediately requested a hearing to prevent deportation proceedings which was initially scheduled March 11, which successfully halted deportation proceedings and right to another hearing, Cristobal said.

We believe that this expedited hearing was a result of a collaborative effort involving a legal counsel, community advocacy, media attention including the crucial support of Tanggol Migrante, according to Cristobal as she mentioned the original hearing date of July 17 was moved to May 29.

“Our experience highlights critical gaps in the support system of Filipino nationals in distress and we intend to work with them to improve these services,” Cristobal revealed to the point of frustration and desperation because of unfulfilled commitment from the Philippine consulate in San Francisco.

Last May 23, the family sent a letter addressed to Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez and San Francisco Consul General Neil Ferrer, Honolulu Consul General Arman Talbol and officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs, in their final plea to bring Aunty Lynn home.

The letter, submitted last May 23 and signed by Dixon’s family, more than 300 friends and individuals and 15 organizations, said after Thursday’s hearing, she can either continue to live the life she built and be with those she loves or completely be ripped from all of this and start from scratch in a place she was born but does not truly know.

“Our family is in distress and we need your help,” the letter said in its appeal adding that “she is not the first nor the last that this will happen, but the Philippine government can and should be doing more to help its nationals in need.”

“We understand that there are rules and procedures in place, but again we simply ask you to stand up for your people, your nationals, your brethren and kababayan,” the letter said as it highlights the current reality of Filipino migrants who have been unjustly targeted, detained, and deported without due process.