The Request a Judge Refused

A man asked to leave the country. He was told no.

Julián Curo-Churata was 47, originally from Peru, and had lived in Laurel, Maryland, for about seventeen years. ICE says it arrested him on June 27 in what it called a “targeted” operation and moved him two days later to a correctional centre in Monroe, Louisiana. ICE says he had volunteered to leave the United States on his own, and that a judge denied that request on Sept. 18. ICE says he was found in “medical distress” on Sept. 28, was taken to a hospital, and was pronounced dead the next morning — eleven days after the refusal. The cause of death is unknown, pending an autopsy, and nobody has published one (The Baltimore Banner, Ashley Clarke and Antonio Planas, Oct. 8).

This page is written for Haitian and Syrian families whose Temporary Protected Status ended on July 27, and for the relatives holding those households together. This story names no Haitian and no Syrian. It is here for the mechanism, not the arithmetic — because the sentence that has been aimed at this readership all autumn, from a government podium and from an advertisement and from a man at a door, is you could just leave on your own. The record now contains a man who tried to, and a judge who would not let him.

This is not a prediction about you. It is a correction to a belief a lot of people are acting on.

What the agency says happened, and what it will not say

Almost everything known about these dates comes from ICE itself. The agency arrested him; the agency says a judge refused his request; the agency says he was found in distress; the agency announced the death. When the newsroom asked about his medical care, it did not answer the questions. It sent its press release, which says he “received proper medical care and was seen by medical professionals.” The same release cited convictions for driving with expired vehicle registration and an unspecified judgment against him in favour of the Maryland comptroller.

This page is not repeating the agency’s characterisations of anyone, and it is not asserting a cause of death in either direction. What it can say is what the record consists of: one agency’s account of its own custody, with no autopsy, no independent review published, and no explanation of the eleven days.

One number travels with this, and it needs its label. He is the 37th person to die in ICE detention in the past year, by the agency’s own count as the newsroom reports it. That is a count of deaths across one year by one counter. It is not the same measurement as the 33 death reviews ICE posted and then pulled from its own website, which this page carried on Sept. 30. The two must not be added together, and no direction should be read into them.

Two different things are being called “leaving on your own”

They are not the same, and blurring them is how people get hurt.

The first is a request decided by an immigration judge. That is what ICE says this man made and what it says a judge denied on Sept. 18. This page is not going to describe how that request works, what it requires, or who qualifies, because that is a question about your own case and a lawyer answers it — not a website and not an officer. The one fact worth carrying is the one the record just supplied: it is a request, somebody else decides it, and the answer can be no.

The second is the offer the government advertises. A video from Homeland Security already on this page ends with the words “LEAVE NOW” and the address of a self-deportation page. On Sept. 4, at a roundtable in Lebanon, Ohio, the Homeland Security secretary urged Haitians who had TPS to go back to Haiti on their own — “Your country needs you” — and said that of people deported rather than leaving voluntarily, “my goal is to make it impossible for you to come back” (Cincinnati Enquirer, Scott Wartman, Sept. 4). That is a government official making an argument. It is not a court ordering you out.

This page does not print the terms of that offer, and has not since August, for a reason the reporting keeps confirming. The payment figure the government has quoted has moved more than once between August and September. A Haitian father who accepted it and flew to Cap-Haïtien told a Human Rights Watch researcher that the money never reached him (Folha de S.Paulo, Mayara Paixão, Sept. 9). Carl Ruby, the Springfield pastor who founded the faith group Springfield G92, told the Dayton Daily News that publicising a cash payment to people who go voluntarily “puts a target on them,” because armed groups read a publicised payment as an invitation to rob someone the day they land (Dayton Daily News, Jessica Orozco, Aug. 28).

There is a third version, go somewhere else instead, and it is the same answer: a lawyer, not a website and not an officer.

What a household can do with this today: if anyone — an officer, an advertisement, a neighbour, a man with a form — puts any version of “leave on your own” in front of you, ask for it in writing, sign nothing in the room, and take the paper to a free legal-aid lawyer before you take it anywhere else. Nobody may charge you a fee to enrol you in a government programme. Find free legal help.

The call that was not returned

His wife, Verónica Ramírez, declined an interview on her lawyer’s advice. She told Telemundo 44, in Spanish, that she had last spoken to her husband two days before he died. On the day he died, she telephoned the detention centre to reach him and was told someone would call her back. Twenty minutes later, a funeral home called to say her husband had died at 4:30 a.m.

Two channels, each named: the family’s account to a broadcaster, and the agency’s press release. Nothing has resolved what happened between them.

This is the part of the week that is actually in a household’s hands, and it costs nothing:

• Keep a call log. Every time you telephone about someone who is held, write down the date, the time, the name of the person who answered, and the facility. A call you cannot prove you made is the part of the record that goes missing.
• Give the facility a number that works, in writing, along with the name of one emergency contact — and keep your own dated copy of what you handed over.
• Ask for medical attention in writing, and keep that copy too.
• Search the online detainee locator — and know what a blank result means. ICE removed more than 16,000 names from it on Sept. 15 without announcing it. A name that is not there tells you nothing about where the person is. Keep calling the lawyer. How to find someone who is detained.
• Name, today, the adult who could make decisions for your children, and put it in writing. A paediatrician who treats immigrant families told Human Rights Watch she counsels parents to name that person in advance, and that many families discover there is no second adult available even in an emergency. Make a family plan.

The money and the roof

Two things moved on Oct. 7, and both are carried in full in the feed below this article. In Haiti, Capital Bank put off reopening its branches again and gave no new date, so check that money you already sent arrived before you send more, and keep the date, the amount and the reference number of every transfer — and remember that nobody will ever ask you for your secret code, not a bank, not MonCash or NatCash, not a transfer agent, not anyone who telephones while a service is down. In Boston, a resolution urging the city and the Commonwealth to shelter displaced former Haitian TPS holders reached the City Council’s Oct. 7 agenda: a council resolution is not a law, it opens no building and funds no bed, and nobody may charge you a fee to “sign you up” for city or state housing.

What has not changed

TPS for Haiti and Syria has been terminated since July 27, 2026, and the work permits expired the same day. USCIS’s own page still says so, and its I-9 index still carries nothing that extends a Haitian or Syrian work permit. No city, state or federal action has given anyone that status back.

And the sentence this whole page rests on has not moved either. Losing TPS is not an immigration judge ordering you personally to leave, and most people who lost it do not have such an order. But if a judge has already ordered your removal, that order did not go away, and that is this week’s question for a lawyer, not next month’s.

You can check your own case for free. The immigration court line is 1-800-898-7180; it answers at any hour and will tell you the next hearing date and whether a judge has decided anything, using your A-number. If you have never had an immigration court case, you will find nothing there — and the line answers in English and Spanish only. Know your rights if ICE comes to the door.