Father and 10-year-old daughter released from ICE custody in Texas; pair returns to Spokane

A 10-year-old Spokane girl and her father detained by Border Patrol last month have been freed from a federal immigration detention center in Texas.

The pair returned to Spokane on Saturday night on a flight and were surrounded by supporters.

Federal court documents indicate that Arnoldo Tiul Caal and his daughter Karla Tiul Baltazar, a Logan Elementary School student, were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on Friday, according to court records. The official ruling remains under seal.

Dan Gividen, an immigration attorney in Texas, filed a petition asserting that the Department of Homeland Security violated the father and daughter rights to due process.

“DHS violated their own regulations,” he said in an interview Sunday morning. “It was the government that essentially said, ‘We are not going to fight this one. We are letting them go.’”

Gividen, a Gonzaga Law School graduate, worked on the case pro-bono after learning about it from news reports.

Olga Lucia Herrera, a volunteer who has been in contact with the family since before their detainment, said that Karla and Tiul Caal stayed in a San Antonio shelter after release on Friday before a scheduled Saturday evening flight. Tiul Caal has an ankle monitor, she said.

Originally from Guatemala, Tiul Caal and Karla had lived in Spokane since 2019. The pair had an ongoing asylum case at the time of their detainment on Jan. 9 and no criminal record.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that Tiul Caal missed 17 check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the past three years. Herrera said that weeks before their detention, Tiul Caal was told during an in-person hearing that the family’s next court date would be in 2027.

“They never explain to the people how serious these check-ins are, because sometimes they’re random,” Herrera told the Spokesman-Review last month. “If it was so serious when he went to court, they should have addressed that then. Instead, they say, ‘You have court in 2027.’ ”

Tiul Caal and Karla have been held since in the Texas Dilley Immigration Processing Center, which has been the subject of multiple lawsuits alleging inadequate medical care, unclean food and limited water for detained migrant families.

Karla was running a fever and vomiting during her stay at the center, Herrera told the Spokesman-Review in January.

Tiul Caal’s attorneys were not immediately available for comment Saturday evening.

This report has been updated to correct the number of missed check-ins alleged by Border Protection.