How a Gonzaga alum stepped in to free a Spokane girl and her father from ICE custody

When attorney Dan Gividen read about a 10-year-old girl and her father detained by federal immigration agents in Spokane, he knew he could help.

As a former deputy chief council for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Gonzaga University alum, Gividen has been following the legal cases stemming from the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. And now that includes the case of Karla Tiul Baltazar and her father, Arnoldo Tiul Caal, who came from Guatemala in 2019 and were allowed to live, work and attend school in Spokane while awaiting a decision on their open asylum claim.

Two thoughts quickly came to mind, Gividen said Monday: They were never given an explanation of why they were detained by Border Patrol on Jan. 10 and why they were denied an opportunity to fight it.

“There are just daily orders for people to be released from ICE custody,” Gividen said of DHS detainments. “They’re not following the rule of law; they’re not following their procedures. They’re not doing it for any reason. They’re doing it to terrorize.

“We are winning cases because they’re violating the law. They aren’t being honest, and they don’t care.”

Working pro bono, the Dallas-based Gividen filed a petition on Feb. 2 alleging the two were unlawfully detained because they never received a bond hearing, which would determine whether they could stay in Spokane rather than a detention facility while they awaited an asylum decision.

Four days later, the pair was released with no pushback. Court records show the government didn’t even file a formal response to Gividen’s petition alleging unlawful detainment.

“You don’t get to take someone’s liberty without a reason, without showing that there’s a justification for it, without showing you followed the law, without showing that somebody made an independent decision that the detention is necessary,” Gividen said. “And that’s the problem right now.”

On Saturday, more than a dozen people stood expectantly at Spokane International Airport’s arrivals ramp to welcome home Karla and her father.

Karla was immediately drawn into the center of a protective circle of balloons and welcome signs, each person taking a turn to embrace her. Wearing a puffy red coat, Karla smiled as she looked around at the people who advocated for her safe return.

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said she’s happy Karla and her father were set free but continues to ponder how unnecessary it was to whisk away a Logan Elementary School student to a Texas detainment center.

“I think about how there are so many other families that have been affected by the overreach in these policies by the Trump administration and those that are living in fear because of it,” Brown said Monday.

A week prior, Karla had spiked a fever and was vomiting, according to previous reporting from The Spokesman-Review. The Dilley Immigration Processing Center, where they were held, has repeatedly been described by migrants and visitors from across the country as unsanitary and unsafe.

While there, she reportedly asked people why she “was in prison.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection told The Spokesman-Review that Tiul Caal and his daughter were detained following 17 missed weekly check-ins between 2023 and 2026. While people can be temporarily detained for missing immigration check-ins, it is not a legal offense.

And missing those check-ins doesn’t – and shouldn’t – affect a person’s open asylum claim, Gividen said, noting that bond proceedings and asylum proceedings are separate processes.

The government denying Karla and Tiul Caal a bond hearing stems from a 2025 change in Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that Gividen called a “brand new interpretation” of due process , essentially treating those who entered the United States without prior authorization as if they were just entering the country and therefore subject to mandatory detention without bond. Federal law states any alien who has not been admitted into the U.S. or is in the U.S. without authorization is still considered an “applicant for admission.”

The new policy seeks to alter that language to mean an alien “seeking admission,” according to Gividen’s petition. This effectively excludes noncitizens apprehended inside the U.S. because they are “no longer in the process of seeking admission into the United States.” All of that still shouldn’t trigger a mandatory detention, Gividen argued.

In Tiul Caal’s case, Gividen said, he came to the country without prior authorization and claimed he’d be in danger if he had to return to his home country.

That triggers a “credible fear review” by the government, a process where an officer will assess the immigrant’s fear of persecution in their home country. The person will usually land before an immigration judge and will either be detained or released while awaiting further direction from the court.

Most people released while awaiting court proceedings have to be evaluated as someone who won’t pose a risk, Gividen said. But once they’re released, navigating the immigration system – a system that doesn’t require legal representation – is often much more difficult.

Tiul Caal was told to check in with ICE occasionally through a government-created GPS app for “low risk” immigrants. But that app can often be difficult to navigate for people facing language barriers. Tiul Caal’s native language is Q’eqchi’, an Indigenous Mayan language used by some 1 million people in Guatemala, according to the University of Virginia Institute of World Languages.

“We are asking people who don’t speak (English) as a first language to try and navigate these various hearings,” Gividen said, adding that sometimes, migrants who don’t speak English get their check-ins and their court dates confused.

Olga Lucia Herrera, who has volunteered to help immigrants going through immigration processes in Spokane, previously told The Spokesman-Review that Tiul Caal’s and Karla’s arrest came as a surprise, since the father was told at a court hearing just weeks before the detention that their next court date would be in 2027.

She also said there was likely confusion about his check-ins, in addition to cell-service problems.

If officials had concerns about missed check-ins, Herrera said, they should have addressed it then. Gividen stated in the Feb. 2 petition that the two never received notice they were “out of compliance” with any immigration regulations.

“DHS as a whole, are taking this position of ‘We take everybody into custody,’ ” Gividen said. “They’re ignoring what we’ve always thought in this country – which is, ‘We hold people in a cage only when there is a very good reason for it.’ ”

A federal appeals court backed the Trump administration’s interpretation of the policy, though most federal judges have called it unconstitutional.

“That is the fight that is happening right now,” Gividen said. “We are arguing that no bond hearing is not due process … You don’t get to just strip somebody of that liberty, one of the highest interests we have, without due process.”

At most, the time Karla spent in a prisonlike detention center has already caused some type of harm, according to the petition filed Feb. 2.

“The complete sudden loss of one’s freedom and liberty takes a significant toll on anyone in Petitioner’s circumstances,” Gividen wrote. “This is only exacerbated when one of the Petitioners is a minor child.”

Cases such as Karla’s and her father’s are not unusual. Many immigrants who file petitions challenging their detainment have ended up winning, according to reporting from NPR.

Last week, Spokane immigrant Joswar Rodriguez Torres was granted release from ICE custody in Tacoma following his federal habeas petition.

U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled the government illegally detained Rodriguez Torres at a regular ICE check-in last June, calling the arrest an “abuse” of discretion from DHS, The Spokesman-Review previously reported.

Gividen said the immigration and deportation crackdown has reached a point in Texas where attorneys are advising migrants to avoid their ICE check-ins, not because they’re doing anything wrong, he said, but because they are doing everything right and being arrested anyway.

He attributes the detainment of immigrants participating in what they believe to be the “right thing” to the federal government’s goal of inflating deportation numbers.

“In immigration proceedings, the judge, the ICE attorneys – they shouldn’t be trying to get a removal order. They should be trying to figure out whether the person has that legit fear of returning to their country, and if they do, making sure we don’t return them,” he said.

Tiul Caal has his next court hearing on March 9.

Since Karla and her father’s detainment, a GoFundMe set up for them has raised more than $25,000.

Mayor Brown said it shows how Spokane unites in times of need.

“Our city is full of people who want better outcomes, believe in the promise of the American dream and want it to apply to immigrants and refugees.”

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