Georgia teen who was arrested after now-dismissed traffic charges is released from ICE custody

A Georgia teenager who was detained by federal deportation officers following local traffic charges that have since been dismissed was released from immigration custody late Thursday, her attorney and mother confirmed to CBS News.

Ximena Arias Cristobal, 19, was released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement one day after an immigration judge granted her bond. She was picked up by family friends at an ICE detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, and will return to Dalton, Georgia — where she lives with her family — in the overnight hours, Arias Cristobal’s mother said. Her mother said she was able to see Arias Cristobal on FaceTime.

Arias Cristobal, who came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 4, had been in ICE custody starting in early May, when she was stopped by local police in Dalton over allegations that she had made an improper turn while driving.

She was charged with driving without a license and making an improper turn and booked into the county jail in Dalton. ICE then took custody of Arias Cristobal, who is in the U.S. illegally, at the county jail, which has an agreement to work with federal immigration authorities.

She had been held at the ICE detention facility in Lumpkin since then. Initially, that facility was also housing her father, who had been taken into ICE custody in April, also after a traffic stop. But he was granted bond last week and released.

Though she was released from detention, Arias Cristobal will continue to face deportation to Mexico, as ICE has started a deportation case against her in immigration court. The Department of Homeland Security has previously said she and her father should face “consequences” for being in the U.S. illegally.

Given her time in the U.S. and lack of a criminal record, local community members, including the Republican lawmaker representing Dalton in the Georgia legislature, expressed support for Arias Cristobal and called for her release. Community outrage intensified once Dalton authorities dismissed the traffic charges against Arias Cristobal after revealing she had been mistakenly stopped by the police officer who arrested her.

Dustin Baxter, Arias Cristobal’s immigration attorney, said an immigration judge on Wednesday granted his client a $1,500 bond, the lowest amount allowed by law.

“The judge had reviewed Ximena’s case in detail and determined that Ximena is in fact not a flight risk or a danger to the community in the least,” Baxter said. “The Department of Homeland Security indicated that it would not appeal the judge’s decision.”

Under the Biden administration, it would’ve been unlikely for someone like Arias Cristobal — an undocumented immigrant without a criminal history who came to the U.S. as a young child — to be arrested by ICE.

But as part of its sweeping immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has vastly broadened who ICE officers can target for arrest and deportation, revoking Biden-era policies that generally ensured the agency would only target serious criminals, national security threats and recent arrivals in the country illegally.  

Even though Arias Cristobal is an undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. as a child — a group commonly known as “Dreamers” — she did not qualify for an Obama-era program that protects half a million of those individuals from deportation. 

That Obama administration policy, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, requires beneficiaries to have arrived in the U.S. before June 2007. Arias Cristobal came to the country in 2010. DACA has also been closed to new applicants due to federal litigation.

Deanna Marie Lowe

contributed to this report.