New Paltz businessman sues U.S. for $10M for false imprisonment

A New Paltz businessman who was jailed unlawfully for five months on immigration violations is suing the United States for more than $10 million for false imprisonment.

Luis Martinez claims that his family and his businesses were devastated when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him in 2019 and tried to deport him to Mexico, according to a complaint filed Jan. 14 in U.S. District Court, White Plains.

His case rests largely on a scathing 2019 opinion in which a federal judge granted Martinez”™s habeas corpus petition to be released from custody.

“The Constitution does not permit the United States government to target people on the streets, arrest them without serving any papers, deny them meaningful due process, and detain them for arbitrary or indefinite periods of time while they engage in fishing expeditions to justify the arrests,” U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román wrote in June 2019.

“That would turn the Constitution on its head and is precisely why the Fifth Amendment exists,” Román wrote. “No one is to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process, lest the innocent suffer.”

Martinez was born in Durango, Mexico in 1978. His father was murdered in 1983, his mother moved the family to Florida, and they relocated to New Paltz in 1990 when Martinez was 12 or 13.

In 1997, at age 19, Martinez returned to Mexico and while there, the complaint states, he was abducted by nephews of the man who killed his father. They apparently believed that he intended to avenge his father”™s killing, the complaint states, and they threatened to kill him if he didn”™t leave Mexico.

He was intercepted when he tried to return to the United States, a removal order was issued and he was deported back to Mexico. Nonetheless, he found his way back to New Paltz.

In 1999, his younger brother, Jesus Jose Martinez Jr., a student at New Paltz High School, was shot to death in front of him. No one has been arrested, according to the complaint, and the investigation remains open.

Martinez married and had three children. In 2008, he formed Lalo Drywall Inc. and began building construction businesses that would eventually employ hundreds of workers.

In 2001 he became eligible for a green card and began the process of trying to secure permanent residency status in the U.S. But the 1997 removal and deportation blocked his path.

“But for that 1997 return trip to Mexico and subsequent order of expedited removal,” his complaint states, his green card application “would have been granted.”

In 2016, he applied for a type of visa that allows immigrants who have been the victim of a significant crime or torture to remain in the U.S if they assist law enforcement in criminal investigations. The visa would give him temporary legal immigration status while he tried to get a green card.

Martinez was cooperating with New Paltz police in their investigation of the killing of his brother, according to the complaint. He also feared the relatives of his father”™s killer and feared torture by a drug cartel if he returned to Mexico, according to Judge Román”™s opinion.

On Jan. 16, 2019, immigration officers arrested Martinez outside his business in New Paltz, took him to the Orange County Correctional Center in Goshen and told him that the 1997 deportation order was being reinstated.

He was not given a copy of the order or formal notice of the intent to reinstate the order, until May 13, the day before a hearing by Judge Román.

Román found that there was no proof that the government had given Martinez notice or served an arrest warrant and that the belated paperwork was dubious.

“These are more than minor technicalities,” the judge found. “There is virtually no proof that this document existed and was served when the government purports that it did, and considerable evidence suggesting just the opposite.”

Martinez “did not have the chance to decide whether to contest his case or how to prepare for a hearing, which is what written notice allows one to do,” Román said. “Instead, he was blindsided and unknowingly deprived of the most sacred things he enjoyed ”“ his liberty.”

Román said the arrest and detention were “blatantly unlawful from the start” and he ordered the government to immediately release Martinez from jail and to take no further actions against him while his immigration proceedings are pending.

Martinez is demanding at least $5 million for lost business income, insurance charges against his companies, forfeited investments and damages to his and his companies”™ reputations; $2 million for emotional distress while he was separated from his family; $1 million for false imprisonment; and $500,000 to each of his three children for emotional distress.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Katie Tichacek said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

Manhattan attorney Paul O”™Dwyer represents Martinez.