UC Berkeley student waiting to board a flight at SFO for a vacation in Oregon is arrested by ICE. Now a judge has ordered her released after 10 days
A federal judge has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release Paula Valentina Albornoz Hernandez, a 23-year-old UC Berkeley business administration student. The judge issued the order on Monday, 10 days after the Colombian student’s arrest at San Francisco International Airport. The UC Berkeley student left detention around 9 p.m. that night, according to The Associated Press.
Albornoz Hernandez was waiting to board a flight to Oregon with her boyfriend when ICE agents took her into custody. Her attorneys say she also has a current work permit and a pending asylum case. U.S. District Court Judge Dena Coggins ruled the detention unconstitutional. “Due process forbids the government from detaining the noncitizen unless they are first provided with adequate notice and a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral arbiter,” Coggins wrote.
She also barred ICE from requiring an electronic monitor unless a future hearing shows one is necessary. The Department of Homeland Security previously told the outlet that Albornoz Hernandez was deportable because she overstayed a visa in 2023. The department claimed her work permit and pending asylum application did not give her legal status. It also argued that “being in detention is a choice,” as immigrants have the option to self-deport.
Homeland Security says she overstayed her visa and called the judge an activist
Following the ruling, the department issued a statement calling Coggins “a Biden-appointed activist judge” while noting that the agency “complies with all lawful court orders.” “This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport,” the department said.
Albornoz Hernandez was held at the California City detention center, a facility in the Southern California desert. Her legal team at Centro Legal de la Raza filed a petition to challenge the detention, arguing that the government deprived her of liberty without a chance to contest the action in court.
Attorney Niko De Bremaeker cast the arrest as part of a wider problem. “Federal judges have overwhelmingly found these arrests unlawful, and ICE keeps making them,” Bremaeker said. He added that the arrests need to stop and that Congress needs to investigate.
UC Berkeley supported Albornoz Hernandez throughout the ordeal. Administrators rallied support from elected officials, and students held demonstrations on Sproul Plaza. “I feel relieved, happy, so many positive emotions,” Liliana Iglesias, the director of UC Berkeley’s Undocumented Students Program, wrote on Monday morning.
The immigration case will still proceed in court. However, her immigration attorney, Lizzie Fulton, said the release will make the process easier, as meeting privately with lawyers and preparing evidence is difficult inside a detention center. Beyond getting back to her family and boyfriend, the UC Berkeley student is focused on her education.
“One of her big concerns while she was detained was missing classes,” Fulton said. Fulton added that the student called her graduate student instructor to ask how she could jump right back into her coursework once released.
Airport arrests like hers have climbed sharply, and so have court challenges
ICE arrests linked to airports jumped after President Donald Trump returned to office. A Hearst Television analysis of Deportation Data Project records found 568 such arrests between his January 2025 inauguration and March 2026, more than five times the 108 recorded in the same span before. However, the analysis noted the data is an incomplete snapshot covering just 16 airports.
The rise has coincided with a May 2025 data-sharing agreement between the Transportation Security Administration and ICE, which watchdog group American Oversight obtained through a records request. Migration Policy Institute analyst Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh told Hearst that arresting people with expired visas may help the agency raise its numbers, as many are already on the government’s radar through pending applications.
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