Memphis Notacias
Manuel Duran
The Memphis journalist who was arrested during an immigration protest last year, and later taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is being released on bond, according to a Thursday post on the “Free Manuel Duran” Facebook page.
“ICE has set a bond for Manuel and we paid it,” the post reads. “We are in [sic] our way to Alabama to bring him back home.”
Manuel was the owner of and reporter for Memphis Noticias, a local Spanish-language newspaper, before his detainment. The journalist was arrested last spring while live-streaming an immigration protest Downtown.
The charges were dropped and the case was dismissed, but Duran was not released from the Shelby County Jail. ICE officials picked up Duran from the jail and he was transported to the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana.
Facebook
Duran arrested during a protest.
After 15 months in various detention centers, most recently in the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama, the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered that his case be reopened earlier this month, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), one of the groups who’ve provided Duran with legal assistance.
Reopening the case sends it back to a federal immigration judge to have his asylum claim heard.
The SPLC did not immediately respond to the Flyer‘s request for comment.
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This comes as the conversation on immigration issues and action against ICE raids and migrant detention centers heat up around the country.
Memphis is one of more than 200 cities slated to hold a candlelight vigil Friday night to shine a light on the issue of immigration detention centers.
Organizers of the Lights for Liberty: A Vigil to End Concentration Camps are partnering with organizations across the country and worldwide to protest migrant conditions that organizers call inhumane.
Mid-South immigration Advocates (MIA), Mismo Sol 901, the Tennessee Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and other advocacy groups are hosting the Friday’s vigil here. It will take place at the Memphis immigration Court on Monroe from 7:00-9:00 p.m.
So far more than 450 people have indicated they are interested or will attend the demonstration on the event’s Facebook page.
Across the country, at least one city in every state has an event planned. Around the world, participants as far away as the United Kingdom, Spain, Israel, and Japan will join in.
