The federal charges brought against Francisco Rodriguez-Rincon, a Soldotna restaurant owner accused of being in the country illegally and falsely claiming citizenship on a driver’s license application, were dismissed on Wednesday, though Rodriguez-Rincon remains in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and this week was moved to Arizona.
Rodriguez-Rincon was indicted by a federal grand jury in March with one count of reentry after deportation and one count of false statement of citizenship. In April, he was ordered released from custody by a federal chief magistrate judge. In May, Rodriguez-Rincon was seized by the Department of Homeland Security and taken to the ICE facility.
Samuel Eilers, the attorney for Rodriguez-Rincon, in a June filing said that the detention violated his client’s rights — he wrote that the federal executive branch can either detain and deport Rodriguez-Rincon, or it can pursue its criminal case against him. It cannot, he wrote, do both. He filed for the case to be dismissed or for Rodriguez-Rincon to be released.
A response from the federal government says that their position was that detention and deportation was a second and independent proceeding from the criminal case being pursued and for which Rodriguez-Rincon was meant to be out of custody. Alaska’s News Source in Anchorage reported that federal Judge Sharon Gleason at a status hearing cast doubt on that argument — the Clarion submitted a records request for audio of that hearing that wasn’t returned before the dismissal.
The federal government filed a motion to dismiss the case on Friday that was approved this week. U.S. Attorney Michael J. Hayman and Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Brickey write in the motion that Rodriguez-Rincon will remain detained under the authority of ICE and that dismissing the criminal charges will allow for costs, logistical challenges and delays to “be avoided.”
ICE’s detainee locator on Wednesday said that Rodriguez-Rincon had been moved to the Florence Service Processing Center in Arizona. He’d previously been held in the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, since late May.
Eilers declined to comment on the dismissal motion.
A GoFundMe was started on May 24 to support Rodriguez-Rincon’s family by a person who writes that they’ve worked for Rodriguez-Rincon for five years and says that the family have been members of the Soldotna community for more than 30 years. As of June 4, more than $4,300 have been donated. The organizer of the GoFundMe did not respond to a request for comment.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
