San Diego DACA recipient detained in Arizona, accused of stealing baby food, family says

A DACA recipient who grew up in the San Diego area has been held for more than two months in a detention center in Arizona after he was accused of stealing baby food, according to his family and attorney.

Bryant Sempoalt Chavez was brought to the U.S. from Mexico in 2002, just before his 4th birthday, with his family settling in El Cajon. When he was 16, he applied for and received DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that essentially serves as an agreement that the federal government won’t attempt to deport undocumented people who were brought to the U.S. when they were young and remain in good standing.

Sempoalt Chavez renews his DACA every two years and, through the program, has employment authorization and works in construction, his family said. He graduated from Grossmont High School and married an American citizen, welcoming two U.S. citizen children: daughters, ages 1 and 4. His attorney said his DACA is valid through 2027, and he’s applied for his green card through his wife.

Sempoalt Chavez’s wife has family in Arizona, his mother said. While he was in Yuma last year, he was charged with petty theft, court records show.

“Essentially, what happened was he was accused of stealing baby food,” his attorney, Michael Hirman, said.

Records also show that Sempoalt Chavez failed to appear in court, which is when an arrest warrant was issued, and he was taken into custody. Because law enforcement in Arizona works more closely with federal immigration officials, his family said, when they tried to bail him out in November, he was, instead, transferred into ICE custody.

In Spanish, his mother said he told her he informed the agents that he has DACA and they yelled at him “No, you had it,” before handcuffing him and taking him to the Eloy Detention Center near Phoenix, placing him into deportation proceedings.

“The pain is enormous for him, his wife, his daughters who need him,” his mother said in Spanish. “The whole family suffers. You can’t understand how much someone suffers when they have a loved one detained until you live it.”

At a bond hearing in his case this week, Hirman said, the Department of Homeland Security attorney argued that Sempoalt Chavez was an “arriving alien.”

“Traditionally, ‘arriving alien’ meant someone that was presenting themselves at the border,” Hirman said. “Border Patrol, for example, might catch someone coming across the mountains here in Southern California, and they would be considered an arriving alien.

“The judge struggled with that, because I pointed out, rightly, that he arrived more than two decades ago,” Hirman continued. “To consider that person an arriving alien — that defies common sense.”

Hirman said the classification stems from a memo sent from DHS indicating that anyone in the U.S. without authorization should be considered an arriving alien. The government also argued that, for arriving aliens, under the law, immigration judges do not have jurisdiction to determine a release on bond.

“The court felt that, given the instructions and the commands from on high, that they have no choice but to find that there is no jurisdiction,” Hirman said of Sempoalt Chavez’s case.

ICE did not answer questions about Sempoalt Chavez’s case.

Hirman said that, if Chavez were to be convicted of petty theft, it likely would not disqualify him from DACA. That theft case is still pending as his deportation case proceeds.

“Let him have his day in court,” Hirman said. “Try the case. Good luck getting a conviction on someone stealing baby food.

“That is not something that normally is prosecuted. There might be a deal that’s made, where he does community service, does restitution,” Hirman continued. “That’s how we normally handle it. We didn’t just put someone in unlimited detention because they stole baby food.”

Hirman said he has filed a motion to terminate the deportation case based on Sempoalt Chavez’s DACA status. The next hearing is scheduled for Feb. 17.

In Spanish, his mother said that Sempoalt Chavez’s daughters always ask, “Where’s Daddy?” and they tell them he’s at work.

“I brought him to another country thinking it would be better for him,” she said in Spanish, through tears. “I want to think I wasn’t mistaken.”