A judge ordered the release of a University of California, Berkeley student from an immigration detention facility, days after she was detained while attempting to fly out of San Francisco International Airport.
Immigration attorney Nikolas De Bremaeker told CBS News Bay Area her client, 23-year-old Paula Albornoz Hernandez was set to be released Monday, after spending more than a week at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in California City.
De Bremaeker said Monday evening that the process of release was still ongoing.
“Part of the broader pattern of just irresponsible conduct with which, that we have seen from ICE, that even the process of release is protracted and often has difficulties. So yeah, we’re waiting for her to be released,” he said.
The release order came after a judge ruled Monday morning that Albornoz Hernandez’s arrest had been unconstitutional.
Albornoz Hernandez was arrested as she was boarding a plane to Portland, Oregon for a vacation with her boyfriend. De Bremaeker said she is an asylum seeker from Colombia who had followed all the appropriate steps.Paula Albornoz Hernandez, a UC Berkeley student from Colombia who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at San Francisco International Airport. On Nov. 9, 2026, a judge ordered Albornoz Hernandez’s release.
CBS
“She went to her biometrics appointment, which she passed. She obtained her work permit, she was granted her work permit twice,” he said.
After she was detained by immigration agents, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CBS News Bay Area that Albornoz Hernandez entered the country in September 2022 and had permission to stay in the U.S. until March 2023.
“In defiance of our nation’s laws, she did not depart. She will receive due process and remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings,” the spokesperson said. “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 order for Albornoz Hernandez’s release comes one day after President Trump sat down for a 60 Minutes interview in which he discussed his openness to changing his administration’s immigration policy. The president said he’d be willing to work with Democrats on a deal as the party prepares to take control of Congress in January.
De Bremaeker said that right now they are seeing the most ICE detainments they have seen this entire administration.
“We have heard this before and then we’ve just seen the government fall back in these patterns of persistent violations of Constitutional rights of folks and really in reality we have never seen a break in this throughout this administration,” he told CBS News Bay Area.
The attorney said he’s pleased Albornoz Hernandez has been released relatively quickly, but expressed concern about the trauma he says she suffered while in detention.
“Frankly, we’re very fortunate that she will be released from this detention center but frankly any person should be released from that detention center immediately. That center should close down. It should not exist in a democracy,” De Bremaeker said.