Virtual Ministry Archive

BREAKING🚨 "It looks like our government tried to break the laws," said a Montana neighbor who spent months raising money for his town's diesel mechanic. A federal judge just agreed, ruling his 109-day detention unconstitutional and ordering him released. Roberto Orozco-Ramirez walked out of the Cascade County Detention Center in Great Falls at 10:50 in the morning and grabbed his oldest son. Both of them were wiping their eyes. "I need to go home," he said. "It's been a long time, but we made it." He's 42 and runs Orozco Diesel in Froid, Montana, a town of 195 people about 50 miles from the Canadian border. He coaches youth baseball, volunteers to keep the school buses running, and has four U.S. citizen sons, ages 8 to 19. Most of his neighbors had no idea he was undocumented until Border Patrol vehicles started sitting in town in January, two agents at a time, 24 hours a day. Neighbors say the agents also harassed his boys. He was brought here as a child after fleeing violence in Mexico and was deported in 2009. He turned himself in on January 25, the day he found out a warrant existed. Prosecutors charged him with felony illegal reentry. On April 13 they dropped the charge, and he stayed in a cell anyway, moved from a Border Patrol office in Havre to a county jail in Idaho, a federal facility in Washington, another in Arizona, then back again. Froid did not sit still. More people packed the community center fundraiser than the town has residents, bidding on hay, gravel, tools, and even beef donated by local ranchers. Tens of thousands of dollars came in. About 50 people drove seven hours to Great Falls for the hearing, where his four sons sat in the front row in black Orozco Diesel sweatshirts. Morris called the administration's reading of the detention law "erroneous." Court records show more than 300 federal judges have ruled against that policy in over 1,600 cases. "To me, it looks like our government tried to break the laws," said Keith Nordlund, the neighbor who organized the fundraiser.