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Juan Francisco Méndez, the New Bedford resident whose arrest last month drew attention after agents shattered the window of his vehicle, will remain free on bond under a federal supervision program until a September hearing, when a judge will consider whether the government can remove him from the country.
Méndez was released last week after spending nearly a month in detention. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fitted him with an ankle monitor and enrolled him in the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, or ISAP — a surveillance system established in 2004 for immigrants released from custody while awaiting immigration court proceedings.
At his first ISAP check-in on Tuesday in Framingham, Méndez was informed that he must continue wearing the GPS ankle monitor. He is free to travel within New England, with the exception of Vermont and Maine, according to his attorney, Ondine Gálvez Sniffin. No explicit conditions were placed on his ability to work, but he would still need proper work authorization, she added.
Méndez’s next appointment in Framingham is scheduled for June 2.
A court hearing is set for May 29 for him to challenge the ankle monitor, which Sniffin calls a form of detention.
The ankle monitor makes it hard to feel truly free, Méndez said at a press conference last week following his release, even though returning home was a relief.
“He is physically out of their custody but virtually still in their custody,” Sniffin said, “and so I hope the judge will give us an explicit order telling ICE they cannot impose any other restrictions.”
ICE uses ankle or wrist bracelets with GPS tracking as one of its alternatives to detention. It also uses telephonic reporting, which verifies identity using a biometric voiceprint, and SmartLINK, a mobile app that uses facial recognition technology to confirm identity through a smartphone or tablet.
The ICE Boston field office has assigned more alternatives-to-detention cases in recent years — with numbers rising from almost 4,500 in 2019 to over 10,000 in 2023, before slightly declining to over 8,500 as of March 2025, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
Méndez still faces a charge of illegal entry into the U.S. The master hearing on his removal — where a judge will decide whether to terminate the proceedings — has been postponed until Sept. 25.
Méndez has been seeking asylum in the U.S. through his wife, who was granted asylum.
Méndez describes jail conditions
At last week’s press conference, Méndez, seated beside his wife Marilú Domingo Ortiz and his attorney, described the conditions he endured during the month he spent at the Strafford County House of Corrections in Dover, New Hampshire.
He described how, in jail, he and other men bonded over shared fears and uncertain futures. “Inside that place, we became like family,” Méndez said in Spanish to reporters. “We took care of each other and tried to encourage each other. We would tell each other, ‘We can do it; everything will be okay.’”
But the atmosphere, he said, was often filled with despair. “People cried day and night. Seeing that — it breaks your heart,” he said. “We didn’t deserve that. We were all workers. We shouldn’t have been there.”
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Méndez also spoke about his childhood in Guatemala, where his mother raised six children alone after his father left. Because there was never enough food, he said, she would often feed him and his five siblings in turns — one at a time.
“I am not a criminal,” he said. “The only thing I am looking for is to put a plate of food on the table for my family.”
Ortiz believes Méndez’s April 14 arrest was a case of mistaken identity. She said that when the agents first approached her and her husband, they asked Méndez if his name was Antonio — the name of a man who had previously lived at their North End address. The couple said no, but the agents detained Méndez anyway.
Last week, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson speaking to The Boston Globe could not confirm whether ICE had intended to arrest a different person than Méndez, but said the agency has the authority to detain other undocumented immigrants as “collateral arrests.”
The fact that in one month of detention ICE failed to file charges against Méndez, Sniffin said, makes clear that officials searched extensively and still came up with nothing beyond his undocumented entry.
Sniffin noted that Méndez’s release was the result of a larger network of attorneys and advocates who worked together to push back and end his detention.
What surprised her most, she said, were ICE’s actions throughout the entire process. Sniffin said she had never seen anything like it in her career—not even during Trump’s first term. “To me it seems like ICE has become so emboldened that they are acting outside the law,” she said. “And it is very scary.”
What’s happening, she added, should trouble more than just her clients. “If they can trample on Juan, they can trample on us as well.”
Email Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org.
