A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer photographed in San Diego in March. (Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

A federal judge in Maine is considering whether to order immigration authorities to bring back an Ecuadorian man they flew to Texas.

Edgar Vicente Bermeo Sicha, 26, was arrested by Border Patrol on July 28 while another man was driving him to a work site in Maine.

Border Patrol held him for more than 17 days before he was allowed to speak with a lawyer, according to a petition filed on Bermeo Sicha’s behalf last week. U.S. Customs and Border Protection flew Bermeo Sicha and nine other people to Texas, according to court records.

Bermeo Sicha was transferred into the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Sunday, according to an attorney for the federal government, and is being held at an ICE facility in Los Fresnos, Texas.

Bermeo Sicha entered the United States in March 2024, according to his petition, and immediately turned himself over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which agreed to release him on personal recognizance. He told the agency he feared persecution in Ecuador, the petition says.

His attorney Yong Ho Song said in court Thursday that Border Patrol failed to recognize his client’s due process rights while in custody.

“My client is not challenging the government’s authority to detain him,” Song said during a hearing over Zoom. “What we’re challenging is the manner in which that authority was exercised. To put it bluntly, we’re challenging the lack of due process that was afforded to my client at the time of his detention.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Lizotte argued Thursday that Bermeo Sicha’s petition should be considered moot, after the man was transferred to ICE over the weekend.

Lizotte argued Bermeo Sicha should seek bond through immigration court instead of seeking relief from the U.S. District Court, which is only considering the case for constitutional arguments. Unlike U.S. District Court, immigration courts are an administrative process run by the Department of Justice.

“There’s no reason constitutionally, under (the law), for this court to take any action,” Lizotte said on Thursday. “The remedies are available administratively.”

U.S. District Court Judge Stacey Neumann said Thursday she will issue a decision on the petition “as soon as possible.”

Song acknowledged that Border Patrol, under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has “wide discretion” to detain people who they suspect may be in the country illegally. But Song said that his client still has a constitutional right to know why he’s being held and to be heard if he wishes to challenge the reason for his detention.

In the petition, Song wrote that Bermeo Sicha never received any immigration paperwork justifying his detention or revoking Border Patrol’s decision in 2024 to release him. Song said Thursday that Bermeo Sicha had also requested that an immigration judge review Border Patrol’s decision to detain him. Lizotte said Thursday that review hadn’t occurred.

Song said in the petition that Bermeo Sicha spent some of his time in Border Patrol’s custody sleeping on a cot, alongside six other detainees, at the agency’s station in Van Buren.

Lizotte filed a copy of Border Patrol’s warrant for Bermeo Sicha in court, a brief document that states Bermeo Sicha “is within the country in violation of the immigration laws and is therefore liable to being taken into custody.”

Song questioned whether Border Patrol made sure Bermeo Sicha understood the warrant.

“It does say that the contents of the notice were read to my client in Spanish, but no one actually signed this notice,” Song said in court. “It doesn’t say anything about who the interpreter is, whether that interpreter is qualified. … I really don’t know if this constituted sufficient notice to my client as to why and what authority he was being detained to at the time.”

Bermeo Sicha had been scheduled to go before an immigration judge on Wednesday for a hearing that had been set more than a year ago.

Song said that hearing never happened because the immigration judge Bermeo Sicha was assigned to in New Jersey retired. Song said his client has not been assigned a new judge.

Lizotte said Bermeo Sicha can advocate for his release instead through the immigration court in Texas.

Lizotte said Bermeo Sicha’s arrest wasn’t unusual. He acknowledged there has been a recent increase in “enforced immigration actions” and said the case law “really does sanction and raise no issues” with arrests like Bermeo Sicha’s.

Several similar petitions have been filed in Maine’s U.S. District Court this year on behalf of men and women arrested by Border Patrol, challenging the arrest and detention of immigrants who are still entitled to due process rights, their attorneys have argued.

In some cases, judges have preemptively ordered the government not to move detainees out of Maine.

Lizotte said Bermeo Sicha’s flight to Texas was coincidental and had nothing to do with his petition against Border Patrol.