Tucson Dreamer given bond after ICE arrest; release expected Friday

A Tucson woman detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement early Monday morning will be able to secure her release by Friday, her attorney says.

Immigration lawyer Mo Goldman, representing 31-year-old Karla Toledo, said he received a call Thursday afternoon from ICE officials, who told him she would be granted a cash bond of $1,500.

It was the lowest possible bond amount and she will likely be released on Friday, Goldman said at an afternoon meeting between Tucson police and the public.

“We’ve got to let the community know in case ICE goes back on their word,” he said.

Police Chief Monica Prieto said during that meeting that her officers “could have done better” at handling a protest outside ICE’s office in Tucson on Monday, while Toledo was being held there. City police officers blocked an attorney from approaching the federal facility to offer her services to the detained woman. The TPD chief said officers should have conveyed the lawyer’s message to ICE.

Toledo was arrested by ICE agents inside her home and taken two days later to the Eloy Detention Center.

In a Wednesday statement, the Department of Homeland Security accused Toledo of assaulting an officer as she was being detained and illegally entering the United States in October 2024.

DHS claimed they’d come to the home to serve a warrant to arrest someone else, though they did not specify who.

Goldman said the ICE agents came to Toledo’s home when her husband was outside, retrieving an item he’d left in his car. When the husband saw agents, Goldman said, he went inside, which he had the right to do.

ICE agents refused to present any warrant to Toledo when she asked for one, he said. “I think this is a growing problem where, when you see the video, they appear to have just been hanging out on that road.”

The immigration attorney added that he believed she’d been targeted for her activism with local immigrant rights group Coalición de Derechos Humanos.

Toledo is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program under U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services for undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children, often referred to as Dreamers.

Protesters gathered outside the ICE field office, 6431 S. Country Club Rd, the afternoon of Toledo’s arrest. Elected officials were quick to decry the agents’ actions on social media and demand her release.

Goldman maintained that Toledo had an advance parole document, enabling her to leave and return to the country that was valid for over a month at multiple ports of entry for a month during a 2024 trip to Modelo, Mexico. DACA recipients who leave the country without those papers are typically barred from re-entering the country for a decade, Goldman added.

Goldman denied that Toledo had assaulted any law enforcement officers. No such assault was seen in a video shown to reporters at a Wednesday press conference held by Goldman in response to the DHS statement.

Chief Prieto said during the Thursday meeting that the owner of the building leased to DHS for the ICE field office called police to report a disturbance, which they responded to, unaware that Toledo had been taken into custody.

When an attorney named River Feldmann attempted to go inside to speak with Toledo about legal representation, Prieto said, Tucson police officers denied her entry and told her to call ICE to arrange a meeting.

The fact that the lawyer was turned away drew criticism towards TPD on social media and during the Thursday community meeting.

Prieto acknowledged officers at the scene should have conveyed Feldmann’s message to ICE in an attempt to facilitate communication between her and Toledo. The error was handled internally, she added.

“We could have done better,” Prieto said. “That was a learning moment for us.”

Several in the Thursday crowd said ICE actions to arrest Toledo amounted to “breaking and entering,” to which Prieto responded that officers could investigate the events of Toledo’s detainment.

But, she added, she could not promise that federal authorities wouldn’t somehow impede that investigation.

On Thursday afternoon, officers had not started investigating anything related to Toledo’s case, said Prieto. She said someone had reached out hours before the meeting to ask about filing a police report, but she didn’t know whether officers had yet taken one.

She also mentioned that, during the Monday protest, one person was cited and released after they stood in front of an unmarked TPD SWAT vehicle and refused to move when asked to do so, believing the officers inside were also ICE agents.

Check back for updates as this story develops Thursday and Friday.