Paula Valentina Albornoz Hernandez, a 23-year-old Berkeley Haas undergraduate and Colombian asylum seeker, has been in ICE custody since agents arrested her at San Francisco International Airport on Oct. 30. LinkedIn photo
A Berkeley Haas undergraduate is in federal immigration detention a week after agents arrested her at San Francisco International Airport. She was waiting to board a flight to Portland, Oregon, with her boyfriend.
Paula Valentina Albornoz Hernandez, 23, is a business administration student in the Haas School of Business undergraduate Class of 2028. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took her into custody on Friday, October 30, Berkeleyside first reported. She spent part of that weekend at a detention site in Stockton. She is now held at ICE’s California City Detention Facility, a remote center in Kern County.
Her lawyer, Niko De Bremaeker, is a managing attorney at the Oakland-based nonprofit Centro Legal de la Raza. He and UC Berkeley spokesperson Aileen Zerrudo both say the case appears to be the first ICE detention of an active Berkeley student since the Trump administration began its mass deportation push last year.
A PENDING ASYLUM CASE
Albornoz Hernandez’s arrest came four days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. In those elections, voters handed Democrats control of the House and the Senate in a sweeping repudiation of President Donald Trump – driven in part by backlash against his administration’s mass arrests and deportations of noncitizens.
Days after the vote, she remains in custody.
Albornoz Hernandez came to the U.S. from Colombia in September 2022. The Department of Homeland Security says she entered legally with permission to stay until March 2023, and remained after that date. De Bremaeker doesn’t dispute the overstay. He says she filed for asylum within the one-year deadline after suffering “severe gender-based violence” in Colombia. He adds that she holds a valid work permit and has no criminal record.
DHS doesn’t see it that way.
“Work authorization or a pending application does NOT confer legal status in the United States,” says a DHS spokesperson. The agency says she “will receive due process and remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”
De Bremaeker says the plainclothes agents who approached her at the gate never said who they were.
“They didn’t identify themselves as ICE or immigration, or even police,” he says.
THE HABEAS FIGHT
Centro Legal filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court on November 2. According to Berkeleyside, which reviewed the petition, it argues that the arrest violated federal law and the Constitution. It asks the court to order her release and to bar ICE from detaining her again unless the government proves at a hearing that she is a flight risk or a danger to the community.
Her arrest “demonstrates the arbitrary nature in which the government is arresting folks and how deeply it cuts into our communities,” De Bremaeker says.
Since the summer, ICE has made more arrests at SFO and other airports, especially of people who once overstayed visas.
BUILT FROM SCRATCH
Albornoz Hernandez is from Bogotá. A personal portfolio website shows she studied finance and international affairs at Universidad Externado de Colombia there. After moving to the U.S., she earned a GED and enrolled at San Jose City College. She studied business administration there and graduated with honors before transferring to Berkeley earlier this year. Her boyfriend, Anthony, says getting into Berkeley had long been her goal.
She arrived in the country speaking no English, she writes on her LinkedIn profile. She says she ended up at Haas because she believes “the best operators are built from scratch.”
She has worked at Palace Staffing for nearly three years while going to school. The firm places workers in the hospitality industry. She says she built its systems for scheduling, client operations and hiring pipelines, which gave her a close look at where growing companies tend to break down. She also led business education for Finvext Club, a student finance group, where she taught peers the basics of budgeting and credit.
Her LinkedIn profile lists entrepreneurship, consulting, product management and investment banking as the paths she is weighing. Her portfolio site singles out corporate finance and investment banking as her particular passions.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons wrote a letter to immigration officials that is attached to the habeas petition. In it, he calls Albornoz Hernandez “one of our outstanding students.”
“It takes remarkable dedication and perseverance to complete a degree at UC Berkeley,” Lyons writes.
A CAMPUS MOBILIZES
Lyons addressed the campus in a message sent Monday, November 2, to all students, faculty and staff. The message doesn’t name Albornoz Hernandez. Lyons cites student privacy laws and university policy as limits on what the university can disclose.
“This student is a valued member of our community, and campus leadership is doing everything within our power to support them so that they may return to their life at Berkeley to continue their studies with us,” Lyons writes.
He says the university has arranged legal support so she has access to advice and representation. It is also in close contact with her family and with groups on and off campus that are working on her behalf.
“We understand the urgency of this moment,” he writes.
Lyons points to Berkeley’s Undocumented Student Program, launched in 2012 as the first program of its kind in the nation. He says the university remains as committed as ever to supporting undocumented students. He also acknowledges that the arrest has spread fear and uncertainty on campus. Citing the rise in immigration enforcement, he urges students and staff to review the university’s Know Your Rights resources.
Berkeley Mayor Adena Ishii and U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon have both called for her release. On Wednesday, Nov. 4, hundreds of students and community members rallied on Sproul Plaza on her behalf.
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