After determining that Dalton Police pulled over the wrong vehicle, local authorities said Monday they have dismissed traffic charges against a Dalton State College student whose arrest led her into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
As of Monday afternoon, according to a federal database, Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, remained in ICE custody at Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, where she now has an immigration case to fight.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which runs ICE, had earlier trumpeted her May 5 arrest on social media, stating that she’d been arrested for “failing to obey a traffic light and driving without a license” and that she had illegally entered the U.S. The post said she would be sent to Mexico with her father, who was recently arrested on a separate alleged traffic infraction.
Arias-Cristobal was brought to the U.S. when she was about 4 years old — and just a bit too late to be eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that protected some unauthorized immigrants who entered as children from deportation, said her lawyer, Dustin Baxter, by phone Monday.
Still, he said, she grew up in Dalton, attended Dalton High School and is supposed to be in classes at Dalton State College.
Her studies were sidetracked last week, when Dalton police pulled over a dark pickup truck she was driving, alleging she’d made an improper turn and was driving without a valid driver’s license — claims the officer later documented in a police report.
In fact she was pulled over by mistake, Dalton spokesperson Bruce Frazier said in an email Monday.
“After a review of the dash cam video of the traffic stop,” he wrote, “it was determined that Ms. Arias-Cristobal’s vehicle appeared similar to the offending vehicle but was not the vehicle that made an improper turn.”
All local charges — for driving unlicensed and making an improper turn — were dismissed, Frazier said.
Still, her immigration case is another matter.
“We know that Dalton has come forward and said that they made a mistake, she should have never been stopped or arrested, all charges have been dismissed,” said Baxter, the lawyer. “But that’s kind of beside the point now because once ICE has her in custody, they’re not going to honor anything that Dalton says.”
Under the administration of former President Joe Biden, ICE was directed to focus on arresting people believed to be threats to public safety. The administration of President Trump, eager to get ICE arrests up and enact its promised campaign of mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants, has dispensed with these priorities, emphasizing that anyone it deems to be here illegally is subject to arrest and deportation proceedings.
“Just being here illegally is enough to be arrested by ICE,” said Lindsay Williams, a spokesperson for the agency in the South, by phone Monday evening. He was speaking in general, he said, and declined to comment on Arias-Cristobal’s particular case.
The Trump administration has, on social media and beyond, portrayed the millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. as a scourge, teeming with criminal elements. In fact, Baxter said, most of the people getting swept up by ICE are people like Arias-Cristobal, who are vital members of their local communities. Though the Department of Homeland Security post suggested otherwise, he said, she and her father would have done anything they could have to fix their legal status, but the law offered no avenue to do so.
“These are good people that are just collateral damage,” he said. “They’re not these dangerous gangbangers and rapists and murderers that that Trump wants to paint them all to be.”
At a bond hearing scheduled for May 20, Baxter said he will argue that Arias-Cristobal is not a danger to the community or a flight risk — two of the factors immigration judges consider when determining whether to let someone out of detention.
What happens at that hearing will have implications for the timeline of her case. If she is allowed to get out on bond, her case would be moved to the non-detained docket, Baxter said. Given the massive backlog in the immigration court system, this would likely mean Arias-Cristobal’s immigration case would not be heard for two to three years. If she stays in detention though, the case, and possibly her deportation, could occur more swiftly.
(READ MORE: Hamilton County law enforcement turning more and more people over to ICE)
TWO ARRESTS
“My understanding is that she was driving because her dad had been arrested a few weeks earlier for speeding and was already detained by immigration, so she was trying to take care of the family while he was detained,” Baxter said, explaining the circumstances of Arias-Cristobal’s arrest.
It was morning, according to the police report, when a Dalton police officer was observing traffic and saw a dark Ram 2500 take a right turn on a red light from Dalton’s Walnut Avenue onto Thornton Avenue.
A street sign, according to the report, said “no right on red.”
In his report, the officer recalled catching up to the offending vehicle and initiating a traffic stop.
This is apparently where he went wrong. According to the city, the officer had to wait behind another car at the light, and at this time, opposing traffic started to flow onto Thornton Avenue.
“Ximena Arias-Cristobal was driving a dark gray pickup truck in this line of cars,” Frazier, the city spokesperson said. “After the line of cars moved past, the DPD officer got a green light to turn north onto Thornton Avenue.”
A dash-cam video released by the city shows what happened next. The officer pulled behind the Ram and turned on his sirens. The truck pulled over, into a parking lot.
The officer approached her. The audio is at times unclear, but in the report he said he asked her for a license, and she said she did not have one, though she said she had an international license, which was not on her person.
“She said her mother took it,” the report said, “as she was not supposed to be driving.”
Asked in the video why she was driving, Arias-Cristobal said she was doing someone a favor. Asked whose car it was, she said it was someone close to her mom, who was like an aunt to her. She called her mother and this close family friend, but both spoke only Spanish, the report said.
The officer told Arias-Cristobal to step out of the car.
“In the state of Georgia, when you drive without a license, you know what happens?” he asked in the video. “You ever been to jail?”
She said she could not go to jail. She had her finals coming up, and her family depended on it.
“Then you shouldn’t be driving,” the officer said. He added, “You’ll get released.”
She said her family lacked the money to release her. Caring for three daughters, she said, her mom was struggling to pay for her college.
The officer told her she would still be arrested. She spoke with her mom on the phone, and the officer told her to let her mother know that in a couple hours she could call the jail to find out how much it would take take to get her out.
Arias-Cristobal told her mother this in Spanish, and then in English that she loved her. Then she hung up the phone, and after another quick call, the officer took her to his police vehicle.
Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office runs the Whitfield County Jail. Under the 287(g) program, ICE has delegated some immigration enforcement work to the sheriff.
Promptly upon Arias-Cristobal’s arrival at the jail, ICE was notified of her presence and placed a hold on her, her attorney said. Less than 24 hours later, he said, the federal agents came to pick her up.
Contact Andrew Schwartz at aschwartz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.
