CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland Immigration Court Judge Richard Drucker last week denied bond motions for Victor Laverde Laguna and Gregory Javier Laverde Laguna for the second time.
In an interview with the Independent, Victor’s son called Drucker’s decision “disappointing” and said he was “heartbroken.”
After denying bond, Drucker granted the brothers’ motions for voluntary departure, ordering that they be removed from the United States to Colombia, or alternatively to Venezuela.
The brothers will need to leave by April 6, one month after the orders at their March 6 hearings.
The brothers are dual citizens of Colombia and Venezuela. They had sought asylum in the U.S. amid fears of reprisal for Victor Laverde Laguna’s statements criticizing the Venezuelan government.
The brothers were transferred from Southeast Ohio Regional Jail into ICE custody following their September 2025 arrests in Athens County. Their criminal charges were dismissed in November.
Gregory Javier Laverde Laguna has Down syndrome, and Victor Laverde Laguna is his legal guardian. Victor’s son lives in Columbus.
The brothers will be driven to a port of departure by immigration officers by April 6, and may be required to purchase their own transportation to Colombia, Drucker said.
The family is raising money via GoFundMe for expenses associated with the brothers’ detention and release.
If the brothers fail to leave voluntarily, removal orders will be entered against them, they will have to pay financial penalties to the U.S. and they will be ineligible for various U.S. immigration benefits for 10 years, Drucker said.
Drucker said his orders granting voluntary departure to the brothers represent the final resolution of their immigration cases.
The March 6 hearing was the second time Drucker considered requests for bond from the brothers. At a December hearing, he found he lacked jurisdiction to consider their initial bond requests, citing directives from the Trump Administration to deny bond to detained migrants.
The brothers’ attorney Liliana Vasquez argued in bond motions prepared for the March 6 hearing that a federal court decision in February would allow Drucker to grant bond.
Unlike at the December hearings, Drucker heard arguments from Vasquez and the U.S. on the issue of jurisdiction. However, he said the law on the issue was not “clear-cut.” Therefore, he said he was compelled to follow the Trump Administration’s directives.
Had he determined that he had jurisdiction to grant bond, Drucker said he would have done so. He said that, in his assessment, Gregory Javier Laverde Laguna and Victor Laverde Laguna were not a flight risk, nor were they a risk to their community.
“I certainly am very cognizant of the disability that we are dealing with here,” he said at the beginning of the hearing, referencing Gregory Javier Laverde Laguna’s Down syndrome.
Victor’s son told the Independent, “We came from a country where everything is crazy, nothing makes sense. We came here thinking that those kind of things that are crazy in our country, for sure are not gonna happen here. And then this happened.”
“To me, that Javier has already spent five months in jail being a special person, a Down syndrome person, is nothing that makes sense,” Victor’s son told the Independent. “He didn’t kill nobody, he didn’t harm nobody. He’s just a Down syndrome person. He’s in jail at this moment. He went through a lot of hearings already and nothing came out of it, nothing came out of it.”
Drucker said he denied the brothers’ bond motions “regretfully — and I do mean regretfully.”
In statements translated from Spanish to English by a court translator, Victor Laverde Laguna thanked the judge for his consideration of his and his brother’s motions. He requested that the removals move forward as quickly as possible and that his brother not be handcuffed.
Drucker said he was hopeful the removals would move forward quickly. He wished the brothers the best.
After their initial bond motions were denied in December 2025, the brothers considered submitting petitions for habeas corpus to federal court, which, if granted, could have allowed them to be released from ICE custody and remain in the U.S.
However, the brothers ultimately decided to pursue voluntary departure instead. Victor’s son told the Independent the family made that decision due in part to financial concerns, and so that the brothers could exit detention as quickly as possible.
Detention conditions have been especially difficult for Gregory Javier Laverde Laguna, Victor Laverde Laguna previously told the Independent.
In an affidavit filed for the March 6 hearing, Victor’s son wrote that the physical health of both brothers has been “declining in custody.”
How local arrests led to several months in detention
Victor Laverde Laguna and Gregory Javier Laverde Laguna arrived in the U.S. in November 2024 and began seeking asylum six months later.
The brothers lived with Victor’s son in Columbus until they were arrested in Athens County in September 2025 over their alleged participation in a criminal extortion scheme.
The charges against both brothers were eventually dismissed with prejudice, meaning the brothers cannot be tried again by the state of Ohio for the same claim in the same court.
In court orders, Athens County Court of Common Pleas Court Judge Patrick Lang wrote, “in regard to these charges, Victor Laguna remains an innocent man,” and “Gregory Laguna remains an innocent man.”
Before the cases were resolved, however, the brothers were transferred from Southeast Ohio Regional Jail to ICE custody. Vasquez previously told the Independent that the brothers’ transfer into ICE custody during the pendency of their criminal cases was “not typical.”
According to records obtained by the Independent, SEORJ Warden Josh Vanbibber forwarded immigration detainers for the brothers that the jail received from ICE to Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn and Athens County Sheriff Rodney Smith on Oct. 28, 2025. Vanbibber asked the sheriff and prosecutor how they would like to proceed. There is no record of a response from either the sheriff or prosecutor’s office.
Neither the prosecutor’s office nor sheriff’s office responded to Jan. 13 inquiries from the Independent regarding whether they responded to Vanbibber in a manner that would not have created a public record, such as via phone call.
The jail handed the brothers over to ICE on Oct. 29, 2025, the day after the jail warden asked the prosecutor’s and sheriff’s offices how the jail should handle the immigration detainers.
Vasquez previously told the Independent that she believed local decision-making led to the brothers’ transfer to ICE. Had the brothers not been transferred during the pendency of their criminal cases, which were ultimately dismissed, she said the brothers may not have ended up in ICE custody at all.
Even after the brothers’ criminal charges were dismissed, they were not able to secure release.
Drucker denied the brothers’ first bond motions on Dec. 18, 2025. Drucker cited a directive from the Trump Administration that reinterpreted decades-old immigration law and said immigration judges cannot grant bond to immigrants held in ICE custody.
Critics argued the Trump Administration’s guidance denied detained immigrants the right to due process. In December, U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes declared the federal guidance unlawful, but the Trump Administration continued its policy, citing a separate legal case.
Sykes vacated the precedent set by that other case in a February order. She wrote that the Trump Administration’s defiance of her December order “far crossed the boundaries of constitutional conduct.”
Vasquez relied on Sykes’ February order in the bond motions for Victor Laverde Laguna and Gregory Javier Laverde Laguna. However, Drucker said Sykes’ order is one of many conflicting court decisions and that it may not apply to this district. He referred to a subsequent decision out of the Northern District of Ohio Eastern Division.
Drucker said he hopes the issue of whether immigration judges have jurisdiction to grant bond in cases like that of the Laverde Laguna brothers ends up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
That won’t make a difference for Victor Laverde Laguna or Gregory Javier Laverde Laguna, however, whose immigration cases are now resolved in the court’s eyes.
“I’m just thinking that the moment this is gonna be over is coming soon, and that’s all that keeps me moving,” Victor’s son told the Independent.
