A 28-year-old immigrant from Ecuador, being held in the Cambria County Prison by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has filed a federal civil rights petition seeking her release from what she fears will be an indefinite period of detention.

Della Maria Garcia Pena is seeking her immediate release and points out in her petition that ICE detained her on Dec. 19, 2025.

As of the date of this petition (March 10), Pena stated there is no end to her detention “in the reasonably foreseeable future.”

She has asked the federal court in Johnstown to release her “on reasonable conditions of supervision” or to conduct its own bond hearing.

Another alternative would be to send her case to an immigration judge for a bond hearing, she suggested.

If a bond hearing is granted, she stated the government bears the burden of proving she is a flight risk and is a danger to society.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman in Pittsburgh.

Pena, through attorney Nneka Jackson of New York, is directly posing a question that is frequently confronting the federal courts these days.

“This case is challenging the government’s authority to indefinitely detain a noncitizen without finding dangerousness or flight risk,” the petition stated.

According to court documents, Pena entered the United States in 2022 near Ysleta, Texas.

She was seeking asylum from conditions in her native country of Ecuador.

Upon entering the country, she was confronted by Border Patrol and on Oct. 8, 2022, she was charged by the Department of Homeland Security as an “alien present in the United States without being admitted or paroled.”

She was released on her own recognizance, and she then filed an application for asylum with the Immigration Court.

While the petition remains unresolved, ICE once again placed her in detention last year.

She was sent to the Cambria County Prison, which serves as an immigrant detention center.

The prison presently contains 60 inmates sent there by ICE.

According to attorney Jackson’s complaint, ICE claims it has the authority to detain Pena indefinitely, citing the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“The government interprets a section of the Act to require mandatory detention without bond hearing of all arriving aliens, for the indefinite length of time necessary to complete removal proceedings, even if that time becomes unreasonably prolonged,” the petition states.

It continues: “(Pena’s) prolonged, indefinite detention pending removal proceedings violates the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment because it deprives petitioner of liberty without due process of law and the Immigration and Nationality Act because it is not authorized by the statute.”

Jackson is requesting the court to issue a writ of Habeas Corpus and Pena’s immediate release from custody “with appropriate conditions of supervision if necessary.”

The question of how long an immigrant can be held in detention has been raised recently in the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals and in the Western District of Pennsylvania, but without resolution.

For instance, bond was recently granted to two immigrant detainees who had spent 18 months or more in the Moshannon Valley Processing Center near Philipsburg, with the Third Circuit judges noting detention could be considered unconstitutional after six months.

Jackson cited a 2003 case that concluded mandatory detention in immigration cases should be a “brief period, lasting roughly a month-and-a-half.”

She noted that judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (New York) and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (San Francisco) considered a reasonable period of detention involving immigrant cases at six months.

Jackson is also concerned that Pena is being held in a prison.

She emphasized ICE detainees are being treated as criminals when they are housed in state and federal prisons.

She objects, stating, “They are getting punished for seeking a better life.”

Stickman indicated he would address the issues raised in the case after hearing from the other side, which include the warden of the Cambria County Prison, ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and the Attorney General of the United States.