A judge on Tuesday granted bond to a Cumberland County corrections officer arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month.
Emanuel Ludovic Mbuangi Landila was stopped by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Jan. 21 in Portland’s Bayside neighborhood. A video of the arrest shows that, as agents pulled him from his car, Landila told them he worked for the jail and was coming home from there.
Emily Gorrivan, Landila’s attorney, said during a hearing Tuesday in the immigration court in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, that the Department of Homeland Security had wrongly characterized Landila’s employment and community ties. She said an attorney for DHS had said in filings that Landila lacked gainful employment and had no family in the U.S.
Those filings were not immediately publicly available Tuesday and neither the DHS lawyer nor Gorrivan, through the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, responded to requests for comment.
Immigration Judge Christine Olsen ordered Tuesday that Landila be released on a $6,000 bond. Landila appeared for the virtual bond hearing from the Strafford County Jail in New Hampshire.
Gorrivan said Landila arrived in the country with a child in 2019 and that his partner is pregnant. Landila had been training and working with the Cumberland County Jail for about a year, according to the sheriff.
“This is not a job that you just leave,” Gorrivan said in court.
On Tuesday, Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said he could not comment on the department’s characterizations of Landila’s employment because he did not listen to the hearing.
Joyce provided the Press Herald with a letter he submitted to the immigration court on Landila’s behalf. In it, Joyce wrote that Landila was recruited in February 2025 and was working as a corrections officer while completing some training.
He wrote that Landila also completed a “rigorous multistep hiring process,” which included fingerprinting, reference checks, a criminal history search and a polygraph. Joyce said Landila was hired with a valid federal Employment Authorization Document from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
People generally receive this authorization after applying for asylum and while waiting years for necessary court hearings, according to immigration experts.
Gorrivan said in court that Landila had applied for asylum after entering the country in 2019.
“Throughout his employment at the Cumberland County Jail, Mr. Landila demonstrated enthusiasm and a strong willingness to learn,” Joyce wrote. “By our standards, he was an excellent employee and showed commitment to his role and responsibilities. He remains an employee of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and, should he be released, we would welcome his return and request that he continue and complete his training.”
The sheriff’s office said in an email Tuesday it was evaluating the conditions of Landila’s release from ICE custody to determine if he can come back to work.
Joyce criticized the agency last month for how it carried out the arrest of Landila. He described the number of agents used to detain him and the fact they left his vehicle running on the side of the road as “bush-league policing.”
ICE removed all of its inmates from the Cumberland County Jail the evening of Jan. 22. Agency officials later said they could not “in good conscience, continue to partner with a law enforcement organization that flagrantly violated our nation’s immigration laws.”
