A 20-year-old Venezuelan single mother was among the group detained in the second immigration enforcement operation in Skowhegan in recent weeks that reportedly targeted agricultural workers, court records show.

Yubizay del Carmen Torrealba Linarez, who claims she has been seeking asylum in the United States for more than a year after fleeing political violence in Venezuela, has challenged the legality of her detention through a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents detained Torrealba Linarez on Wednesday, along with several other people in a van on their way to work at Backyard Farms’ greenhouses in Madison, the filing says.

The petition, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Bangor by attorney Talia Rothstein of Pine Tree Legal Assistance, asks a judge to either order authorities to release Torrealba Linarez or provide her a bond hearing in immigration court.

Attorneys across the country have argued that the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, is not granting bond hearings to immigrants that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has detained. Homeland Security includes Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. District Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. ordered authorities to keep Torrealba Linarez in Maine while he reviews the case. Rothstein said her client was being held at the U.S. Border Patrol’s Fort Fairfield station as of Friday afternoon.

Woodcock ordered the government to respond to the petition by Wednesday, court records show. The office of Maine U.S. Attorney Andrew Benson, representing the federal agencies and high-ranking officials named in the petition, had not filed its response by Friday afternoon. Attorneys from the office did not respond to a request for comment.

Ryan Brissette, a regional spokesperson for CBP, said in telephone calls this week that he was awaiting approval from more senior agency officials to release information about Wednesday’s operation in Skowhegan. Multiple emailed inquires to DHS and CBP have gone unanswered.

The agency also has yet to say anything about a reportedly similar early morning operation Feb. 10 in which federal agents detained a busload of workers heading from Backyard Farms’ employee housing in Skowhegan to its greenhouses in Madison.

A judge later ordered authorities to release one of them, a Venezuelan man who had entered the country as an unaccompanied child. Two other Venezuelan men who challenged their detentions withdrew their habeas petitions shortly after filing them. It is unknown what happened to the rest of those detained.

The office of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, relayed information from DHS that the first raid this month was part of a “targeted operation” unrelated to enhanced immigration enforcement in Maine in January. Collins had announced previously that DHS ended that enforcement surge, dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day.”

Collins’ office was working to determine whether Wednesday’s detentions were part of the same “targeted operation,” spokesperson Blake Kernen said Friday.

A spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent, said he was checking whether the office had received any information about the most recent raid. A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat whose district covers Skowhegan and Madison, did not respond to a message Friday.

Rothstein said the Border Patrol, part of CBP, was targeting rural work sites in Maine since before “Operation Catch of the Day.” But the two recent Skowhegan operations appeared planned, Rothstein said, and represented a concerning “escalation” in enforcement tactics.

“We don’t have a lot of information about why they’re doing this and who they’re targeting,” Rothstein said. “And they might say that ‘Operation Catch of the Day’ is over, but this enforcement has only escalated.”

According to her petition, Torrealba Linarez began participating in political protests in Venezuela in 2021, when she was 15.

She and her husband experienced at least “thirteen incidents of violent repression at the hands of the Maduro regime.” In September 2024, Venezuelan intelligence agents broke into her home, beating her husband, pointing a gun at her 2-year-old daughter and threatening to kill all three of them if they did not leave within a week, the petition says.

Torrealba Linarez, her husband and her daughter eventually reached Mexico, where they waited to make an immigration appointment through a CBP phone application, according to the petition. They were paroled into the United States in December 2024.

DHS, at some point, initiated removal proceedings, and Torrealba Linarez applied for asylum, the petition says. The asylum case is pending.

After entering the country, the family moved to Maine, where Torrealba Linarez’s sister and brother-in-law live, the petition says. Her husband left the family at some point.

The petition states she has no criminal history.

Since Torrealba Linarez was detained Wednesday, her sister has been taking care of her 4-year-old daughter, according to the petition.

Rothstein, her lawyer, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed to have CBP facilitate daily phone calls between Torrealba Linarez and her daughter.

“Without the intervention of the habeas petition and without an advocate,” Rothstein said, “that wouldn’t have happened, as I understand it.”

Torrealba Linarez’s petition does not specify whether Backyard Farms employed her directly or whether her asylum status gave her authorization to work. 

Rothstein declined to speak directly about her client’s employment status but said, in general, asylum-seekers can seek work authorization.

Backyard Farms’ Canadian parent company, Mastronardi Produce, did not respond to requests for comment about this week’s detentions. Regarding the operation earlier this month, the company said workers who did not arrive at the Madison facility worked for a contractor.

The owner of the local bus company providing transportation to those workers said they were employed by a Michigan-based contractor, Martinez and Sons. Efforts to reach representatives of that company have been unsuccessful.