NYC Council staffer Rafael Rubio, detained in Bethpage in January, ordered deported

An immigration judge on Wednesday ordered the deportation of Rafael Rubio, the Venezuelan staffer for the New York City Council who was detained earlier this year at an asylum appointment in Bethpage, the council speaker’s office said.

The ruling appears to hinge on a "technical error" that is "related to his asylum application," the speaker, Julie Menin, said Wednesday in a statement.

Unlike typical jurists, immigration judges are employees of the executive branch — the Trump administration — and are not fully independent adjudicators.

A separate proceeding, in Manhattan federal court via habeas corpus, is pending to challenge Rubio’s detention and deportation.

Rubio, a 45-year-old data analyst for the council, has been jailed since Jan. 12, when he was detained at what was scheduled to be an asylum interview at a nondescript office building on Stewart Avenue in Bethpage.

Rubio, who argues that he is fleeing persecution in his native Venezuela, is one of hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals whom President Donald Trump is trying to strip of Temporary Protected Status and any work authorization. Persons with TPS are typical granted the right to work in the United States.

The Trump administration has also moved to terminate the status for immigrants from Haiti, Yemen, Somalia, Myanmar, Honduras and elsewhere.

A key issue is whether Rubio has a valid TPS status. Rubio’s lawyers say he does, citing paperwork he previously filed as well as a favorable California case, but the Trump administration argues otherwise, including by noting that Trump terminated the TPS program.

The immigration judge who issued the deportation order, Charles R. Conroy, had previously declined to release Rubio, saying he failed to show he’s not a "danger to society."

Last month, Conroy, who has one of the city's lowest rates of granting asylum, sided with a government lawyer who cited Rubio’s previously dismissed criminal case involving a dispute with his roommate.

Menin’s statement Wednesday said Conroy’s order would be appealed, and she called for Rubio to be released pending the appeals process. An appeal would be due by April 17.

"We are outraged and will continue to pursue every legal avenue to secure his release and ensure his case is properly heard on appeal," her statement said.

Rubio's lawyer, Roger Asmar, did not return a text message seeking comment. Earlier this month, he told Newsday that his client is locked up in Brooklyn at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, which has long been assailed as a brutal jail. Rubio, Asmar said, is depressed and running low on hope.

Menin, speaking at City Hall, said Conroy ordered Rubio deported due to a missing signature on asylum paperwork — which his lawyer offered to get fixed within an hour. Such fixes are routinely allowed, she said, for good cause. But Conroy, Menin said, treated the missing signature as evidence of "abandonment" and ordered Rubio removed from the United States.