City analyst from Venezuela detained in Bethpage, jailed in Brooklyn, awaits decision on asylum

Locked inside a Brooklyn federal jail cell for roughly 18 hours a day, Rafael Rubio waits, depressed and running low on hope.

"He can’t take it anymore," says Rubio’s lawyer, Roger Asmar. "He can’t sleep."

It’s been nearly two months since the 45-year-old Rubio — a New York City Council data analyst from Venezuela who is seeking asylum — was surprised to be detained Jan. 12 during what was supposed to be an asylum interview at a nondescript office building on Stewart Avenue in Bethpage, one of 11 asylum offices in the United States. 

In an arrest authorized by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement suboffice in Central Islip, Rubio was taken into custody and shuffled that day from Bethpage to the Nassau County jail in East Meadow to upstate Goshen and the Orange County jail, according court filings. 

Rubio, who says he is fleeing persecution in his native Venezuela, is one of hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals from whom President Donald Trump and his administration are seeking to strip Temporary Protected Status and any work permission. The administration has also moved to terminate TPS for immigrants from Yemen, Haiti, Myanmar, Somalia, Honduras and other countries.

Rubio is now at the Brooklyn federal jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center, that houses the deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione, drug cartel bosses and others, a place with a long history of brutality, maggot-infested food, power failures, staffing shortages, lack of medical care, and heat and light outages. 

With the help of Rubio’s lawyers and employers at the New York City Council, where he has worked since last year, a habeas corpus petition has been filed at federal court seeking his release. He could be locked up for months or years, the petition says, unless a court intervenes.

The case is pending before U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York John P. Cronan.

At issue in Rubio’s habeas case is whether he has valid TPS status and whether the government should be able to detain him. Rubio’s lawyers say he has valid TPS and cite a favorable California case; the Trump administration and Department of Justice, represented by Chibogu Nneka Nzekwu, says Rubio doesn’t have TPS and cites a ruling by a higher court.

In a separate proceeding, immigration judge Charles Conroy, who works for the Trump administration, declined to release Rubio, saying he failed to show he isn’t a "danger to society," according to published reports. In early February, Conroy, who has one of the city's lowest rates of granting asylum, sided with a government lawyer, who cited Rubio’s since-dismissed criminal case involving a dispute with his roommate.

Rubio has been in and out of the United States since 2012, according to a petition filed last month by the Central Islip ICE office's acting assistant field director, Tony Petito, who cited visa records.

Rubio was supposed to depart in 2017 but failed to do so by the deadline, Petito wrote, according to records in the habeas case.

Beginning in 2021, Petito wrote, Rubio filed requests for TPS, which were repeatedly granted. Petito wrote that in March 2023, Rubio was arrested and accused by the NYPD of assault as a misdemeanor and harassment, a violation. Both charges were dropped and his arrest record was sealed, according to records in the habeas case. Rubio's lawyer said Rubio wasn't at fault in the altercation. 

That incident was apparently what the Department of Homeland Security was referencing the day after the Bethpage detention when it issued a news release announcing: "ICE Arrests Criminal Illegal Alien Employed by New York City Council."

While Rubio — identified in court papers by his full name, Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez — is challenging his detention, he is locked up, despite his lawyers’ attempts to get him out.

The case has become a rallying cry for his colleagues at the New York City Council, who have demonstrated in the street, and its speaker, Julie Menin, who became aware of his detention when Rubio used his one phone call from custody to call the council’s human resources office.

The council has filed an amicus curiae brief arguing for Rubio’s release, calling him a successful model for TPS, which allows those who can’t return safely to their homelands because of disaster, armed conflict or other extreme circumstances to stay and seek permission to work.

The city, the brief says, has tens of thousands of TPS recipients.

"Mr. Rubio’s experience offers a fine example of how extending temporary protected status has allowed many people to thrive while they remain in the United States," the brief says. "Mr. Rubio is a hardworking and reliable City Council employee who ‘goes the extra mile’ to help his coworkers. Our community would be lesser without him."