According to his lawyers, Castañeda Mondragón entered the U.S. in 2022 with valid immigration documents. Minnesota incorporation filings show he founded a company called Castaneda Construction the following year with an address listed in St. Paul. He appears to have no criminal record.

His lawyers told a court that Castañeda Mondragón was racially profiled during the crackdown, and that officers determined only after his arrest that he had overstayed his visa.

“He was a brown-skinned, Latino Spanish speaker at a location immigration agents arbitrarily decided to target,” his lawyers wrote in a petition seeking his release from ICE custody.