Cliona Ward, a green card holder and Santa Cruz County, Calif., resident who has been held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in its Tacoma facility for almost two weeks, was granted release by a federal judge Wednesday.“It has just been an absolutely surreal moment,” Ward’s sister, Orla Holladay, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel hours after the release. “She’s in shock. We got her some food; she was starving.”Holladay said she and a close friend of Ward’s arrived at the courthouse in Seattle early Wednesday for a rally in support of Ward that was organized by the union she is a member of — Service Employees International Union — before a scheduled hearing around 8:30 a.m.After the rally, Holladay said she was initially denied entry to the courthouse and was told by a court employee that a hearing would not occur after all. But only a little while later, after the arrival of Ward’s legal counsel, Erin Hall with Global Justice Law Group, they spoke again with the court’s staff and were told the charges against Ward had been terminated and she would be released.“(At) about 10:30 a.m., she walked out the door,” Holladay said, still in disbelief and a little confused by how events unfolded.As soon as Ward was reunited with her family, they took her to a nearby store to decompress and get food. Ward excused herself for a moment to use the restroom but stopped suddenly. “She came back and she said, ‘I started to walk away, and I realized I’m afraid to be alone, and I’m in trauma, and I’m going to need help,’” said Holladay.Ward, 54, who moved to the United States from her native Ireland when she was 12, was stopped by immigration authorities in Washington state in late March on her way back to Santa Cruz from a trip to Ireland to visit her ailing father.The federal officials called into question Ward’s decades-old drug possession convictions that she explained had been expunged, or cleared from her record. She was eventually released and asked to report to the San Francisco International Airport.But despite later presenting this information to authorities in San Francisco, she was taken into custody by border protection officials April 21 and eventually moved to the Northwest ICE Processing Center, where she had been confined since April 24.Ward’s family previously told the Sentinel that she suffered from addiction issues more than 20 years ago that contributed to her run-ins with the law, but she went through the rehabilitation process and has been sober for decades since. In addition to working as a jack of all trades at a local Christian nonprofit group, Ward is also an in-home caretaker for her chronically ill son, who has been receiving care from Holladay and other family members in her absence.“The convictions were vacated because Cliona Ward did not receive advice by her criminal attorneys about the devastating immigration consequences of even a simple possession of drugs conviction,” said Michael Mehr, Ward’s attorney in Santa Cruz. Mehr added that last week, a Santa Cruz County Superior Court judge, in a decision supported by the county district attorney’s office, granted Ward postconviction relief — a formal recognition of her lack of adequate legal counsel almost 20 years prior, dating back to 2007 and 2008. That was enough, Mehr said, to render the current case against Ward moot.“Prior to the current Trump administration, Customs and Border Protection would not have detained a lawful permanent resident returning from a short trip abroad for expunged convictions that are decades old,” said Mehr. “Unfortunately, the current Trump administration is unreasonably detaining and deporting foreign nationals from the United States for insufficient reasons or to deprive them of the right to freedom of speech in other cases.”The day before Ward was granted her freedom, Rep. Jimmy Panetta. D-Calif., told the Sentinel that he was optimistic things were moving in a positive direction but said Ward’s case is indicative of a “dangerous deportation policy” coming from President Donald Trump’s administration and highlights why due process must remain a cornerstone of American life.“Even when you have someone like Cliona that is contributing to this community after taking responsibility and being (rehabilitated) from her drug addiction to the point where she has a full-time job, taking care of her ailing son, being repeatedly OK’d for legal permanent residency; even a person like that can get wrapped up in this,” said Panetta. “So it is our responsibility to ensure that there is due process for people like Cliona; for everybody in the United States.”At the same time Holladay was preparing to enter the courthouse in Seattle, close to 100 people gathered outside the Santa Cruz County Courthouse in solidarity with Ward. The rally was organized by SEIU Local 2015, the union representing California’s long-term caregivers that Ward is a member of, in conjunction with the event in Seattle. Patti Martin, a county resident of more than 40 years, said she read stories in recent weeks about lawful U.S. residents unexpectedly being detained by immigration authorities, but she never imagined the news would hit so close to home.“How could this happen here?” said Martin. “It’s shocking when it does come to your community.”Still spinning from the events of the day, Holladay spent Wednesday afternoon booking two tickets back home to California while her sister rested.“We’re just trying to hold her close,” she said. PK Hattis. © 2025 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.). Visit www.santacruzsentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.