Faith leaders and family call on ICE to release Harrisburg-area asylum seeker

Omar Viadurre Luis was detained by ICE after meeting with a Harrisburg magistrate judge last October.

A group of Catholics and local faith leaders from the Harrisburg area gathered in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Harrisburg on Tuesday to rally for a parishioner who has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the last five months. 

Omar Viadurre Luis, a Peruvian national and asylum seeker along with his wife, Lara Ramirez, came to the US with their son in 2022 to escape organized violence. Now, Viadurre Luis has been held in ICE detention since late last year. 

“ We didn’t want to leave our home country. We did not want to leave our families, but our lives were in danger in Peru,” Ramirez said at Tuesday’s press conference. “People tried to kidnap our son, and Omar’s coworker was murdered by organized criminals trying to destroy Omar’s business in Peru.”

According to Ramirez, Viadurre Luis was picked up at the Dauphin County prison and taken into ICE custody in late October after pleading not guilty for a misdemeanor offense in front of a local magistrate judge. His charges were later dropped, but Viadurre Luis remains locked away in detention. 

She added, “We have done everything the American government has told us to do. We registered at the border, we applied for asylum, and we were allowed to legally enter the United States.” 

Throughout Tuesday’s press conference Ramirez was comforted by Catholic workers and members of the Harrisburg Diocese. 

“We are here today to speak about the sufferings of one of our brothers in Christ, Omar,” Renee Roden, a Catholic worker with St. Martin de Porres in Harrisburg, said. He’s a fellow Catholic of ours in the diocese of Harrisburg. And Omar, like Christ, has been unjustly detained. He has spent the past five months separated from his family, unable to provide for them suffering in ice detention, lonely in pain.”

Ramirez went on to state how Viadurre Luis missed an important doctors meeting the day after his detainment to see if he is suffering from bone cancer.  

“ The day before ICE stole him, Omar and I led a religious possession with all throughout the neighborhood.  The day after ICE stole him, he was supposed to go to a medical appointment to look for cancer in his bones. He’s paying right now and needs urgent medical care,” Ramirez added. 

During his detention, Viadurre Luis pleaded for, and was granted, a habeas petition for his detention but an immigration judge denied his bail on multiple occasions. He was originally sent to Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an immigration detention center in Clearfield County, but was transferred to FCI Lewisburg. 

According to his family members, Viadurre Luis faces deportation to a country where he is not from or familiar with. 

Ricky Palladino, a lawyer representing Viadurre Luis through the habeas process, warned that Vidaurre Luis detention and denial of due process should concern all Americans. 

“People like Mr. Viadurre Luis should not be stained while seeking asylum in the United States not only because it is a violation of his constitutional rights, but because it is a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars and is fundamentally unfair,” Palladino said in a statement. 

“As Pope Leo XIV states, someone who supports the inhuman treatment of immigrants cannot be ‘pro-life.’”