A former Catholic Diocese of Yakima seminarian will be released from federal custody pending payment of a $25,000 bond, an immigration judge ruled Tuesday. Juan Jose González Rios, who has been held in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma for the last week, will be heading back to his home in Tieton as soon as bond is posted.
He should be released today or Thursday, said Yakima attorney Jerry Talbott of Talbott Simpson & Davis who represented González in the immigration hearing.
The next step for the 37-year-old González will be traveling to Oregon on June 5 for arraignment on charges of viewing child pornography. J.J. Sandlin of the Sandlin Law Firm in Zillah represents González in the criminal proceedings.
The ex-seminarian was arrested in March for allegedly viewing child pornography while studying to be a Catholic priest in Oregon in 2003.
Last month, a fugitive warrant from Oregon for González was dismissed in Yakima County Superior Court, and the $80,000 bail requirement was waived.
However, González remained in detention pending the outcome of Tuesday's custody hearing.
Elaine Komis with the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the Department of Justice in Falls Church, Va., said the Department of Homeland Security can appeal Tuesday's ruling if it chooses.
The custody hearing was precipitated by the expiration of González's visa to be in the United States. A native of Jalisco, Mexico, González emigrated here more than 15 years ago. He was working at the St. Peter Retreat Center in Cowiche under a religious visa, but it expired in 2005.
González spent about four years at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon but was dismissed in February 2003 after the seminary reported the pornography allegations to Mount Angel police.
He returned to the Yakima diocese, where Bishop Carlos Sevilla hired him for a part-time job at St. Peter Retreat Center in Cowiche.
The warrant surfaced when a Tieton police officer stopped González for speeding March 19.
Sevilla apologized for his handling of the situation at a news conference last month, acknowledging that he had hired González, even though he knew the former seminarian was under criminal investigation.
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