DC youth baseball coach held in Louisiana after traffic stop

Amaury Monsalve, a youth baseball coach known as "Coach A" who has coached in Washington D.C. and Virginia for more than 25 years, is being held in ICE custody in Louisiana after a traffic stop in the district two days before a hearing on his citizenship case. His family says he is a lawful permanent resident from Venezuela with no criminal record.

According to a police report obtained by WTOP, Monsalve was stopped on October 18 while working as a chauffeur, allegedly for running a red light. Police reportedly found a handgun, a fifth of tequila and a clear bag containing a white powder in the vehicle. All seven passengers were arrested along with him. No charges were filed, according to Robert Carmona-Borjas of the Arcadia Foundation — but Monsalve was held overnight, and when his wife and one of their sons waited outside the immigration courthouse the next day, he did not come out. Officers had brought a warrant for his arrest to court, his wife says. Online records show a search warrant was executed on Monsalve and list the case as closed.

The decision on whether to charge Monsalve or the passengers rests with U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro. Meanwhile Monsalve has been transferred among multiple detention facilities and now sits in Louisiana; his wife says he has told her by phone that detainees are ill and struggle to obtain medical care, and that she has been unable to open a commissary account to send him money for food and hygiene items.

A bond hearing is scheduled for November 3, and an appeal filed the day he was taken into custody remains pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals. The gap between the traffic stop and the ICE warrant is undocumented in the public record.

A man arrested without charges in one jurisdiction on a Sunday was in a third state by the following week.