A Maine engineer from Colombia, who was working legally on an H-1B visa, was arrested, handcuffed and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for a long day in January during an operation aimed at sweeping up illegal immigrants in the state for deportation.
ICE released the engineer, Juan Sebastian Carvajal-Muñoz, after 12 hours and now is suing the Department of Homeland Security and one of the officers who arrested him for illegal detention.
Carvajal-Muñoz he had studied for a master’s degree at the University of Maine before accepting a job related to soil and bridge foundation analysis at GEI Consultants in Portland, Maine.
His arrest and lawsuit come in a year when engineering firms face greatly reduced opportunities to fill open positions through the H-1B visa program as the Trump administration limits legal immigration.
On the morning of Jan. 22, while driving to work in Portland, ICE agents involved in the sweep pulled over. Carvajal-Muñoz and looked for identification. According to his lawsuit filed in federal court in Portland, Carvajal-Muñoz showed a REAL ID driver’s license while behind the wheel with the window still down and was reaching for his phone when one of the officers broke the driver’s side window and handcuffed him.
What followed, according to Carvajal-Muñoz, It was a day of riding, as the officers — one wearing a mask — appeared to deliberately humiliate him by driving through the area, but never returned him to his car, which was still running with the keys inside. Later in the day, officers took him and other inmates to a parking lot where they were offered the chance to urinate and then drove to a detention center in Burlington, Massachusetts, where Carvajal-Muñoz He was detained for some time before being abruptly released and forced back to his bus car.
Carvajal-Muñozwhose case is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, claims that ICE agents deliberately profiled him based on his physical appearance. “Even though I followed all the rules, federal agents targeted me based on my race,” Carvajal-Muñoz said in a press release issued when the lawsuit was filed.
An ICE spokesman says it does not comment on litigation. It is not clear if Carvajal-Muñoz continues to work for GEI Consultants. A company spokeswoman, citing privacy concerns, declined to comment on that or on the company’s use of H-1B visas to fill positions.
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Rules changes for H1-B visas
The case comes at a difficult time for employers who in the past have been able to hire foreigners on H-1B visas to fill vacancies. Under the H-1B rules, employers must indicate that they could not fill the position with a nonimmigrant. Federal rules allow 85,000 new H-1B visas each year, 20,000 of which are for higher-paid employees.
About 40,000 of the half a million H-1B visa holders in the US work in architecture and engineering, according to data cited by the American Engineering Companies Council (ACEC).
But in September, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation which requires employers to pay an additional $100,000 per H1-B visa.
The HThe -1B nonimmigrant visa program, Trump said in the proclamation, “was created to bring temporary workers to the United States to perform additive and highly skilled roles, but has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, lower-skilled, lower-paid American workers.”
Then, in February, the new administration issued new rules that change the selection criteria for visas that are granted from a random process to a weighted one to favor higher-paid employees. This change applies to the 2027 H-1B cap filing season.
ACEC last year opposed the change and noted that it was expected to reduce the number of engineering and architecture visas granted by 48,000.
Although the median annual salary for a civil engineer in 2024 was $100,000, ACEC argued when the rule change was proposed, the new weighting method would tilt the selection process in favor of international technology companies that could afford to pay more.
