Daury Baez Seri did nothing wrong. He is a DACA recipient who came to the United States at age six, grew up in Boston, and has no criminal record. On Tuesday, immigration officials detained him inside Logan Airport after his flight home made an emergency landing he had no say in.

Rubin Pomerleau was retained on Wednesday and went to work immediately. About two and a half hours later, at roughly 1:00 p.m., our emergency petition challenging his detention was on file.

Late that evening, Daury went home.

A detention no one saw coming

Daury was flying home from a gaming convention in Puerto Rico with friends. It was a domestic trip, the kind that requires no passport.

Then another passenger had a medical emergency. The plane made an emergency landing in Bermuda, and that stop turned a domestic flight into an international arrival.

When the flight reached Logan on Tuesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained Daury and held him for more than 24 hours.

"They basically treat him like he's not in America," partner Todd Pomerleau told WCVB while Daury was still in custody.

What it takes to move that fast

Airport detention cases are complex. The person is held in a secure area, often unable to reach a lawyer, and the facts have to be pieced together from the outside while the hours pass.

The tool for that situation is an emergency habeas petition, a lawsuit that asks a court to decide whether the government is holding someone lawfully. Preparing one under that kind of time pressure takes attorneys who have done it before.

Todd Pomerleau, a partner at Rubin Pomerleau and president of Mass Deportation Defense, led the response. Rubin Pomerleau attorney Nicole Dill prepared and filed the petition. From the moment we were retained to the moment it was filed took about two and a half hours.

Experience with a growing problem

This is not the first airport detention our attorneys have handled. In July, Todd represented a woman who was detained at Logan after traveling to Boston for a concert. She was held for more than a week before she was released. Maria and Daury are just two of dozens of cases Rubin Pomerleau has handled in recent weeks from the airport alone.

Todd expects these cases to keep coming, as airports are increasingly used to drive up arrests. That is why we treat each one as an emergency.

If someone you know is detained

Time matters. Contact Rubin Pomerleau right away.  Contact Us.

Read WCVB's coverage: Passenger held by immigration officials for 24 hours at Logan Airport

Every case is different. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.