A mother took her three sons to a routine check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, something she had been doing for years since fleeing El Salvador. Moments later, they were gone. She hasn’t seen them since.
Alma Lopez Diaz had been taking her boys to a Manhattan ICE office for regular immigration check-ins since coming to the United States in 2016, reported New York Magazine. She said it had never been a problem since none of them had a criminal history.
Her boys didn’t even have a school disciplinary record. They included 19-year-old Josue, an usher at the family’s church; and 20-year-old Jose, a recent high school graduate. She also brought her eight-year-old son Mateo, a nonverbal child with a rare neurological disorder called Moebius Syndrome, which causes seizures and requires constant care.
Only moments after Diaz’s two eldest children went in for their regularly scheduled check-in, they were gone. An ICE officer came out with what little they were forced to left behind: one of her son’s wallets and another’s debit card.
“They are not going to be returning,” an officer told Diaz.
Frantic, Diaz tried to peek behind the curtain where her two sons had disappeared, but they were long gone. She never even got to say goodbye.
The two brothers never had a dad in the picture. They grew up in extreme poverty, with their father sending barely enough money to pay for diapers and milk. It’s what led them to pursue Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, granted to those under 21 who have suffered abuse, abandonment, or neglect by a parent. They hoped to receive their green cards and stay in the United States permanently. Instead, ICE officers shipped them back to their home country despite a New York Family Court ruling that it was not “in their best interests” to be returned to El Salvador.
Diaz, who in El Salvador sold soda and chips to pay for her sons’ education, was regularly threatened by gang members. Diaz, pregnant with her youngest at the time, grew desperate. She fled with her two boys, then 10 and 11, in search of asylum. They were stopped at the border in 2016 to be placed in removal proceedings but were later released into the country.
Her sons’ dreams were dashed this year when they were detained without warning. They were sent to a center in Buffalo, then later transferred on a 16-hour journey to a cold Louisiana facility. They were shackled for so long that the brothers described phantom pains even after their limbs were unbound.
Officers detaining individuals at regular ICE check-ins has become common in the days since President Donald Trump’s mass immigration crackdown, and Diaz’s children are just two of many. Although the president has in total deported fewer individuals per day than during former President Joe Biden’s administration, he’s been escalating deportation methods to find and expel people in churches, schools, and visa offices. They’ve often targeted individuals with no criminal record, and many who show up at ICE offices as required, like Diaz’s sons.
“When they can deport, they’re deporting,” said Camille Mackler, CEO of Immigrant ARCM which provides legal services. She added that grabbing individuals during an ICE check-in can be an easy way for the government to spike immigration numbers.
Today, deportations are being made now almost “arbitrarily,” said Ala Amoachi, the brothers’ lawyer: “It really depends on when you check in, who’s the supervisor of the day. You may be picked up. You may not be. You may be given an ankle bracelet.”
Two weeks shy of Josue’s high school graduation ceremony and on his mother’s birthday last week, he and his brother were loaded on a plane bound south.
“Is this really happening?” Jose remembers thinking. “I wanted to cry, but I wasn’t able to.”
Diaz is unable to leave her youngest son, who has been distraught over his brothers leaving. “I don’t know what would be the next time that I would be able to see them again,” she said. “It would probably have to be many years.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to ICE for comment.
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