A Colombian dad “following the American dream’’ was killed along with his little girl in Wednesday’s collapse of a Brooklyn building — where the family often hid at home for fear of ICE, kin said.
Father of two Juan Daniel Sabala, 31, his 9-year-old daughter, Nicole Daniela Rodriguez and a family cousin, Kevin Santiago Reyes Gonzales, 10, died when the three-story Flatbush Avenue building fell.
Sabala, his wife, and kids had preferred to stay inside their apartment as much as possible because they were increasingly terrified of being stopped on the street by federal immigration agents — with the parents often “shut inside” between work shifts, Sabala’s cousin, Juan Carlos Zabala, told Gothamist.
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“We have no words,” Zabala told the outlet from his home in Spain on Friday.
“They were following the American dream,” Zabala said of Sabala and his wife.
The heartbroken cousin said the family arrived in the US from Colombia three or four years ago and that Sabala had been working for a cleaning company.
“Everything with ICE was really bothering them,” he said. “So they stayed shut inside, from work to home and home to work, because they were afraid of being deported.”
The family was home Wednesday for Veterans Day, Zabala said.
He said he had planned to visit his relative in the Big Apple in December.
“I have a lot of nostalgia and a lot of sadness … because I am also in another country that’s not mine,” said the relative, who also is Colombian.
“We came with a dream, hoping for a better life,‘’ he said, referring to his new home in Spain.
“And at the end, we don’t know what will happen to us,‘’ Zabala said, noting life’s uncertainties.
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