When Jose Luis stopped to pump gas on his way to work in southern Texas, his family’s entire life changed.
ICE agents showed up out of nowhere and demanded to know his immigration status. The father of five, who arrived in the United States from Mexico in 2010 at the age of 19, was quickly handcuffed and detained.
He now faces deportation and permanent separation from his wife and children, as well as the loss of the family’s sole source of income.
“Every day, his little girls ask, ‘Where’s Dad? “What time is he coming home?” His wife, Rosa, tells The Independent that she does not want to break her children’s hearts by telling them the truth just yet. “I have to tell them he’s out working.”
“I’m extremely stressed right now. “I don’t know what comes next,” she says.
Jose Luis is one of approximately 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, many of whom have lived, worked, paid taxes, and raised families in the country for years. Authorities are targeting them in what Donald Trump’s administration has promised will be the largest “mass deportation operation” in American history.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have nearly doubled their daily arrest rate as part of the crackdown since Trump took office, and more than 10,000 people have already been deported on military flights widely publicized by the White House. The Trump administration is now housing some detainees at Guantánamo Bay.
The deportation drive has instilled fear in immigrant communities across the United States. Every day, ICE teams raid restaurants, traffic stops turn into family separations, and some parents are hesitant to send their children to school for fear of detention.
The Trump administration has not released official figures for the number of deportations carried out since Trump returned to the White House on January 20, but ICE officials said at the end of January that it made an average of 710 immigration arrests over a five-day period, a significant increase from a daily average of 311 in a 12-month period through September under President Joe Biden. Some days, it has reported up to 1,000 arrests.
That figure exceeds the previous high set during Barack Obama’s administration, when 636 arrests were made per day in 2013.
ICE arrests can take anywhere from a few days to months to process. This week, ICE announced that it would release some of the people it had detained due to overcrowding.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced on Friday that her country has received nearly 11,000 deported migrants since Trump took office, including approximately 2,500 non-Mexicans.
Jose Luis’ family is one of thousands of people whose lives have been turned upside down as a result of the increased arrests. As the sole breadwinner, they relied on funds from a small plumbing business he established.
“There was so much going through my head when I found out,” Rosa tells me. “All the payments for the house, the kids.”
Rosa has had to sell her belongings to stay afloat since Jose Luis was detained on January 26th. She sold two pickup trucks owned by the company and is being forced to leave their mobile home and move in with her parents because she can’t make the payments.
“It’s really shocking. We’ve lived here for a long time, and this has never happened to us. So I am speechless,” she tells The Independent.
Rosa and Jose Luis met in 2018 at a race track in Texas, where they both live, and quickly fell in love. She had two children from a previous relationship, and they had three more together, creating a large blended family.
Their two sons, ages 11 and 2, and their three daughters, ages 9, 5, and 4, were all born in the United States. They had a happy life in small-town Texas before the arrests. Their family has been split up, and she has no idea when or if they will be reunited.
She has only been able to speak with Jose Luis a few times since his arrest and is desperately trying to raise funds to mount a legal defense. But she is afraid of the future.
“In the interview, they said that he didn’t have an option for a bond or to see a judge, so he will be deported,” she shares.
Even before her husband was arrested, she claims that ICE raids had a significant impact on their community.
“A lot of people here are afraid for their lives. The streets are very lonely. The stores are lonely. “I mean, it was a significant change,” she says.
“People are already returning to their home countries out of fear for what will happen next. Friends of mine are removing their children from school and moving to Mexico.”
Rosa, who is trying to raise funds to fight Jose Luis’ deportation, says she can’t imagine leaving the place she has called home since she was four years old.
“Honestly, I was that person who would say, ‘I’m a Texas girl, I wouldn’t leave Texas. But with everything going on, I’m speechless.
“I did not expect this. “All I see on the news is Texas targeting all Hispanics, all immigrants, and that’s very sad for us,” she says.
