Ice comes to Oakland which raises concern

By Stacy Gittleman

The violent actions of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers that led to the deaths of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, are still vivid in the memories of people living in Southeast Michigan.

Now, the federal government has leased office space in Southfield’s Town Center, which will be used for ICE administrative purposes. Though there is pushback, including from a local judge, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also proposed converting a 473,158 square foot warehouse in Romulus to a short-term detention center with 500 beds, conveniently located near the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Distressed Metro Detroit residents, as well as some elected officials and grassroots organizers, fear the horrific scenes from Minneapolis will repeat here.

Data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University shows that ICE booked people into detention in Michigan nearly 6,000 times in the second Trump administration through October 15, 2025. Most spent time in the state’s five detention centers, but hundreds were held for short periods at ICE field office locations in Detroit and Grand Rapids.

The data showed that in 2025, in Michigan, there were 4,450 removals and 286 voluntary departures. There are 31,000 cases pending in Detroit’s immigration court.

Behind each of those numbers is an individual, human story.

Fifty-one year-old Miguel, whose name has been changed for family safety reasons, had been living in the United States on and off since the late 1990s. With a sister in Chicago and his father here in Pontiac as legal citizens, Miguel traveled back and forth from Guanajuato, Mexico, to work odd jobs and do landscaping over the summers. In 2000, he and his wife, also an undocumented Mexican, married in Chicago. They did not return to Mexico.

The couple made a life for themselves in Pontiac as illegal immigrants. They raised four children, all born here. Miguel had factory and odd jobs around his neighborhood, and eventually ran a landscaping and mowing business he started in 2012. They own a home in Pontiac on which they pay property taxes.

With his sister as a sponsor, Miguel applied for citizenship in 2003. The application was processed, but Miguel said he never received a clear approval or denial or any indication from the government on his immigration status.

Miguel and his family continued to make a life in Pontiac. He and his wife raised their four children and ran their landscaping business.

Then came a traffic stop in 2019.

“I was with my father, mother, and grandfather in our truck and we had stopped at a gas station on Perry Street in Pontiac to fill our gas cans for our lawnmowers at the start of a workday,” recalled Miguel’s son, 24. “It was a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays, we cut grass. I believe we were being watched by (Immigrations Customs Enforcement) officers around the neighborhood because we are Mexican.”

The son said the ICE officers followed his family to their work site in Bloomfield Township.

“We got stopped, and neither my mom or dad had papers,” the son said. “They gave my father two options: they could take him or take his wife.”

Miguel opted to go, and he spent a month in jail while his family worked to collect enough money to clear a $6,500 bond to release him. He was released pending the fact that he now had a formal date in the immigration court system. From that point on, the son said Miguel was in and out of court for immigration status proceedings. At that point, he was able to attain a legal work permit and continued to run his landscaping business.

Then, at a scheduled court appearance to discuss his bond and immigration status on July 26, 2025, he was notified that he would be deported. Miguel was detained at the Northlake Processing Center in Baldwin for three days before getting deported back to the Mexican border from where he found his way back on his own to Guanajuato.

The son and his three siblings took turns visiting his father over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Miguel’s wife, who is undocumented, has not left her home since that date, only to go to doctors’ appointments to treat and manage her diabetes. Israel, his mother, and siblings, the youngest of whom is 18, do their best with school and work and to upkeep the landscaping business.

The separation has taken its toll on his family emotionally, mentally and financially, according to the son.

“We have missed birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries together,” the son said. “My mother has been afraid to leave the house since the summer because ICE is here in Pontiac. She used to come out with us on jobs all the time before this happened. My dad in Mexico is trying to keep busy, he is living with his parents and siblings and doing some work on their house. He keeps busy to keep his mind clear.”

The son’s frustration with the government is because he believes the immigration system is broken. The only way he could personally keep his father in the country is to join the military through a 2013 initiative called the Patrol in Place (PIP) program that was launched in 2013, which offers migrant families an option to keep parents from being deported.

“There needs to be a way forward to fix this,” the son said. “I tried to fix it myself, but the only way I could keep my father here is if I joined the military, or if my father was a victim of a violent crime.”

It’s not that the crackdowns on undocumented people living in America were unexpected. Donald Trump centralized his second presidential campaign on it.

But to immigrant advocates, local political officials, and grassroots organizers, it’s the breakneck pace at which it has occurred. And it is happening faster than anyone could have imagined.

“There has been a blistering pace in changes to immigration laws that make it harder for people to stay and easier to classify them as deportable,” said Christine Sauvé, policy, engagement, and communications manager for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC). “In under one year, there have been over 634 policy changes to our immigration laws, putting the system into chaos. We are talking about daily new changes to the system. It’s hard to keep up with, and there is cruelty at every turn.”

In Michigan, Sauvé said at any given time there can be up to 2,000 people held in detention within the state’s five facilities.

Sauvé said that clients are telling MIRC attorneys that they are getting picked up at traffic stops. A typical stop may begin as a minor traffic infringement, such as a broken taillight. Under Michigan law, once the purpose of the stop is complete, the interaction should end. Instead, MIRC’s clients say that law enforcement is running identification through Customs and Border Control (CBP) records to verify a foreign identification and to determine identification status, and may hold the person until ICE or CBP arrives—sometimes more than an hour, which she characterizes as unlawful because it prolongs the stop beyond its original purpose.

Sauvé said that Pontiac has been a hotspot for ICE activity and pickups for detainment. Trump’s campaign promises to apprehend only the worst criminals have fallen by the wayside. People like Garcia had no criminal record. Sauvé said that many of these apprehensions have emanated from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, which has contracts for local policing with 15 communities in the county.

In response, MIRC distributed a letter they drafted with the American Civil Liberties Union on best practices according to Supreme Court Law decisions.

“Local police and sheriffs are taking matters into their own hands and going beyond the scope of their local law enforcement duties,” Sauvé said. “About 75 percent of ICE arrests come from local law enforcement handovers. In the past, local law enforcement would transfer jailed criminals to ICE. But now, ICE is no longer focusing just on individuals who have committed violent crimes. Apprehensions are happening at routine traffic stops.”

Sauvé said that the Trump administration terminated the sensitive locations policy, meaning that ICE officials can apprehend people at churches, schools and hospitals. An immigration policy that was in place for decades, it allowed immigrants waiting out their immigration or asylum status to safely receive healthcare, attend religious services, and attend school.

“Before the Trump administration rescinded this policy, people could go about their business,” Sauvé said. “Now, there is fear and a chilling effect on so many individuals, because they are afraid that they may be arrested while dropping their kids off at school, which we have seen.”

Responding to allegations that the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office is overstepping its bounds, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said there is a lot of misinformation floating around about why or why not local law enforcement should or should not work with ICE.

He refuted the claims that local law enforcement is picking up undocumented immigrants and turning them over to ICE at routine traffic stops.

“The courts have clearly upheld that immigration is a federal duty and they have sole responsibility for handling these cases,” Bouchard said. “If somebody is illegally in the country and they are stopped on the side of the road, local law enforcement does not have the authority, nor does it want to get involved. It is not something local law enforcement has the authority, nor wants the authority to deal with.”

Bouchard said that rumors that some immigration activists have been spreading on social media, such as the allegations that ICE is conducting mass sweeps at the Somerset Collection in Troy, or at local public schools, are not only false but dangerous.

“My fugitive apprehension and narcotics enforcement teams are going out to conduct high-risk arrest situations at someone’s home, and we have had people trying to record us on their phones and insert themselves in a very dangerous situation,” Bouchard said. “These are situations when there could be gunfire, and people are mistaking us for ICE (especially my plainclothes officers).”

Bouchard said using the word “cooperation” when it comes to federal and local law enforcement is a misnomer. He also rejected the notion that people are getting randomly picked up and detained without proper judicial warrants. Justifying the need for some ICE agents to wear masks, Bouchard quoted a statistic recently released by the DHS claiming ICE agents face an 8,000 percent increase in death threats against them and a more than 1,300 percent increase in assaults against them over the last year.

“If a federal agency has a warrant for someone, or another state or local agency has a warrant for someone, that suspect gets turned over to that agency,” explained Bouchard. “Are we stopping people on the side of the road and asking them for their immigration status? Absolutely not. Every time someone suspects this is what is happening, we have investigated it. It never happened.”

Elected government officials are decrying the prospect that ICE may pick up the pace of detentions and deportations in Oakland County.

In January 2026, Congresswoman Haley Stevens (D-Oakland County) called upon her colleagues to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on allegations of the agency’s lack of transparency on spending billions of federal dollars, abuse of the Fourth Amendment, and improper training of ICE agents. At a March 4 congressional hearing, Noem refused to retract a DHS statement that described Good and Peretti as “domestic terrorists.” It was also uncovered that she spent an $220 million of taxpayer dollars for a DHS ad campaign, the money reportedly going to two companies linked to long-time Republican operatives. The next day, Noem was fired.

Stevens, on March 5 released the following statement on X:

“Under Kristi Noem, ICE killed Americans, used children as bait to detain their parents, lied to Congress, and terrorized our neighborhoods. She should have been fired a long time ago. We still must address the chaos and lawlessness that Donald Trump’s ICE has unleashed across our country.”

Before the Senate considers any replacement, the American people demand serious reforms at ICE that will keep people safe. I won’t stop fighting for a complete overhaul that focuses on transparency, accountability, getting the facts of what’s unfolding at the detention facility in Baldwin, and keeping Michiganders safe.”

Weeks before Noem’s ouster, Stevens and Congresswoman Hillary Scholten (D-MI-3)_ toured the privately-owned North Lake Processing Center ICE detention facility in Baldwin, Lake County, on February 17 to inspect its living conditions and glean from the staff there exactly who was being detained there and the average length of detainment.

According to an early March Michigan Public investigation, between August 2025 and mid-February 2026, over 800 claims of unlawful detention were filed in Michigan’s two federal district courts. Before this spike, the last time any petitions were filed was in 2020. And in many of these cases, Republican-appointed judges are siding with the detainees.

The North Lake Processing Center, one of the country’s largest immigration detention centers, is the main source of habeas petitions in the Western District. Habeas corpus petitions are civil lawsuits that allow people to argue they’re being unlawfully detained by the government, in violation of their Fifth Amendment due process rights.

When Stevens visited Baldwin, she most urgently wanted answers as to why and how 56-year-old detainee Nenko Gantchev, an undocumented immigrant from Bulgaria with diabetes, died in custody in December 2025. According to news reports, his family said he begged multiple times for medical assistance.

Speaking with Downtown on the morning of the February 24 State of the Union address, Stevens came away with more questions than answers.

“What is unfolding before so many of our eyes on the streets, and then what is happening behind closed doors?” Stevens pondered. “Why are people being taken, and why are they not getting answers about why they are there?”

One hundred people signed up to speak with Stevens and Scholten at the detention center. They were only permitted to speak with four.

Among the few the congresswomen met, Stevens said some were afraid to speak openly for fear of retribution. All wanted to know about their pending cases. She comforted a pregnant woman detainee, separated from her 18-month-old toddler, who has not been told why she was being detained.

“It is the demonstration of complete lack of transparency on how these detention centers are being run is one of the reasons why I called for the impeachment of Noem, and why I believe that President Trump owes the American people an apology and a show of accountability,” Stevens said. “It begins with masked, unidentifiable agents in our streets taking people out of nowhere and using our taxpayer dollars to do so. And it ends up in these detention centers.”

State Senator and President Pro Tem of the Michigan Senate Jeremy Moss (D-Southfield) is concerned about an ICE office opening in Southfield because he said it brings ICE activity to “a civil and harmonious community.

In Lansing, Moss and state Senators Stephanie Chang and Mary Kavanagh have introduced House Bills 508, 509 and 510 to curb the actions and demand accountability from ICE personnel in Michigan.

HB 510 would prohibit ICE officers from wearing masks, require them to wear badges of identification and identifiable uniforms while conducting operations. HB 508 and 509 would ensure that ICE cannot raid sensitive locations, including schools and courthouses, where immigrants frequent to make a court appearance. It would also be unlawful to conduct ICE raids in domestic violence shelters or “other places where people go to seek solace and shelter.” The legislation, if passed, would also protect personal and private data, such as electronic healthcare records, from being mined by ICE.

There is growing concern about about the sharing of government data which was heightened even more following a February 19 Detroit News story revealed that as early as 2014, Oakland County signed a $21,000 contract that gives ICE officials access to a large database containing first responder and court records called the Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information System (CLEMIS).

Michigan immigrant rights advocates are troubled as to how this contract came into being without the knowledge of several county officials and what this can mean to the privacy of Oakland County residents, especially since many municipalities, including Southfield, have recently proclaimed that they are not sharing data with ICE.

In a statement released to Downtown, Oakland County Public Information Officer Bill Mullan said that before it became an independent authority at the state Capitol on February 1, CLEMIS operated within Oakland County’s Information Technology Department.

“The system is supported through agreements with local, county, state and federal law enforcement and other agencies across Southeast Michigan to access court and law enforcement records securely,” Mullan said. “Consistent with its long-standing role as a regional information-sharing platform, federal agencies – including ICE, the FBI, and the U.S. Secret Service – have historically maintained agreements for access to CLEMIS.”

Mullan said Oakland County has begun the process of terminating all user agreements, including any associated with ICE, so that interested agencies can pursue service agreements directly with the new independent CLEMIS authority after it is fully set up and legally positioned to accept members.

Moss and others remain concerned about the possibility of ICE entrenching itself in his community. “Why would ICE need to be setting up a new office in Southfield?” he pondered. “My guess is that it is to create the same havoc here as we have seen in other parts of the country, like Minneapolis.”

While leasing office space for administrative or legal purposes may seem harmless on the surface, Moss said it would serve as an administrative hub to perpetuate wrongdoing and abuses of ICE.

“They say they are just lawyers and administrators, but those lawyers will be there to protect and litigate in defense of the horrific actions of these agents,” Moss said. “They are abusing the Constitution, stripping people of their rights, and causing chaos in our community. By leasing this property, ICE is embedding itself in a community that does not welcome its presence.”

At a February 23 city council meeting in Southfield, residents during the public comment segment described ICE agents as “modern-day slave catchers,” “Gestapo,” and “fascists.” Stepping up to the microphone, they told the council that they did not want ICE agents or administrators anywhere in Southfield. They condemned Town Center for renting office space to the federal government, and called for a ban on any possible local police collaboration with sweeping or apprehending illegal immigrants. Keeping the midterm elections in mind, some residents feared that ICE agents may present a threatening presence at polling places.

“There is now a public pressure campaign to let REDICO know that they need to be a good landlord in the city, and this is not something that we’re welcoming here,” Moss said. “REDICO has a responsibility to be a good neighbor in our community and not lease to a tenant that the community finds to be opposing our values.”

That evening, the Southfield City Council unanimously passed a resolution that stated it was committed to “remaining a welcoming and inclusive community where all residents feel safe, respected and supported.”

“We understand that the recent immigration enforcement activity, both nationally and in surrounding areas within our own city, has raised concern,” said Southfield City Council President Charles Hicks. “We cannot ignore federal law, but we can and will determine how the city of Southfield engages within that framework, guided by our responsibility to protect the safety and trust of our community.”

The resolution affirmed that the Southfield police department focuses on local public safety and does not participate in immigration status investigations or enforce federal immigration law. The city does not grant access to private property or non-public spaces without a valid legal warrant, and information from the city’s automatic license plate readers is limited to vehicle-related investigations and will not be used for immigration enforcement.

In a written statement to Downtown, REDICO, Southfield Town Center’s leasing agent wrote that it understands that questions and concerns have been raised regarding the lease with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), and that these concerns are taken seriously.

“REDICO has not entered into a lease with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” the statement read. “The lease in question is with the United States of America, by and through the General Services Administration, for general office use only, consistent with REDICO’s longstanding relationship with GSA.”

“The terms of the lease explicitly prohibit any law enforcement, detention, or similar activities from occurring at the property. Should the terms of the lease be violated, REDICO is prepared to fully enforce the agreement,” according to the statement.

But according to BISNOW, a business-to-business website serving the commercial real estate industry, it is the GSA that, beginning in September 2025, launched a nationwide hunt to designate available office spaces for 300 new locations just outside the center of many metropolitan areas that will be needed to facilitate a surge in ICE roundups and detentions.

And according to an independent report from WIRED magazine, an “ICE surge team” at the GSA is helping the federal agency rapidly open locations to support ICE. The report said that ICE coordinated with the GSA and circumvented the usual open bidding process by citing national security concerns and the “critical space needs” that allow for a departure from the rules.

On February 23, the Romulus City Council unanimously passed a resolution decrying the federal government’s plans to build a detention center there.

“The proposal is inconsistent with community planning, economic priorities, and the city’s vision for a safe environment for its residents and commercial business interests,” read the resolution. It also warned that such a facility in their municipality would sink property values. Negative impressions about Romulus due to the possible presence of a detention center would impede economic development. There are also a few zoning issues. For starters, the property is in a flood plain. It is also in an area zoned not for human habitation but for light industry, and the area would have to go through a lengthy rezoning approval process.

State Representative Noah Arbit (D-West Bloomfield) admitted there are limits on how local legislation and resolutions can disrupt federal immigration policy. He expressed doubt that the legislation package to rein in ICE activities will see any light or discussion in a Republican-controlled State House. For now, it may be merely symbolic.

“Whether or not we will see a surge of activity in our community, people are seeing what is going on in other parts of the country, how ICE conducted themselves in Minneapolis, and they feel threatened,” Arbit said. “Donald Trump was elected because he promised to reduce irregular immigration. But it has been the way it is rolling out, using maximum force, detaining people without due process, and even detaining the wrong people and sometimes deporting U.S. citizens, that shows that this is a Constitutional crisis. Trump administration is not looking to solve the problem of immigration enforcement. It’s all about a show of force and dominance.”

In an emailed statement to Downtown, an unnamed ICE spokesperson said that the property the agency is looking to purchase for a proposed detention center in Romulus would meet the agency’s “regular detention standards,” but did not expand upon what those standards were.

The spokesperson said the site would undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to ensure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure before purchase. ICE added that the Romulus facility and its construction are expected to bring1,458 jobs to the area, would contribute $149.9 million to GDP, and is projected to bring in more than $33 million in local tax revenue.

The statement included names and photographs of several undocumented people picked up by ICE in Michigan that have criminal records that included sexual assault, rape, larceny, kidnapping, vehicular and weapons and drug possession offenses.

“These economic benefits don’t consider that removing criminals from the streets makes communities safer for business owners and customers,” the statement continued. “ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens … and 70 percent of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S. Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE has new funding to expand detention space to keep these criminals off American streets before they are removed for good from our communities.”

The statement said if only more local police departments would sign off on a 287 agreement to work and collaborate directly with ICE, there would not be a need to recruit and train and deploy more ICE agents into local areas.

According to ICE, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 added Section 287(g) to the Immigration and Nationality Act. It gave ICE the ability to give state and local law enforcement officers authority to perform specified immigration officer functions under its direction and oversight.

Under the Big Beautiful Bill, Congress allocated $14 billion to local agencies as an incentive to join the program. For now, local law enforcement in Oakland County has no such arrangement. According to ICE’s database, the Michigan counties and individual law enforcement departments enrolled in a 287 program include the Berrian County Sheriff’s Office; Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office; Crawford County Sheriff’s Office; Jackson County Sheriff’s Office; Roscommon County Sheriff’s Office; Taylor Police Department (Wayne County); and the West Branch Police Department (Ogemaw County).

Bloomfield Township Chief of Police James Gallagher said the Bloomfield Township Police Department is committed to the safety of everyone who lives in or visits our community. “We do not participate in localized immigration enforcement, nor do we maintain agreements with ICE that guide our daily operations,” Gallagher said. “We do not have a 287 agreement and are not signing one. Our primary focus is local public safety. While we respond to specific, safety-related incidents within the township as we would for any agency requesting backup, our purpose is to serve our community and address the priorities and concerns of our residents.”

Birmingham Chief of Police Scott Grewe echoed Gallagher’s stance.

“There have been no ICE operations within Birmingham that we are aware of,” Grewe said. “Additionally, the Birmingham Police Department will not assist ICE in any operation. My department will respond to any call of service that may or may not involve ICE to ensure the safety of all individuals involved and to make sure any and all activity is within the law.”

Downtown reached out to communities neighboring the Birmingham-Bloomfield area and confirmed that Wet Bloomfield has no agreement with ICE, while Southfield and Troy officials stated that those communities are not cooperating with ICE.

If ICE does pick up the pace in apprehending and detaining undocumented immigrants, there are efforts at the grassroots level to help. Within Pontiac’s close-knit Latino community, people are looking out for each other and providing relief when and where they can to undocumented migrants and their families.

Mexican-American Elida Reyes, 69, a lifelong resident of Pontiac, is the founder of Community Aid For Empowerment (CAFE), a grassroots, volunteer-run immigrant advocacy network focused on helping documented and undocumented migrants in town. Help from CAFE can come in the form of grocery shopping, running errands, or checking in on people who are too afraid to leave their homes. Volunteers are trusted even to drive and pick up children from school as ICE sweeps can occur at the school bus stop.

Reyes is no stranger to life’s adversities. She is the oldest in a family of 10 siblings who lost their parents at an early age. Reyes fought the legal and foster care systems as soon as she reached legal adulthood to win custody of all her siblings. By her twenties, she worked as a telephone operator and then in the automotive industry, enabling her to purchase a home in Pontiac for her and her siblings to live.

Now, Reyes fights for the dignity of migrants in her community. CAFE trains volunteers on how to be responsible ICE observers. CAFE volunteers speak and train in local churches and meet with business owners who employ Latinos to explain their Constitutional rights regarding searches.

Above all, she is motivated to keep families together and avoid the heartache of separation. And this separation is happening a lot, Reyes said. From her accounts, at least 300 Pontiac residents have been apprehended since the fall of 2025. There are apartments once full of life that she now describes as empty shells.

“Latinos are raised with a strong sense of big families and keeping close and together,” Reyes said. “And for me to know that ICE is coming and taking people apart from their families, I don’t think under I don’t think people understand we cannot let that happen. I cannot let that happen.”

When asked what inspired her to do this work, Reyes told the story of a young Venezuelan woman named Beru.

Beru was born in Venezuela around 2000 to unmarried parents, who abandoned her to the Catholic church. To support the church, she begged on the streets starting at age four. She was informally adopted in 2005.

As Beru was growing up under the dictatorship of Nicholas Maduro, members of her family were executed for criticizing the government. Fearing for their lives, Beru’s mother made plans for them to make the dangerous trek north and seek asylum at the United States border.In 2024, Beru made it to the U.S. border at the age of 22 and asked for asylum on the Mexican side of the border. It took some time and several relocations, but Beru wound up in Pontiac, where Beru and Reyes eventually met at a church. Reyes and her husband took her in.

Beru lived with them for almost two years during which she enrolled in English classes while Reyes worked with an attorney to expedite Beru’s asylum case. In early 2025, Beru moved to Florida to be with a friend who had also escaped Venezuela. They made a living by cleaning short-term rental homes. Her asylum case was transferred to the Sunshine State. One morning, while waiting to get picked up for a job, Beru was apprehended by ICE, sent to a detention center in Louisiana for a brief time, and deported back to Venezuela.

“At that time, the most we could do for Beru was to add money to her alien registration account number so she could get decent food from the commissary in the detention center,” Reyes said.

With Beru as her inspiration, Reyes and other CAFE volunteers use their investigative skills to learn where detainees are taken so they can send them money for essentials.

“As soon as we find out that someone is taken, we get their full name, date of birth, and “A” (alien account) number. That way, we can put money into their account so they can buy some food and make phone calls to their family. They should be able to call their family and let them know they’re gone. I cannot imagine as a mom waiting for your son or daughter to come home and they don’t come home.”

Back in Guanajuato, Mexico, Miguel waits it out. He is separated from his family. Though his children can visit him, his wife cannot. Miguel said there are not many employment opportunities for him in the city of his extended family. To keep busy, he helps out around his parents’ home doing some repairs. It might take him up between three and 10 years before he complete the U.S. citizen process of first applying for a green card and then attaining permanent U.S. residency.

He misses his wife. They speak each evening. He said he felt bad one recent night when he could not be with her, when she had to go to the emergency room. He is in touch with her and his sons on a regular basis, advising them on how to keep up and manage their landscaping business. Not knowing when he will see his wife again, he said has been a strain on his mental health.

“This is really bad for my family,” Miguel said. “But at this point, all we can do is wait.”