Border patrol grabs Venezuelian parents in DC despite protected status

Eo Armus, Maria Sacchetti, Steve Thompson
| The Washington Post

The Venezuelean couple-poured after a six-week trip to the north, through an unforgiving jungle and wrong cities over the southern border to Texas, with their three children in 2022, part of a historical wave of migrants who seek refuge against economic and political agitation, which I see now in the United States.

The couple, whom The Washington Post identifies only by their middle name Cesar and Norelia, and their three children were allowed in the country through border patrol. Subsequently, the interior security department granted them temporarily protected status – a legal promise of security against deportation to the country in which they fled. They settled in a DC neighborhood with their children – 4, 9 and 13 years – received social security numbers, driving license for Cesar and new hotel cleaning. They gave the immigration officials their address.

Then, on Monday, each legal protection they thought was in force was apparently supported. With two of their children who were looking, screaming and crying, the border patrol arrested the couple in DC, removing them from home in handcuffs, under the charge of an offense of illegally crossing the border more than two years ago, according to the judicial documents, a video that surprises some of them. The family was separated for three days. Until Thursday night, the couple returned to their house, with an order to appear in a federal court El Paso in 30 days to respond to the illegal crossing.

The arrests, a few weeks before the temporary protected status expires for several hundred thousand Venezuelians, immediately raised alarms among the lawyers of the immigrants that the Trump administration undertakes a new strategy, as they try to perform mass deportations. Advocacy groups say they investigate whether the government violates a 2023 court resolution that prohibits the separation of children from their parents based on illegal border crossings, the same minor crime The first Trump administration in 2018 to justify the separation of families at the South Border, under a “zero tolerance” policy. It was not clear on Friday why this couple was aimed at arrest and what it could mean for others who have temporarily protected status after they also passed illegally.

“They saw their father’s father and mother,” Gregorio’s grandfather said on Thursday in an interview. “The children were looking.”

US spokesman and border protection, Youssef Fawaz, refused to answer questions about why the border patrol arrested the couple and separated them from their children for three days, saying that he cannot discuss individual cases due to confidentiality issues.

But the border patrol made their names public in judicial records that claimed that they passed the illegal border on October 13, 2022, crossing the river in the El Paso area. The posting does not fully identify the couple and grandfather of the children, because they said they are afraid of their lives if it is deported to Venezuela after requiring our asylum. After the couple was released, Hilton Beckham, Deputy CBP Deputy Business Commissioner, issued a statement on Friday, claiming that the couple had links with the Aragua train, which the family lawyer and the immigration of the couple denied it.

The same day, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation to quickly eliminate Venezuelans with alleged links with that transnational band, an attempt to use the law of aliens for the first time from World War II that a federal judge blocked her on Saturday.

The American Lawyer Civil Liberties Union Lee Gelernt, who led the process against family separations in Trump’s first term, said the organization immediately launched an investigation into arrests, which were first reported by Los Angeles Times.

Cesar and Norelia tried to comply with the rules after passing the border, the lawyer and their relatives said, paying taxes and completing the requests that the Government asked. But, according to the Trump administration, the rules have changed – for them, and other millions that have entered the country illegally, whether they are allowed to stay.

The family believed that they are safe because they have a temporary protected status, which the Congress created in a law since 1990 to protect people from deporting if their country is included in the war or another crisis. A few days before leaving the position, the Biden administration extended the protection for up to 600,000 Venezuelians until October 2026, saying it is uncertain to deport them due to political repression, extreme malnutrition and to collapse the health system.

After taking over the position, the Trump administration canceled this extension last month and said that thousands of Venezuelians should prepare to lose their work permits from April, while others will lose them in September. The Trump administration has made thousands of immigration arrests, reopened the detention facilities of the migrant family that the Biden administration has closed and sought to quickly follow the deportations of thousands in the United States, including those who have entered conditional freedom, such as the couple.

In another case, a TPS holder in Venezuela spent more than 20 days in ice detention in New Mexico, after the authorities took the man in arrest while his routine appointment last month, his lawyers said.

Maitony Cardenas Barrera, 23, entered the United States legally through the CBP One application in 2023, after waiting for a conditional freedom, according to its lawyers.

While it was detained for three months, he passed a credible fear interview – the first step in an asylum request – and was later released. The lawyer of the Advocacy Center for Immigrants in Las Americas, Heidi Cerneka, said they told about the protected status of Cardenas Barrera and submitted their customer’s verified documents more than 10 times, but the authorities did not answer any of their calls or questions, they said.

“It is abusive and intentional when a person is held a day or 24 days without any legal basis,” Cerneka said. “I’m afraid there is more Maitony that no one knows about.”

The status of TPS of Cesar and Norelia, which expires on April 7, remained firmly in force when a border patrol reached their door in the south -Washington, while the couple was returning home from work, their public defender said ABE.

Cesar, a former member of the Venezuelan National Guard, and his family fled from Venezuela, because he opposed the detention of people who opposed the Nicolás Maduro regime, his father Gregorio said. They joined the relatives in Ecuador, but they faced discrimination and felt obliged to move to the north to the United States. Their children went to school and learned English and Cesar found a second job as a Uber driver.

Ever since they settled in DC in 2022 -some of the thousands of migrants from South America who arrived in the city that year -volunteers have been offered with the efforts of the Advocacy group for Migrant Aid Advocacy migrants to help others with food or furniture, even contributing to a vacation party, said Amy Fisc.

Fischer said this was the first time he saw people who settled in the United States to face criminal prosecution for illegal entry -the same charges that Trump officials have used in his first term to separate families.

A video with the mobile phone of the arrest taken by one of their children behind a partially closed shade, says the simple clothing officers who take Cesar in an unmarked vehicle as their son shouted, in English: “I did nothing!” In the background, another child can be heard crying, saying in Spanish: “He is my father.”

The Government’s decision to pursue the accusations under the conditions in which he seemed to confuse the judge at the first hearing of the couple at the US District Court on Wednesday.

“It is my first case like this,” said American judge G. Michael Harvey, at the hearing, after rejecting the request of the Trump administration to keep the couple incarcerated longer for the offending. He wondered if “he could be the first of many.”

During the meeting, the US Deputy Lawyer, Megan McFadden, asked Harvey to order the couple to hold longer, saying that the government hopes it could be perfectly transferred to ICE for deportation procedures. She said that “I can run” because they did not refer to the nearest ice office within 60 days of crossing the border with Mexico, as needed.

McFadden said he does not know that the defendants have temporarily protected status. Subsequently, the judge said he was “underlined” by her knowledge about the case. He was also dissatisfied with her statements that the couple was a flight risk.

Abe said she had “never met” such a case during a public defender and claimed that her customers were not trying to hide from the government. On the contrary, they requested social security numbers, paid taxes and passed background checks, applying temporarily protected status.

ABE mentioned that the federal officers found the couple easily. She said they would report to Texas and understood that the failure will appear will lead to another arrest and possibly another separation from their children.

“They don’t want to be without their children,” Abe said.

As a Spanish performer translated the lawyer’s comments about their children, Cesar and Norelia, who participated in the hearing through separate online flows from the DC prison, they could both be seen wiping tears.

The judge ordered the couple to report to the Texas Federal Court within 30 days of issue to cope with the charges.

The couple remained in the federal custody on Thursday morning and were taken to an ice office in a suburb of Virginia in the DC, later mentioned.

After the post and others asked Ice and CBP why they were arrested and separated by their children, the officials released them that evening. Immigration and customs application did not answer questions about their detention.

On Thursday night, they returned to the weak apartment of Gregorio in southeast Washington, where a single blue ball floated in the corner, part of a last-minute birth holiday for their eldest son, who is 13 years old.

Cesar began to tremble as he predicted what could happen if he had deported to Venezuela, leaning his 4-year-old son. “I see myself as a traitor,” he said. “There will be six months in prison immediately or worse.”

The date of the court in Texas appeared high, full of uncertainty.

He should pay his own road, Cesar said. Would they get to be detained again? Would everything be finished? And would they see the kids again?

Norelia cut, telling her husband: “We must be optimistic.”

“You’re still traumatized,” Gregorio told him. “We have to take you to a therapist.”

The family fled to the United States because they hoped the government would treat them better, they said.

“It is as if we were building a castle here in two years and in an hour, they broke everything,” Gregorio said. “I lost everything, even if it’s not much. Everything I did here I worked. “

The birth ball was clinging to the corner of the white walls of Stucu. On a black kitchen table, the crumbs of the child’s birthday cake were deleted.