With no where to turn, this Venezuelan family in CO walked into ICE custody

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Cecilia stood outside a federal immigration field office in Centennial, chewing her lip and weighing the few choices left to her. Behind her, piled in a car, was what remained of her family’s life in the United States.

It was early May, and a few feet away, her three sons took turns sticking their shoes into old prairie dog holes in the dirt, the youngest’s Crocs breaking through cobwebs. As the boys looked from the ground to their mother, she explained that if she returned to the office the next day, immigration agents had promised to detain the family and arrange their return to Venezuela.

The Centennial office building was similar to one into which her husband and the boys’ father had disappeared late last year. But unlike Ronald, who’d been arrested at what he thought was a routine appointment, Cecilia arrived that day hoping that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would take them away.

She and her three children — ages 12, 9 and 6 — had walked for three months to get to the United States in 2024, crossing notorious expanses of jungle and mountains for the prospect of a stable future and a reunion with Ronald, who’d come earlier that year. But like other families split by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, they now found themselves struggling to make ends meet in a single-parent household, with no regular paycheck and few options.

The loss of a primary source of income, coupled with the federal government’s efforts to keep many immigrants indefinitely detained, has spurred families like Cecilia’s — and detainees like her husband — to stop fighting and leave the country. They’ve given up on asylum cases or other legal defenses in favor of a swift release from detention and from financial collapse.

An unprecedented number have asked to leave while in detention, while tens of thousands more have, like Cecilia, signed up to leave in exchange for a promise of cash and a flight home. Many more have simply left on their own, immigration advocates say.

Cecilia, who had been seeking asylum in the U.S., said outside the Centennial office that her family would be flown first to Arizona and kept in a detention center before they left. She believed the government would expedite their exit, she said in Spanish, because she was seven months pregnant. Earlier, she said she’d heard that families could sleep in hotels.

Two nonprofit workers and a volunteer had come with the family to the field office. They weren’t accustomed to walking immigrants without proper legal status into ICE custody. They were skeptical of the stories Cecilia had heard — and as she spoke, they exchanged glances and shifted their feet.

“A detention center is not a hotel,” V Reeves, of Housekeys Action Network Denver, told her in Spanish.

Cecilia crossed her arms.

After her husband was arrested, she’d learned she was pregnant. In the six months since then, the family lost its apartment and Cecilia lost her own job after her pregnancy began to show. They tumbled into poverty and near-homelessness, and she wanted to leave for her kids.

“They’re hungry because I can’t work,” she said that morning, before they’d left the house. They were all struggling to sleep. She’d briefly continued sending the boys to school, where they could at least get reliable meals. But then she’d pulled them out, fearful they could be arrested.

To protect her privacy and that of her children in her small Venezuelan town, The Denver Post is identifying Cecilia by her middle name. The Post confirmed Cecilia’s identity with two immigration advocates helping the family and by identifying her later in an ICE detainee database.

Using internal ICE records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, The Post also confirmed Ronald’s initial arrest and release in spring 2024, as well as his second arrest at the Centennial office in November, two days before Thanksgiving. Those details matched both Cecilia’s description and the advocates’ records about the family. The Post was unable to speak with Ronald and is identifying him by his first name.

ICE spokespeople did not respond to questions sent earlier this month about Cecilia’s status, and they referred additional questions to another agency. On Thursday, in an unsigned statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wrote that it “continues to support lawful and orderly departures and to work with interagency and international partners to mitigate documentation challenges where possible.”

On the morning that she turned herself in, Cecilia had $6 in her bag. If she decided to stay, she would need $800 to pay for another month in the single room the family shared in a south Denver home. She had an air mattress that was twin-sized and fraying. The boys took the floor.

So she made a choice. They would return to the Centennial office the next day and hope for a swift return home.

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