Then they came for your family
How Bellingham families are coping in the aftermath of a devastating ICE raid
Story by QUESTEN INGHRAM with contribution from LAURA PLACE / Illustration by MOUSE BIRD
Ruby Castañeda was lying with her one-month-old son on Aug. 29 when she received a phone call from her husband, Daniel. He had left for work at Granite Precasting and Concrete in Bellingham two hours before. He usually texts her during his break, but this call came early. He told her he needed her to stay calm and to bring him tennis shoes.
“They had a really labor-intensive job moving concrete, so my first thought was like, shit, he hurt his leg or his leg got cut off or something,” Ruby recalled.
Instead, she was shocked to hear him say he’d been pulled over and arrested by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement while on his commute to work.
“I just started freaking out and crying,” Ruby said. “And I was like, ‘Oh my god, what’s going to happen?’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know. But stay calm. I need you to be calm for the kids. Just get yourself together and then they’re going to tell you where to meet them.’”
Daniel had to persuade the ICE agents to let him call Ruby. He didn’t want her to hear what happened from a stranger. During the phone call, the ICE agent told Ruby to meet them at a gas station. She brought them the shoes, and they told her that Daniel would call again once he was in Tacoma at the Northwest Detention Center.
“That was basically it. They gave me his keys, his wallet, his belt, his boots and told me where to get his truck. They told me where it was parked, which was literally down the road from my house,” Ruby said. “And that was it.”
That same day, Marisol Chapina worried about what happened to Jahn, her partner, after he called saying he was stopped by law enforcement five minutes after leaving for work at the precasting company. She didn’t hear back from him. She called Bellingham Police and Highway Patrol. No one had been arrested that morning, they told her. They transferred her to Border Patrol, who said they had him, but could not provide any more information other than the location of his car, which they had parked in the Barkley movie theater lot.
Daniel and Jahn, along with 14 others, were detained on Aug. 29 in an ICE raid targeting workers of Granite Precasting and Concrete while they were on their commutes. The raid resulted in the deportation of nine people over the following months, one as recent as Nov. 4, with seven still awaiting court dates to determine if they are eligible to remain in the United States, the land of their work, family and homes.
Ruby and Marisol ended up meeting one another the day after the raid at a community meeting hosted by Community to Community Development, or C2C, a women-led group in Bellingham which advocates for migrant and immigrant labor rights.
C2C had planned an action to stop the bus which would take the men from a Ferndale Border Patrol facility to the Northwest Detention Center, but when they arrived at 6 a.m., they discovered the men had been transported in the night, C2C media coordinator Liz Darrow said.
That week, Ruby met with Darrow, and Pamela Jons, executive vice president of the Whatcom Community Foundation to discuss the needs of the families. It was there that Raid Relief to Reunite Families was born. Because Ruby is bilingual, she offered to coordinate the group for the families, and Marisol stepped in to help lead it, Ruby said.
Raid Relief to Reunite Families funds bail bonds and legal fees for those detained by ICE and provides necessities for their families, many of whom lost their principal working family members.
The Whatcom Community Foundation, a nonprofit charity group, accepts donations for Raid Relief, which then is granted to the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship and Catholic Community Services which disperses the money as needed. As of mid-November, over 200 people have donated to the foundation and to the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship to support the families affected by the raid. Between the two groups, $200,000 was raised as of mid-November, Jons said.
“It’s not about immigration policy, or residential status, it’s about how everyone who lives here should have the opportunity to thrive,” Jons said.
Six of the men have been released from the detention center on bail bond, ranging from $3,000 to $18,000, Ruby said. Jahn was not offered bond, along with another man who was deported back to Honduras on Nov. 4 who has an 8-year-old son still in the United States.
“Some of them that are released right now I don’t think would be released without this foundation. They would not have been able to post the bonds,” Marisol said. “The hope is that these bonds with be returned when their cases are solved, and that money would be recycled and hopefully we’d be able to help other families.”
The Northwest Detention Center, with a capacity to confine 1,575 people, is the fourth largest immigrant detention center in the country and is one of many owned by The GEO Group, a multibillion-dollar corporation which is contracted by the federal government.
Marisol said that Jahn and other detainees have been quarantined for chickenpox and mumps, during which times they are not allowed to receive visits from family or lawyers. She said that missed hearings because of quarantines cause delays in court schedules and as a consequence, longer times in detention. She described how Jahn complains about the food in the center, and how they are only allowed to go outside for one hour a day.
“They’re treated like criminals basically. He’s like, ‘We have no rights,’” she said.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit in September 2017 against The GEO Group for violation of the state’s minimum wage laws and for unjust enrichment. The GEO Group pays its Northwest Detention Center inmates one dollar a day or in extra food for work that keeps the facility operational, the Office of the Attorney General stated in a press release. In April, a federal judge rejected a motion by The GEO Group to dismiss the lawsuit.
The detention center has also been the site of a hunger strike by an asylum seeker from Russia, who died in a Tacoma hospital on Nov. 24 after attempting to hang himself at the center. Prior to his attempt, the detainee had detailed his inhumane treatment in the center, including being left in an isolated cell with no clothes, in a written note to his attorney, according to an article by The Seattle Times. According to the Human Rights Watch, 74 people have died at the facility since 2010.
Tanya Roman, an ICE public affairs officer, stated in an email that they “take both the mental and physical wellbeing of those within our care very seriously.” Roman also addressed the matter of detainees being quarantined in the event of illness, saying that those put in quarantines still have access to family and lawyer visits, so long as they wear a mask.
“In an exercise of caution, ICE houses individuals together who may have been exposed to chickenpox to determine immunity,” Roman said. “Visitors entering the facility are informed when there is an active chickenpox case, but not prevented from entering.”
When asked if the raid was carried out due to past criminal records of any of the detainees, Roman said, “ICE does not conduct sweeps, checkpoints or raids that target aliens indiscriminately. On Aug. 29, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arrested 16 individuals in a targeted immigration enforcement operation.” Roman did not address whether any of the targeted men had prior criminal records.
Roman stated that ICE cannot comment further on the case as it is part of a longer ongoing investigation.
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While awaiting decisions about his future in the U.S., Marisol recalled her and Jahn’s first years together.
“We both went to a karaoke night at a restaurant and ended up sitting next to each other. He ended up asking for my phone number and it was kind of funny — a few weeks later I had foot surgery and so he was there for me. We had just met so we bonded more over that,” she reminisced.
Marisol and Jahn felt they were at the age to start a family, and they soon decided to move in together, she said. They fell in love with a house they’d seen for sale, and they bought it. He was detained right before their first mortgage payment, Marisol said.
Jahn came to the United States from Honduras in 2014, fleeing the threat of organized crime. His father also arrived from Honduras in June, but was detained and sent to a facility in Louisiana until Marisol and Jahn posted his bail on Aug. 27 and got him a plane ticket. At last, on Aug. 28 Jahn’s father arrived and saw him for the first time in five years. They spent the evening together after his shift at work, only for Jahn to be taken the next day.
“It’s just like, we couldn’t believe it. We had just gone through that process, it was supposed to be a celebratory weekend, and he was excited, and — ” Marisol paused — “it’s been awful ever since.”
Ruby also described the progress she and Daniel had been making in their life together. She first met Daniel working at a restaurant in Lynden. They later reconnected, leading to their marriage in September 2017. On the day of the raid, they were planning to move in with a friend in order to save money while they began the process of obtaining his permanent resident status, Ruby said.
“It’s something that you always talk about with your spouse who’s undocumented, like, ‘What’s our plan? What’s going to happen?’” Ruby said. “I would always tell him to shut up, it’s not going to happen to us, like you’ve been here for 12 years, you don’t have a ticket, you’re not a bad person, you don’t look for trouble, and we’re in the process of getting your permanent residency.”
Daniel came from Mexico in 2006 with his first wife, who moved to the United States on a work visa. She was pregnant and they already had a 5-month old child. They moved to Washington 11 years ago.
Ruby found herself unable to explain the situation to her 8-year-old daughter, who wondered how Daniel could be in jail if he didn’t do anything wrong and he only lacked the proper papers.
“And she’s like, ‘Well what kind of papers does he need? Why can’t we just go to Walmart or Target and buy them for him and get him out, because he’s sitting in a place where only bad people belong,’” Ruby recalled her daughter asking. “I just instantly started crying because I didn’t know how else to explain it.”
Ruby said after nine days of Daniel in detention, she scrambled around Tacoma, depositing checks and waiting in ICE offices to pay Daniel’s bond. Finally, Daniel was released.
“It was a huge relief,” Ruby said. But with her on maternity leave and Daniel prohibited from working, they had to move again, this time into her parents’ house. Ruby admits that not being able to work has been stressful for Daniel, but until the outcome of his trial, Daniel remains productive, and Ruby remains hopeful.
“It’s obvious that Daniel would have a job when he’s able to work. He has ties to the community, he’s working on his English, he’s been going to school, he’s volunteering at the food bank,” Ruby said. “He’s doing things just to prove that he’s worthy of being member of the community. So I’m not scared. I just don’t feel like anyone can say no to that.”
Daniel’s first hearing in court is set for March 29, Ruby said.
As for Jahn, his asylum claim was deemed credible and he is awaiting his hearing set for Jan. 28.
“Jahn and I are still in a way appreciative that he’s not deported. There’s been some people that didn’t even have the option — they were just deported,” Marisol said. She is hopeful that Jahn will be released.
The family members of Julio Ayala, another worker of the precasting company detained by ICE during the raid, have been left feeling hopeless following Julio’s recent deportation. Julio was deported and arrived back to Mexico on Sept. 19, leaving behind his wife Laura Noriega, his four stepchildren and his daughter, who was three weeks old at the time of the raid.
It was the first day of school for Laura’s children and her car had broken down, but Julio wouldn’t answer her phone calls, Laura explained through translation by Marisol. When he did call her, it was to tell her that he was detained and where to pick up his truck. Julio was at the detention center for two weeks until he was deported back to Mexico.
Laura was ill during her pregnancy and Julio had been helping take care of the family. With Julio gone, Laura’s eldest son, who is 18 years old, had to drop out of his senior year of high school in order to begin working to support the family, she said.
Since arriving back to Mexico, Julio has been staying with some of his other children. He is trying to find work and wants to come back, but there is not much hope for the foreseeable future of him returning to see his newborn child, Laura said.
Laura met Julio at a dance four years ago. “It was something unexpected,” she said. Laura came to the United States in 2008 and Julio has been in Bellingham since 2013.
The teachers at her children’s school have been supportive, and the donations from Raid Relief to Reunite Families have helped her pay for necessities, bills and clothes for the baby, Laura said.
“Had it not been for the foundation, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said.
“These are people that come to work, they don’t come to harm anyone,” Laura stressed of the men who were taken on the August morning. “Everyone was on their way to work.”