'Have mercy': Families plead as migrants arrested at routine DHS check-ins
Outside a nondescript building in downtown Manhattan, Ambar was pleading to God and immigration authorities that her husband Jaen would not walk out the doors of the Elk Street facility in handcuffs.
"It's the only thing I ask of God and them, to have mercy for his family. I don't have anyone else. I'm alone with my daughter, I don't want to be separated from him," Ambar told ABC News with tears welling up as her daughter Aranza kept herself distracted on an iPad.
But her prayers were not answered. That afternoon, Jaen and two other men were brought outside by masked agents in plainclothes and quickly ushered into unmarked vehicles, with Ambar wailing and making a last plea. Aranza, 12, tried to push past the agents to prevent them from leading him toward the vehicles, tears streaming down her face.
ABC News observed the emotional moments as an uncontrollably distraught Ambar threw herself on the ground pleading for her husband to be released.
The masked individuals did not respond to multiple questions asked by ABC News regarding what agency they belonged to, why they were covering their faces, and which authority was being invoked to detain the men. But Jaen's lawyer, Margaret Cargioli, says his detention follows a growing pattern of migrants being detained during check-ins with the Department of Homeland Security and being quickly deported under expedited removal.
In 2023, ABC News did a sit-down interview with the Colombian-Venezuelan family about their tearful reunion after being separated at the border by U.S. authorities in Texas. Jaen, Ambar and Aranza made the dangerous journey from Colombia hoping to seek asylum in the U.S.
"[It was] traumatic," Jaen said during the interview. "It was a risky decision. We knew we had someone to take care of, our daughter. As a family, we felt we didn't have another option."
Once they reached the border the family said they were separated and were placed in different types of removal proceedings. Ambar and her daughter said they were eventually released and placed on a bus to Los Angeles, funded by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star.
Jaen was issued a removal order under the expedited removal process, but Cargioli and other attorneys with Immigrant Defenders Law Center were able to successfully challenge the separation and he was released on humanitarian parole for one year.
Cargioli says Jaen has petitioned for asylum, a renewal of parole and a stay of removal but all are pending.
Jaen was scheduled for a check-in on June 16 as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) — an alternative to the detention program run by ICE -- but was unexpectedly told to come in on June 3 or 4, Ambar told ABC News.
That raised major red flags for his legal team, who has been monitoring increasing incidents of the Trump administration detaining migrants in the interior of the country and placing them on "expedited removal." The process allows the government to remove migrants in a streamlined manner without requiring them, in some cases, to go before a judge.
Under the Biden administration, the process applied to migrants who had entered the U.S. within 14 days and within 100 miles of the border. Under the Trump administration, it has been expanded to apply to migrants anywhere in the interior who have arrived within two years.
Jaen and his family entered the United States on June 4, 2023, exactly two years before his latest detention, leading Cargioli to fear he's being placed in expedited removal. Despite asking the ISAP officers where he was going to be detained, and if it was through expedited removal, the attorney says she has not received an answer.
Jaen spoke with Ambar on the phone after his detention and said he did not know where he was, but that he was being held at a facility close to where he was detained, Ambar said.
Ambar and Aranza have an asylum hearing scheduled for June 2028. Cargioli believes Jaen would be with his family if they had not been separated at the border.
"If he had not been separated from his family at that stage and put into expedited removal, he would have his case in immigration in New York, in immigration court with her, with both of them," she told ABC News.
ISAP check-ins are carried out through a government contractor called BI Incorporated, according to DHS reports. Jaen has been regularly checking in at the Elk Street office since his initial detention, Ambar said.
Families with loved ones checking in stand outside the facility hoping they will not be detained. On Wednesday, ABC News saw one woman cry with joy when a relative and her baby walked out with no handcuffs in sight. Another woman was shocked to see her mom being quickly led into one of the vehicles waiting outside the building.
"Mom what happened, what is this," the woman asked. The masked agents did not respond to her repeated questions about why her mom was being detained.
"I don't understand," the woman yelled. "She didn't do anything. She has a work card."
"Who do we speak to…what is going on," she asked as the agents closed the car door and drove off with her mother.
A spokesperson for DHS said in a statement Friday, "Those arrested had executable final orders of removal by an immigration judge and had not complied with that order. If you are in the country illegally and a judge has ordered you to be removed, that is precisely what will happen."
The DHS spokesperson said ISAP "exists to ensure compliance with release conditions. All illegal aliens are afforded due process."
