Bay Area mother, separated from family, flown to Arizona detention after ICE check-in

We have big news: The American Journalism Project is investing $1.5 million in Mission Local!

It’s a powerful validation of our neighborhood-first reporting from one of the largest national journalism funders, and will help us expand our reporting to more neighborhoods.

Thank you for reading us — and supporting us — all these years.

Read more

On Monday morning, Carolina, 39, got a text message from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, asking her to come to an impromptu check-in at San Francisco’s ICE field office, at 630 Sansome St. in the Financial District.

Less than 36 hours later, she was on a plane, en route to a detention facility in Arizona.

The Trump administration has justified mass deportations with statements about dangerous migrants who have criminal convictions. But what seems to be happening in San Francisco, immigration attorneys and advocates say, are arrests of those easiest to find. People who, like Carolina, will show up.

Carolina, who is originally from Guatemala and has asked to be referred to only by her first name, lives in the city of Richmond with her husband, Eliseo, 43, and their two children: A daughter and a son, ages 10 and 5. 

Her detention came amid a rash of arrests at ICE’s San Francisco field office this week. Later in the week, three families, comprising at least 15 people, including a toddler, were arrested on Wednesday. At least one of those families has since been sent to a detention facility in Texas.

Last week, immigration attorneys and advocates told the San Francisco Standard that four people were arrested at the nearby immigration courthouse, at 100 Montgomery St.

Immigration lawyers and advocates believe the Trump administration is pressuring field offices to increase deportations, to fulfill President Donald Trump’s election promise of “mass deportations.” 

Hayden Rodarte, a senior staff attorney with the asylum program at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, a civil-rights organization, is representing Eliseo and the couple’s children in their asylum application. He was with Carolina the day she went to the ICE office, and spoke Friday to Mission Local about Carolina’s case.

Carolina first entered the United States more than 11 years ago, but quickly received a removal order at the border and went back to Guatemala, Rodarte said. The Department of Homeland Security has broad administrative powers to immediately turn migrants away at the border, without a court hearing.

Under asylum law, migrants have the right to challenge those removal orders by claiming asylum, Rodarte said. But, in practice, few of them can, he added.

Several years later, in 2019, Eliseo and the couple’s daughter entered the United States and claimed asylum. They have been living in the country since then.

Five years after that, in 2024, Carolina and the couple’s son, then a toddler, crossed into the country as well. This time, authorities detained Carolina and her son at the border, but then connected her with Eliseo and their daughter.

The family was reunited in the Bay Area, Rodarte said. Carolina and the couple’s son both applied for asylum. 

The son’s case was combined with his father and sister’s. Asylum seekers must show that they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country because of characteristics like race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. 

Eliseo is arguing that he faces persecution in Guatemala because of his indigenous race. His and the children’s case is being heard at the Concord Immigration Court, Rodarte said. 

But Carolina never got a notice to go to immigration court to seek asylum herself, the next step in the asylum process after a person files the initial paperwork, Rodarte said.

Had Carolina been allowed to seek asylum at the immigration court, then she would have been able to join her husband’s case, as her son did, and her prior removal order would no longer be relevant to whether she could stay in the country, Rodarte said. 

But without that ability to seek asylum, Carolina was left legally vulnerable. Rodarte thinks that vulnerability is why she was called in on Tuesday. ICE can legally choose at any moment to reinstate old removal orders, like Carolina’s, Rodarte said. That makes her someone easy to detain, and maybe even remove from the country. 

(Reinstating these orders is not unique to the Trump administration, Rodarte added. This happened regularly during the Obama administration as well.) 

On Tuesday at 9 a.m., Carolina, Eliseo and Rodarte arrived at ICE’s field office. Rodarte accompanied Carolina, he said, as her lawyer for the day. ICE often requires check-ins with people going through the immigration system, to make sure they are meeting requirements based on their legal standing. Failing to show up at a check-in could result in detention.

Rodarte said when he and Carolina finally entered the building, it was almost noon. Rodarte said he recommended Eliseo stay outside. 

Carolina checked in at an open cubicle on the first floor of the field office. She was then told to go up to the sixth floor, Rodarte said.

After another hour’s wait, Rodarte said, plainclothes ICE officers entered the room and took Carolina’s paperwork. They then asked her questions, and made a motion for her to turn around so they could cuff her.

The agents said they were reinstating her old order and would not allow Carolina to continue to apply for asylum, Rodarte said. Rodarte said the agents then took Carolina into another room. 

Rodarte spent the next few hours trying to speak to supervising officers in the field office, none of whom agreed to release Carolina.

By the time Rodarte saw Carolina again, she had been fingerprinted, DNA swabbed, and given gray, detainee clothing to wear, Rodarte said. He was only able to speak to her via a phone, through a plexiglass window.

Carolina is fluent in Maya K’iche’ and only speaks elementary Spanish, Rodarte said, which made trying to explain to her what was happening very difficult.

Officers told Rodarte that she would be on a plane that afternoon to Arizona. California has a handful of detention facilities. When Rodarte asked why Carolina was not able to stay in California, officers told him California’s detention beds were full, Rodarte said. 

Mission Local reached out to ICE to confirm the state did not have detention beds available. An ICE spokesperson said there was capacity for individual detainees in California, but not for families.

ICE did not clarify why Carolina then could not have then been held in a detention facility in California. ICE is not obligated to detain people inside of the state they are living in, Rodarte said. 

An ICE spokesperson added: “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.”

It took until Wednesday morning for Eliseo to find out where Carolina was. Officials said she was sent to a processing center in Arizona, called Florence Processing Center. She is now in a nearby, for-profit facility called Eloy Detention Center.

For Rodarte, the situation feels eerily familiar to Trump’s first term. 

“This is another family separation policy,” Rodarte said. “It’s just happening at the interior instead of the border.”