Francisco, 38, and his brother, Ruben, 28, had functioned as a unit since they migrated from Nicaragua in October 2022 looking for better economic opportunities.
The brothers hired a coyote in Honduras that was recommended by a Nicaraguan friend who had migrated to the Bay Area a few years earlier. Francisco and Ruben sold their motorcycles, pooled all their savings and paid the coyote in full before embarking on a 13-day journey to the United States. Like nearly 100,000 other people, they planned to apply for the Biden era parole for Nicaraguans, which allowed those nationals to work temporarily in the U.S. They later applied for asylum once they entered the country.
“We could only hear the coyotes and the authorities nearby,” said Francisco, recalling their journey through the Mexican desert before surrendering to U.S. immigration agents at the border. When they arrived in the Bay Area, they slept in a car borrowed from their friend, Ruben said.
The siblings grew up in Granada, Nicaragua, a colonial city economically fueled by the tourism industry about an hour from the capital, Managua. Ruben and Francisco didn’t grow up in a wealthy family, but the brothers, and their sister, had a normal, happy upbringing with access to education, food, healthcare and a loving family.
For months the two brothers shared meals. They walked Mission Street for hours looking for work and eventually found some – Francisco at a grocery store and Ruben at a natural juice shop. They shopped for sneakers, a shared passion. They went out for dinner. They visited Alcatraz and went to Giants games. They came to enjoy and like the new city they called home. Eventually, they found a room on 24th Street that they rented from a Nicaraguan family they met through a friend of their friend. Francisco and Ruben shared the room, two beds and piles of sneakers and hats, and cooked and took care of each other.
Most importantly, the two kept each other company and, together, missed the life left behind in Nicaragua and bonded over their new reality as immigrants in the United States.
That world shattered on Feb. 17 when Francisco got a call while at the grocery store: Ruben had been arrested during his asylum appointment at the Sansome Street immigration court.
“I felt like my world was crumbling. The only reason I didn’t cry is because I was at work,” said
Francisco.
Francisco and others had advised Ruben not to go to the February appearance. “You’d be walking straight into the wolves’ mouth,” he remembers telling his younger brother.
As he arrived at his immigration appointment, he was surrounded by agents. “I gotta do my job. Don’t be afraid,” one of them said. Ruben was going to be deported.
“Why would I be afraid?” Ruben recalled saying at the time. “I’m not running away and I haven’t done anything wrong.”
For Francisco, it felt like “they’re taking someone from you, like you’re losing someone.”
For Ruben, it was the start of a 20-day journey back to Nicaragua.
He was handcuffed, shackled and transported to an all-metal room where he received a gray jumpsuit, boxers, socks and some snacks.
Around 4 p.m. he was back on a bus to the immigration court in Concord where ICE agents picked up more detainees. In the van, Ruben said, he and other detainees bonded over their shared stories of migration, jobs, income and arrest.
As rain pounded down, the van carried around 70 men on a 270-mile journey to the Mesa Verde Detention Center in Bakersfield.
They arrived at 1 a.m. and each received a pillow, a toothbrush, and a blanket, Ruben said. As they headed toward bunks, other detainees woke up and clapped in recognition of the newcomers. Ruben would spend 10 days there.
Meanwhile in San Francisco, Francisco was adrift. He started to feel anxious, exposed and alone. He lost weight.
He remembered the couple of days the two spent inside a detention center in Texas when they reached the United States and requested asylum.
“You don’t know the day or the time. You only see these lamps and all of these people. It’s like a jail,” said Francisco.
For 35 cents a minute, Ruben would call his brother to assure him he was well. “Don’t worry about me.” Francisco knew his brother wanted to ease his anxiety, but he didn’t believe Ruben was telling everything.
And he wasn’t. But it was also good to hear his voice.
At the Bakersfield detention center, Ruben found “brotherhood.”
“As soon as I walked in, people helped me fix my bed,” Ruben said in Spanish from Granada, Nicaragua. “Within a few days I was doing the same for other newcomers.”
Ruben met two other Nicaraguan detainees there and quickly earned the nickname of “Hindu” because he was taken for Indian by a group of Indian immigrants when he first arrived.
During his time at the detention center, Ruben said he sustained himself mostly on apples and cookies. The center served “eggs that felt like chewing plastic” and “beef patties that make McDonald’s meat seem VIP.”
One of his Nicaraguan friends at the center advised Ruben to speak to an attorney to try to find a way to stay instead of accepting deportation. A wife and six-year-old son awaited him, but he wanted time to save more money to build a house for all of them.
So Ruben contacted an attorney from the rapid response line the next day to invoke his habeas corpus rights, a tool that allows citizens and non citizens to challenge their detention if they believe the government detained them without legal authority.
Milli Atkinson, the director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the San Francisco Bar Association, said that those who receive a removal order have to file an appeal within 30 days after the order is issued, and those who missed an immigration appointment, need to file a motion explaining why they missed their court appearance.
Ruben failed to do that. He thought the removal order he received was a warning. Moreover, he had missed a previous appointment because he was unaware that the date had been changed. Atkinson and other legal experts said immigrants are increasingly confronting changes – without notification – of their appointments.
He thought he could sort out the confusion. But that was not the case. And that proved fatal to his case.
“If someone missed their hearing and they do not file the correct motion as to why they missed their hearing with their evidence as to why they missed their hearing, then they’ve basically lost any legal argument,” said Atkinson.
Atkinson recommended people check their court dates online, rather than relying on mail notifications, to stay up to date with possible changes on their cases.
Within a couple of days, Ruben was on a plane with other Latino, Chinese and African migrants to a detention center in Arizona he described as “horrible.” He recalled being in a cell with 75 people that had a capacity for 25. There were no mattresses and the bathroom was smelly and dirty.
That was his home for 14 hours before he boarded another plane.
Meanwhile in the Bay Area, Francisco was worried. He spoke with his brother less frequently and much of the information he received about his whereabouts came through his mother and sister-in-law in Nicaragua, both of whom spoke to Ruben more despite the call costing more.
Francisco couldn’t sleep and cried at night when he returned home and saw his brother’s empty bed in the room the two shared.
“He represented my mom, my dad and my sister. He represented my whole family. It felt like my whole family had died,” said Francisco.
“Whenever he called me, I returned to life,” he said. And when his nephew called him, he added, he would ask where his dad was and why he was taking so long. He’d say ‘why has he been traveling so long?,’” said Francisco.
Ruben’s final ride home was not direct. On Saturday Feb. 28, he was back on a plane that made two stops before arriving at Puerto Isabel Detention Center in Texas on Sunday, March 1. In his seven days there, he befriended many of the Cuban detainees at the center. The food and the general attention was better at Puerto Isabel and the other Nicaraguans there were excited to return home and end their lives in detention centers. He was too.
Ruben arrived in Nicaragua on Sunday March 8. He remained handcuffed and shackled until he reached Nicaraguan airspace.
Police officers welcomed about 300 detainees on the same flight and then took them to a room where they picked up their belongings, sang the national anthem and received a snack.
Soon, Ruben was on a government truck and heading home to Granada
“I felt nervous and happy. I was just really excited to see my son,” said Ruben.
Ruben’s family met him in the city of Masaya, 11 miles from Granada. He looked different. He had lost nearly 20 pounds and he had facial hair. At the beginning, his son, Kathriel, hid behind his mom.
“He was shy,” said Ruben. “I told him ‘hey champion. I promised you that I was gonna be back with you soon enough. I’m here.’”
Today, Ruben is not employed and is working fulltime on his house, which he expects could be completed in September. He plans to open a market soon after.
He talks to his brother Francisco about twice a week and tells his son about the beautiful city he remembers, describing the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz Island to a fascinated Kathriel.
Most recently, he felt a little emotional thinking of the fourth of July fireworks. He’s also been listening to “Be Sure to Wear Flowers in your Hair,” the famous song by Scott McKenzie about San Francisco.
He would like to return someday to take his son to Disneyland.
“I hope to one day fulfill that dream, but it won’t be the way my brother and I did it,” said Ruben.
In the Bay Area, Francisco still misses his brother, but he now lives in a new place and has come to adapt to their new long-distance relationship. He feels happy that Ruben is building the house he dreamed of and spending time with the little boy he loves so much.
Francisco said he would like to return to Nicaragua one day, but at a time of his choosing. He also fears deportation given what his brother went through and he now frequently checks his court date online, currently scheduled for July next year, for a possible change. He said, however, if he was to be deported, he’ll accept his fate and be happy to be reunited with his family.
Meanwhile, Ruben, while happy to be with his family, misses and worries about his brother.
“I was happy flying back, but also sad at the same time. We left together and I wanted us to return together, victorious,” said Ruben.
I understand that this is supposed to be a sympathetic portrayal, but geez, I do not feel it. There are many things to say, but the thing that jumps out at me is that they make a mockery of the asylum system, which requires *persecution* in your home country for eligibility. This article would be Exhibit A in any asylum hearing: they’re not refugees, here because of persecution, but to make some cash to bring home. Asylum is for people suffering in their home country, not ones here to better their economic circumstances. They explicitly want to go home; asylum is for those unable to, because of mistreatment. This is the kind of misuse of asylum that makes it hard for actual refugees to be taken seriously.
Economic refugees? That seems like a reasonable reason to try to find work somewhere… We destabilized their country for years.