A high school champion mariachi musician who was arrested and detained when he and his family appeared for an immigration check-in was released Monday following pressure from members of Congress and others.
Shortly afterward, his family was released from a detention center hundreds of miles away.
Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, announced she had secured the release of Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, a McAllen, Texas, mariachi trumpet player and high school senior. His award-winning mariachi band, which included his brother Caleb, 14, performed on Capitol Hill in June at her invitation.
Gámez-Cuéllar had been separated from his father, mother and two brothers, who were detained in a family detention center in Dilley, while he had been held with adults in a facility in Raymondville, about 230 miles away.
“Antonio is going home,” De La Cruz said in a news release.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, followed with a social media post, saying: “The Gámez-Cuéllar family has been released from Dilley! We just picked them up.”
Gámez-Cuéllar’s father, Luis Antonio Gámez Martínez, 40, his brothers, Caleb, and Joshua 12, and his mother, Emma Cuéllar de Gámez, 38, had been held in Dilley, about 75 miles southwest of San Antonio.
A family member, Denise Robles, said Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar went from the Raymondville facility to a Whataburger restaurant with De La Cruz after he was released.
Outrage had been growing since ICE arrested and detained Gámez-Cuéllar and his family. His father and brothers are also mariachi performers, and there’s a long history of mariachi musicianship among their family in Mexico.
Ezra Cavazos, Gámez-Cuéllar’s girlfriend and a fellow mariachi, told NBC News the family had come to the country seeking asylum. The father had been kidnapped and faced cartel threats, he told The New York Times — and they presented themselves at a Brownsville port of entry in May 2023 seeking asylum. The family supports itself through the musical gigs of the father, Gámez-Cuéllar and Caleb, Cavazos said.
In an email sent before Gámez-Cuéllar was released, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson who was not identified said that the young man’s parents were arrested Feb. 25 and that they chose to bring their children with them. DHS said the family had entered the U.S. near Brownsville illegally and were released back into the country by the Biden administration.
“The law requires illegal aliens who show up at a port of entry without valid entry to be detained while all their claims are heard. You can look it up in the statute. Unlike the previous administration, the Trump administration is not going to ignore the rule of law,” DHS said.
The Trump administration’s detention of asylum-seekers has been a contentious issue, and it has led to legal challenges over the practice.
The agency said that under ICE policy, men without children are “NOT housed at the Dilley facility for the safety of the children inside the facility.”
Mariachi is deeply embedded in the Rio Grande Valley and something of a competitive sport in the region. Top middle and high school students face off in statewide competitions, and some go on to participate in programs at the college level.
“Antonio and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar went from performing with the Mariachi Oro vocalists before Congress to being imprisoned by ICE,” Castro posted on social media Sunday. “I am doing everything in my power to make sure the boys and their family return home safely.”
Castro, along with other members of the Democratic caucus, had scrambled to visit Dilley and pressure ICE to release the family.
The facility also previously held 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, the Minneapolis boy who was photographed wearing a backpack and a blue bunny hat when he and his father were taken by immigration agents. Castro pressured for their release, as well as the release of all families held in Dilley.
Brothers Caleb and Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar.Ezra Cavazos’We couldn’t believe it’
The family had shown up for every ICE appointment and were told early on that the children didn’t need to accompany them so they could attend school, Robles said.
But this time was different, said Robles, whose husband is a cousin to Emma Cuéllar de Gámez. This time, ICE called and asked to speak to Cuéllar de Gámez, even though her husband answered the phone. They were told that everyone had to show up at the appointment, Robles said.
“We were all shocked. We couldn’t believe it,” Robles said.
Texas Democratic consultant Anthony Medrano, a San Antonio-based mariachi, said he heard about the family’s arrest from other musicians in the close-knit mariachi community and has been working to get word out about the family’s detention.
“There’s an injustice happening in our country, and it’s happening to a family of immigrants who have tried to do the right thing,” Medrano said.
He and others praised Gámez-Cuéllar as an exceptionally talented musician and student who had not been in any trouble.
The night before he and his family ended up jailed in separate immigration detention centers, Gámez-Cuéllar and Cavazos attended church youth services, as they do every Tuesday, and prayed for his and his family’s impending immigration appointment.
“We went to church. We prayed over it. Just for peace and if worse comes to worse. … I mean, it’s happened now right?” Cavazos said earlier Monday as she and others were rallying for his release. “We weren’t sure that everything would be OK.”
The arrests and the scramble to free the family took on political overtones.
De La Cruz, who’s seeking re-election and has been a supporter of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, criticized the arrests of the mariachi family, saying their story “breaks my heart,” and said she has been talking to government agencies and calling for their release.
In her statement about Gámez-Cuéllar’s release Monday, she said, “While some were busy politicizing this family’s situation, I was busy solving it.”
Her challenger in this year’s midterm elections, Tejano singer Bobby Pulido, a Democrat, had posted a video about the family’s detention, saying: “This is a family who came here though a legal process. They passed a credible fear interview — they showed up to every single court date. They followed the rules. They’re doing it the right way. Now they are being torn apart.”
Castro also criticized De La Cruz on social media Saturday. He said he had met Gámez-Cuéllar and his brother Caleb at a congressional event hosted by De La Cruz.
“Where is their congresswoman now?” he said. “How are they good enough, safe enough, excellent enough to perform at the Capitol and visit the White House but still deserve to be locked up at Dilley?”
Trump scored a historic victory when he flipped several counties in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley from Democratic blue to Republican red in the last election, helped by Latino votes.
The region is now considered potentially competitive, with the possibility of some Latino voters’ swinging back to blue in November’s midterm election.