ICE detained Great Neck resident Tomas Orellana outside a Mineola courthouse on Monday, Jan. 5.<\/p>\n
Orellana, a Salvadoran native, has lived in the country for more than 20 years with his wife who is a U.S. citizen and eight children who are all U.S. citizens and attended Great Neck schools.<\/p>\n
Orellana was attending a mandatory probation visit at the courthouse for a DWI conviction from 2023 before he was detained by ICE. This was Orellana\u2019s second DWI.<\/p>\n
Efforts to reach ICE were unavailing.<\/p>\n
Orellana\u2019s family found out about his arrest when they received a text message from him asking them to call his immigration attorney.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tomas Orellana\u2019s wife, Claudia Orellana, has not been able to speak with her husband since he was taken into custody.<\/p>\n
\u201cI broke down,\u201d she said. \u201cWho expects this to happen to someone?\u201d<\/p>\n
Tomas Orellana was in the country with Temporary Protected Status, but his renewal was denied in 2024 because of his second DWI.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Claudia Orellana said some of her first thoughts were about their children. Their youngest child is six years old, and they have an 18-year-old son who is in his first semester of college.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow is he going to college if we don\u2019t have the income?\u201d Claudia Orellana said. She works as a health aide, but Claudia Orellana said her husband was the \u201cbreadwinner\u201d of the family.<\/p>\n
The couple met in Great Neck where Tomas Orellana was working for a local landscaping company. They later married, and Tomas Orellana acted as a father figure to Claudia Orellana\u2019s child with special needs.<\/p>\n
The Orellana family has raised over $5,000 on GoFundMe for bail and covering house expenses in just one day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tomas Orellana was initially held in Nassau County Correctional Center in East Meadow, but his attorney, Byron Quintanilla, said he thinks Tomas Orellana has been transferred to a jail in New York City.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blackman made an agreement with ICE to temporarily hold its detainees.<\/p>\n
Between February and October 2024, over 2,200 people detained by ICE were held at the East Meadow jail.<\/p>\n
Quintanilla will be appearing in court on Tuesday, Jan. 13, in Manhattan to apply for Tomas Orellana\u2019s release and to cancel his removal proceedings.<\/p>\n
Until then, Claudia Orellana said she will be focused on raising awareness about her husband\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cA lot of immigrants are so afraid to speak out,\u201d Claudia Orellana said. \u201cEven though we\u2019re immigrants, we have rights. This is a free country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ICE detained Great Neck resident Tomas Orellana outside a Mineola courthouse on Monday, Jan. 5. Orellana, a Salvadoran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[28012,7946,2035,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-98139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-east-meadow","9":"tag-great-neck","10":"tag-ice","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-queens","15":"tag-queens-headlines","16":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}