SAN ANTONIO – We’re hearing from a San Antonio couple whose lives were upended earlier this year when the husband was detained by ICE.
They say they’ve spent years, and thousands of dollars, trying to “do it the right way”. Now they’re fighting to keep a planned detention facility out of the east side.
“Why would you want families to go through that,” said Hilda, the wife of a man detained by ICE in January. She didn’t want us to share his last name.
Hilda first took her concerns about the center to council during its March 5th meeting.
“I’m here to urge you to pass the resolution before you, and to do everything in your power — understanding the limitations — to prevent the operation of an ICE detention center in San Antonio.”
ICE agents detained her husband in January after a traffic stop. He spent nearly a month in a Pearsall detention center before his release.
“I’ve lived in San Antonio my whole life, so I want them to know how these detention facilities are affecting families that live here in the city,” Hilda said.
Her husband has been working toward obtaining his citizenship since 2019. Hilda has called the process taxing both emotionally, and financially. The couple has spent roughly $38,000 on legal fees, paperwork and a habeas corpus petition for her husband’s release from the Pearsall detention center.
The couple said that arrest should’ve never happened.
The husband was on his way to work when he says he was racially profiled and pulled over.
“He stopped me, he asked, ‘do you know why I stopped you?’,” he told us. “I said I didn’t know. He said ‘because your inspection sticker is too high on your windshield’.”
He described what he called a deliberately uncomfortable 3 and a half weeks in the center.
“What’s difficult is, when you get there, you can’t sleep because they always have the lights on,” he explained, saying there has to be a better way.
Bexar County Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert said he’s heard similar stories from other immigrants in the county.
He’s also working to stop the center from breaking ground.
“There’s a lot of corruption of the heart, and cruelty that’s going on, and it doesn’t represent who we are,” Calvert said.
The facility is set to go near the center of precinct 4.
City council discussed its limited options at its March 5 meeting.
“The county passed a resolution to join in other legal processes, including partnerships with the city and other nonprofits,” Calvert explained.
We asked about the timeline for those processes.
“There are some unique aspects to some of the areas of law that we’re looking into, and so just stay tuned,” the Commissioner said. “It will come in due time.”