{"id":253742,"date":"2026-04-17T04:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T04:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/253742\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T04:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T04:20:13","slug":"new-details-in-case-of-texas-doctor-detained-by-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/253742\/","title":{"rendered":"New details in case of Texas doctor detained by ICE"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. Rep.\u00a0Joaquin Castro<\/a>, D-San Antonio, announced the pending release of Dr. Ezequiel Veliz on social media late Wednesday, April 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr.\u00a0Ezequiel Veliz will be home soon! He was in the states (sic) for nine years with his U.S. citizen husband and practicing medicine in an underserved South Texas community when ICE targeted him,\u201d Castro said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe should have never been locked away. I\u2019m glad to hear that he will be released and am grateful to all of the doctors and folks who spoke out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Friends of the doctor who organized a\u00a0GoFundMe to help pay for his legal fees confirmed the news<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoseph is on his way now to Laredo to bring (Veliz) home. The courts granted him bond prior to his actual court date next week,\u201d Johnny Moreno, one of the campaign\u2019s co-organizers, said, referring to Veliz\u2019s husband, Joseph Williams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe important thing is that\u00a0Ezequiel will be able to sleep comfortably at home until the process continues,\u201d Moreno said.<\/p>\n

Veliz and Williams had been traveling to Houston as part of a cross-state move when they were halted at the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Sarita on Monday, April 6, according to a post Williams shared on Facebook. All vehicular traffic traveling north from the Valley must pass through the checkpoints, located along Interstate 69-C (also called U.S. 281) and Interstate 69-E (also called U.S. 77) about 60 miles north of the Valley\u2019s population centers. Williams described how Border Patrol agents detained Veliz \u201cbecause they believed he overstayed his visa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Veliz had a work permit that allowed him to serve at Knapp Medical Center in Weslaco while he completed UT Health RGV\u2019s residency program. He had entered the country under a program that offered Venezuelan refugees temporary protected status \u2014 a protection that the Trump administration unilaterally revoked in October 2025.<\/p>\n

MySA reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for comment about Veliz\u2019s detention but did not hear back by the time of publication. However, a CBP spokesperson told ABC affiliate, KRGV<\/a>\u00a0that Veliz\u2019s pending green card application through his husband did not qualify as a valid visa.<\/p>\n

A second Venezuelan doctor,\u00a0Rubeliz \u201cBibi\u201d Bolivar<\/a>, remains detained after she and her 5-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, were taken into custody at McAllen International Airport on Saturday, April 11. Bolivar, who has been in the country for a decade, had been traveling to California for a scheduled asylum hearing. Just a few hours before news broke of Dr. Veliz\u2019s pending release, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus<\/a> issued a statement calling for both doctors to be released.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were told immigration enforcement would focus on the criminals, the \u2018worst of the worst.\u2019 These were neither. They were the best of the best,\u201d\u00a0MALC said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Rep.\u00a0Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, announced the pending release of Dr. Ezequiel Veliz on social media late Wednesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[86021,2320,820,82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-253742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-mysapolitics","9":"tag-mysasotx","10":"tag-mysastaff","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","13":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}