‘I didn’t know if I was going to see them again’ – Chicago Tribune

When Martha Ruiz returned home to Gary on Nov. 13 after a few weeks in ICE custody in El Paso, she was excited to see her children.

“When I left them at the prison, I didn’t know if I was going to see them again,” Ruiz, 57, said.

Her husband, Rosario Carrillo Lopez, who built the fences, managed to evade U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The family alleges that officers struck Carrillo’s vehicle Oct. 13 as he returned from taking his son Eli Carrillo, then 14, to Gary Lighthouse’s school.

A few days later, immigration agents searched their Gary home, near the Gary airport, around 6 a.m. on October 23.

Ruiz said she was sleeping on the couch when officers armed with flashlights began banging on the front door.

“I got up, but they didn’t give us time to open the door,” she said.

The officers broke down the door. Her youngest son, Eli, now 15, took his diabetic mother downstairs to hide. She hid near their furnace and heard a police dog.

“I’m afraid of dogs,” she said in an interview in Spanish. “When they saw where I was, I just put my hands up.”

Although they told them she had an injured arm, the officers forced her behind her back. Handcuffed to the ground, she asked for help to go to the bathroom. They refused to help, she said.

“You get up,” she remembers telling them.

Then a dog bit her.

“They said, ‘Our dog doesn’t bite,'” she recalls, replying, “Yes, your dog bites me.”

A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not in the office Wednesday for comment.

Dragged down the stairs, they threw her to the ground, fracturing her ribs, said her son, Arnoldo Carrillo. It was not processed for ribs at the Broadview processing plant outside Chicago or in El Paso. When he took her to a doctor after her release, they told him that her ribs had started to heal on their own.

In the melee, Arnoldo, 26, was suffocated and left with a black eye. Their daughter Sarai Carrillo, 24, is charged in federal court with pushing a federal agent, which she denies. Eli spent a few weeks in Lake County juvenile detention after admitting to throwing a punch. The officers threw him through a porch, leaving him with a bloody head.

Arnoldo and Sarai previously said that when they requested a warrant, officers showed them a folded piece of paper and did not give them a document to review until the family was handcuffed outside.

Carrillo Lopez was taken to the Hammond City Jail. His son Arnoldo was released. Her daughter Sarai was taken to the Porter County Jail and released after a day, while Martha was placed in ICE custody.

We have always been together as a family, Ruiz said with emotion.

She was taken to ICE’s Broadview Processing Center for two days, where she estimated one day she was in a room with about 170 people with only one window, some of whom were sleeping on the floor. The women’s restrooms were open and “without privacy.” They had ham and cheese sandwiches with water. Ruiz’s daughter had collected her diabetes medication, so she had it with her in custody.

Then Ruiz was taken by bus to the Gary airport for a flight to Texas. Once she arrived, she was told she would be deported to Mexico.

“I was scared,” she said, “but I just said ‘well, if that’s the case, God, I thank you, just watch over my children’.”

In El Paso, she received an injection to relieve her pain, but not much other medical care. There, she spent a total of three hours outside in three weeks.

“For some women, the routine was just eating and sleeping, because they didn’t want to despair thinking about their children,” she said. “I thank God I’m here.”

His son posted $5,000 bail for his release. When ICE released her on Nov. 12, they took her to a women’s shelter, where she was still shackled until she walked through the door, she said. The conditions there were much better and the staff was nice.

Arnoldo drove to El Paso to take her back to Chicago, then took her home.

She and Carrillo Lopez met in a California church in the 1990s. He was handsome, a calm, steady presence. When asked what would happen if her husband was deported, she hoped the family could stay together. Their house is paid for.

“I honored this country,” Ruiz said, “by giving them (American citizen) children.”

She always sleeps on the couch at night, to make sure no one else is outside. His children said the raid left them traumatized. She was very proud of the way they behaved. Arnoldo said in an interview that he had no experience as to what to do.

Eli said he was “very surprised” when she was released, thinking it would take more than a week. In juvenile detention, he dreamed of his united family.

The family will have to decide whether to pursue legal action for excessive force following the dog bites, Ruiz’s immigration attorney, Alfredo Estrada, said Wednesday.

“We think our case is strong,” he said.

Ruiz was able to secure bond in immigration court because she came to the United States legally in the 1990s on an F-1 visa for her religious studies. That makes it a relatively rare case, Estrada said.

ICE has always had the ability to grant bonds, he said. In contrast, the Trump administration largely removed the ability of immigration judges to grant bail to those who crossed the border illegally and risked being deported again. Previously, it was up to them to decide to release people who did not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk.

For Ruiz’s immigration case, they were looking for an “adjustment of status” — to hopefully get his green card within a year or two. The fact that his son, Arnoldo, is a U.S. citizen over 21 also helps his case, Estrada said.

He confirmed she was released from ICE detention and transferred to a local El Paso shelter.

“That’s the value they have on human life,” he said. “They put her down and said, ‘Do your best.’

His client was a practicing woman, mother of three children who was an American citizen and had no criminal history.

“This is how ICE concentrates taxpayer dollars,” he said. The idea that they were going after “criminals” was a “farce” and a “lie.” People need to “talk to their representatives,” because “what they voted for” was using taxpayer money to “disrupt good families.”

Estrada faces a disciplinary case from the prosecutor after the daughter of a former client accused him of trying to initiate a sexual relationship. The investigation is still ongoing.

When asked how this affected his current clients’ immigration cases, Estrada said the question was “inappropriate.” Moments later, he contacted a reporter to clarify, later saying he was surprised by the question.

The disciplinary case was “vigorously defended,” Estrada said, adding that he “looked forward to the process playing out (and uncovering) the truth of what really happened.”

“If they ask, we tell them we’re not really at liberty to discuss the process going on,” he said.

Ruben Garcia, director of Annunciation House in El Paso, which oversees the Casa Papa Francisco shelter where Ruiz spent a night after his release, said they typically house 10 to 11 people a day who are released on immigration bail.

Established in 1974, they had “rich experience” in caring for migrants and refugees crossing the border, he said. What was relatively new was that people were being detained and then transported to the shelter from all over the country.

We “make them feel at home, even if it’s just for one night,” he said. “That they can breathe freely and eat (while ensuring their transportation) to join their families. »

mcolias@post-trib.com