A Durango father and his two children arrested by federal immigration agents who thought they were someone else have agreed to leave the United States because of the trauma they have experienced in detention, advocates said Wednesday night.
Fernando Jaramillo-Solano and his 12- and 15-year-old children were on their way to school the morning of Oct. 27 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested them. A senior ICE official later testified in Denver court that agents thought Jaramillo-Solano, who is Colombian, was a different person, but they arrested him and his children anyway.
Jaramillo-Solano and the two children were transferred to a federal detention center in Dilley, Texas, and the “mental, physical, and emotional trauma they have endured has left them unable to continue fighting their case,” advocates with Compañeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center said Wednesday night. Jaramillo-Solano sought a voluntary departure, which is less punitive than a deportation order but is still a request to be removed from the country.
Jaramillo-Solano was still in ICE custody in Texas as of Thursday morning, according to the agency’s detainee locator. People who request voluntary departures are often removed within two weeks and typically are transported directly from detention.
Record numbers of immigrants without legal status have sought voluntary departures this year, amid a surge in arrests and efforts by the Trump administration to keep even noncriminal, longtime U.S. residents detained.
The family, including Jaramillo-Solano’s wife, Estella Patiño, who was not detained, have lived in Colorado with a pending asylum case after fleeing Colombia because Patiño was tortured and her previous husband assassinated.
During the arrest, the 12-year-old girl was initially separated from her father and brother and inappropriately touched by an ICE agent, Patiño said at a
When her brother noticed and told them to stop, agents beat him, Patiño said. An attorney who’d spoken with the family testified in court last month that Jaramillo-Solano and his children were kept in a “dungeon”-like room in Durango, where all three had to share a single urinal, before they were transported to Texas. ICE agents also refused attempts by Durango Police to reunite the children with their mother.
“(Patiño’s) testimony highlighted the profound trauma the family has endured while in federal custody and reinforced the urgent need for oversight, transparency, and child-safety protections within all immigration enforcement agencies,” Compañeros officials said in a news release.
In a statement Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said the allegations were “disgusting and wrong” and called out the family for going to the press and activists instead of reporting it to law enforcement.
McLaughlin also rejected claims that the family was denied adequate food in detention.
Jaramillo-Solano and his children did not use U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s Home program — which provides financial assistance for people living in the country illegally to leave — and do not qualify for those incentives, she said.
“They were granted a voluntary departure by the immigration judge and ICE will facilitate their return,” McLaughlin said.
In a statement Wednesday night, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper said federal officials have refused to release the family from ICE custody. He said he’d personally spoken with Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security security who oversees ICE, about the family.
“They forced a father and his 15- and 12-year-old kids to make an impossible choice: leave their wife and mother behind and return to a country where they don’t feel safe; or remain indefinitely isolated in detention, separated from her,” Hickenlooper said.
A Douglas County teacher and her family who were arrested in October during a routine immigration appointment also voluntarily departed the country earlier this month.
Denver Post reporter Seth Klamann contributed to this report.
