Mahogani Rosales and Ahlai Carballo talk with Rosales on Monday night. Neville Mayorga-Rosales goes by his middle name, Aharon. (Screenshot of call)
Mahogani Rosales and Ahlai Carballo can see Aharon Rosales, but he can’t see them.
In a video call from the Hopkins County Jail, Aharon’s face appears in a small window as he talked to his mom and sister Monday evening.
Since he was detained by ICE agents last Wednesday in Bloomington, his mom, Mahogani, and sister, Carballo, have anxiously awaited these calls. He’s been at the Kentucky ICE detention facility for more than a week. They have no way of reaching him unless he calls.
Usually, Aharon calls for a couple minutes in the morning and evening.
“It's just whenever he's able to call us so we can get information about how he is and how he's feeling,” Carballo said.
Last week, various groups in Bloomington posted information on social media about what they believed was ICE and federal agents in the city. Bloomington’s Exodus office temporarily closed.
Rosales, who’s from Nicaragua, is one of at least four undocumented men detained by federal agents last week in Bloomington. Three of them, including Rosales, were transported to the Kentucky jail.
Mexican national Martin Cortez-Lopez was detained by federal agents when he went to Monroe County court to schedule a plea for drug charges the day before. He’s being held in Indianapolis.
Mahogani recalls driving her son, Rosales, to work on Wednesday. In an interview, her daughter, Carballo, provides translation:
Mahogani and Rosales stopped to pick up Manuel Sente-Tevelan from the Barclay Square apartments. They did not realize there were cars in the parking lot waiting for Sente-Tevelan to come out.
“(Sente-Tevelan) got in the car, and they started driving,” Carballo said, “After they started driving, it didn't take that long. Somebody was following them. They drove around 100 meters, and they got pulled over by ICE.”
Agents asked Sente-Tevelan, who has pending charges in Monroe County and a past conviction in Jackson County, for his information and arrested him. Mahogani presented her green card and driver’s license. Then they asked Rosales for his information.
The agents learned that Rosales didn’t have documentation and wasn’t legally allowed to work in the US, Mahogani said. But he wasn’t on the list of people they were looking for. The agents spoke for a few minutes before deciding to arrest him, too.
Now, Rosales and his family are hoping for answers. Rosales is undocumented but doesn’t have a criminal record. He has two children in Nicaragua and Costa Rica he works to provide for.
It bothers Carballo that her brother was arrested without an order and wasn’t on the list of people they were looking for. She said no one explained to her mom why Aharon was being arrested.
“She did try to ask one of the agents, ‘Can you please wait and tell me, where are you guys going? Where are you taking him? Why are you taking him?’” Carballo said. “But the only information that she got was a link for the internet where she could try to look up his name and get information from where he was at.”
Carballo and Mahogani said they knew President Donald Trump campaigned to deport undocumented people, but anticipated operations would target people with criminal records.
“We thought that (the Trump Administration) was going to go for the criminals, anybody that had terrible, criminal records and dangerous people, not people like us,” Carballo said. “We’re just a family.”
President Trump aims to deport 1 million undocumented people this year — which former ICE officials predict means a rise in collateral arrests and violations of immigration rules if not constitutional rights, too.
Rosales’s family found a local immigration lawyer, Christie Popp, to help with his case. Popp didn’t speak about Rosales specifically but said ICE is not issuing bonds “basically at all.” And if someone is not granted bond or released, they can ask for a custody redetermination with an immigration judge for potential release.
“At this hearing with the judge, that person may present evidence that they are eligible for bond, and if they are eligible for bond, they need to present positive equities or positive factors that shows that they should be released,” Popp said. “And that includes showing that they are not a danger to the community, and also that they are not a flight risk, and then the judge may grant bond.”
Rosales told his family he’s being held with about 20 other detainees in a large room, not cells.
Carballo said she and her mom are gathering letters of support to present to an immigration judge. Rosales, Sente-Tevelan, and Jose Gomez-Iras do not have court dates assigned and have not been granted a bond. It is unclear how long they will be detained.
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Carballo said she and her mom wanted to speak out because “it's also many immigrants that are going through the same thing, and it's very painful, really painful for everybody.”
More than 422,000 people — about 6 percent of Indiana’s 6.9 million people — are foreign born. Estimates suggest about 100,000 undocumented people live in Indiana.
Last year, a net international migration of 30,852 residents accounted for 70 percent of the state’s growth.
Carballo said her family came to the United States for better economic opportunities, but her brother’s detainment makes them feel like those opportunities will be harder to reach.
“We wanted a better life than the life that we had back in our countries,” she said. “And it's been hard for all of us in different ways, because it's not just my brother. He has children he has to think about and his family. But it's also the rest of us too. We all had dreams that we were looking for when we moved to the U.S. Going through this process has been really painful, because it feels like it's a dream that is really hard to reach.”
Contact WFIU/WTIU News reporter Bente Bouthier at bentbout@iu.edu or 812-390-0416.
