A daily phone call holds together a family divided by detention

This article was produced by Capital & Main. It is published here with permission. 

At least once a day, Esmeralda and her daughters gather in their living room, waiting for her cellphone to ring. The voice on the other end always begins the same way.

“Hola, mi amor.” A husband greeting his wife.

Then: “Hola, mis amores,” or “princesas.” A father greeting his daughters.

The girls send hugs and kisses through the phone and tell their father they miss him. He tells them he misses them too. He reminds them to help their mother and behave well. There are often tears on both ends of the phone.

Twelve-year-old Yoselin tells him he will surely be back soon. It’s a hope, a wish, and lately, a prayer.

For nearly seven months, Jesús has been in federal immigration detention for being in the U.S. without permission. He was arrested in January while selling burritos from his street vending stand in Gardena.

The South Bay family’s story of struggle and uncertainty has become increasingly common across Southern California.

Since federal immigration raids intensified in Los Angeles starting in June 2025, thousands of families have lost a parent, spouse and primary breadwinner to detention or deportation. Last year, men accounted for nearly nine out of 10 arrests in the L.A. ICE field office’s “area of responsibility,” which spans Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, according to a Capital & Main analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained by the Deportation Data Project through the Freedom of Information Act. That has left many women and partners alone with the task of paying the family’s bills, while also supporting traumatized children and hiring lawyers to help them navigate the immigration system. 

“We have thousands of people in detention that are mainly the breadwinner, and entire families are changing their lives because of this,” said Palmira Figueroa, of NDLON, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “People are not going out, women are struggling to work, and kids are leaving school to work because of this. Complete futures are changing.”

Some families have lost housing. Others, like Esmeralda, have fallen behind on rent while relying on food banks, churches and community organizations for food and funds to pay bills and legal fees.

“All these months have been difficult emotionally, healthwise and financially,” Esmeralda said in Spanish while flanked by her two daughters in their living room. “Mainly, we are here fighting and hoping that he can get out. Up to now nothing has worked, but we are still in the fight, and thank God, they have not deported him.”

Esmeralda, Jesús and their daughters are being identified only by their first names and their faces are not being shown for safety reasons. Interviews with the family were conducted in both Spanish and English.

* * *

The morning the family’s life changed also began with a phone call. A friend who had been with Jesús at the food stand called to tell Esmeralda that immigration agents had taken her husband away.

She screamed. Then she cried and wailed that it was not possible. The sound brought Paola, 15, running into the room. Mother and daughter sat together and wept until Yoselin followed the sound of sobbing into her parents’ bedroom. Soon she was consoling her older sister, who suffered a panic attack.

“I had just talked to Jesús 10 minutes earlier and had told him to pack up and come home, because I was seeing on social media that immigration officers were all over the place,” Esmeralda said. “I had a bad feeling the week before and dreamed he had been taken.”

Hours later Jesús, 48, was able to call his wife from a processing facility in downtown Los Angeles. Later that day he was transferred to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, where he remains today.

That afternoon, the friend who witnessed the arrest packed up Jesús’ vending stand — the canopy, folding tables, cooler and the burritos Jesús never got the chance to sell — and drove Jesús’ van home.

Esmeralda was bereft. Her mobility is severely limited because of rheumatoid arthritis and other health issues, and Jesús did most of the physical work in their home and for their street vending business. He also drove his daughters to school, did all the grocery shopping and took his wife to doctor’s appointments. In addition, Jesús had handled the bills, paid the rent and carried the bank card. 

On weekends, he drove his family to the beach or to Crystal Lake in the San Gabriel Mountains. His girls describe him as calm, sensible and funny. He played games with them, sang and danced and still managed to settle disagreements or complaints with little more than a look, the daughters said.

“The only way we survived was because he helped me a lot, he did most things, and now I have to do everything and I cannot really do a lot,” said Esmeralda. “We are behind on rent, we ask for food, we go to food banks or churches.” 

Advocates have had food delivered to the family and that helps close the gap, Esmeralda said.

Video of the arrest, taken by a Rapid Response volunteer, was sent to the family.

“It was something I never thought I was going to see, my father handcuffed,” said Paola, who loves to read and talk to her dad about current events. “Never in my life. I thought because he is a good father and he is a good person; he is very calm and he gets along very well with everyone.”

For Esmeralda, 39, there was no time to dwell on her disabilities. She began to pay the family’s bills, including car insurance payments, and nervously let the landlord know that they were unable to make their rent payments because of her husband’s detention. She hired lawyers and reached out to immigration advocates who have helped raise money for Jesús’ defense and created a GoFundMe account to help with legal fees.

“I say to myself, ‘Stay strong,’ because I don’t have time to cry,” Esmeralda said.

* * *

Esmeralda wakes up even earlier now, at 3 a.m., to make the burritos by herself, and sometimes with her daughters, for a relative to sell. She used to instruct Jesús on how to make the burrito fillings. Now, she hobbles around the kitchen slowly, manning several stoves and moving from pot to pot to stir, season and sauce various kinds of meat for her burritos.  

The family’s earnings go toward gas, utilities, food and cellphone bills. There isn’t enough to pay the $2,500 rent for the house they’ve lived in for six years. The landlord has been understanding, but Esmeralda fears that could change at any time.

Meanwhile, she worries about her husband’s health and how she will bring him home.  In detention, he has grown depressed and developed a heart condition.

Community organizations have rallied to help the family hire lawyers. Esmeralda said she paid $5,000 to one attorney who, she said, mismanaged the case. The family and the supporting organizations are raising money to pay a second lawyer who is preparing an asylum application for Jesús ahead of an immigration court hearing in August. 

Another legal group assisting detainees has filed a federal habeas corpus petition, which seeks his release, Esmeralda said.

Filing a habeas petition has become the only way to challenge unlawful or protracted detention and win release for clients who still have to go through the immigration process, said Lindsay Toczylowski, president and co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles. Toczylowski has filed habeas corpus petitions for clients but does not represent Jesús. Petitions are filed in federal district court, which is separate from immigration courts overseen by the U.S. Department of Justice. Last year, the administration stripped immigration judges of their ability to preside over bond hearings for most detainees.

If Jesús is released, their ordeal still won’t be over, a state of affairs Esmeralda considers daily. He’ll be required to return to court so that  a judge can determine the outcome of his asylum case. If he is ultimately deported, she said she would stay in the U.S. for her daughters’ sake despite how hard and lonely it would be.

* * *

Paola and Yoselin have stepped in for their father in all kinds of ways. At the grocery store, the sisters shop while their mother, who can walk only a short distance, waits in the car. At home, Yoselin helps her mother stand up from the couch and move around the house. They take out the trash bins.

Paola, who refused to go to school for three months after her father was arrested in January, began to translate mail, bills and other documents for her mother. She also helped track down account information so her mom could pay the utility bills, all while dealing with her own panic attacks. 

“I didn’t want to go out. I was afraid something would happen to my mom or sister,” said Paola, who had been an A student before her father’s detention.

When Paola did return to school in April, she completed every assignment she had missed and passed her classes with the support of her teachers. Besides studying, she also started assembling snack bags — chips, chocolate and other treats — and selling them at school to earn extra money.

Yoselin returned to school almost immediately, seeing it as a way to focus on something else and be with her friends. Her school also provided her with therapy because of the stress at home.

Since their father’s detention, the family rarely leaves home unless necessary and usually does so at dusk or under the cover of night.

From detention, Jesús worries constantly about his daughters.

When Esmeralda tells him they are planning to go to the park or even run errands, he immediately asks questions. Do they need to go? Are they being careful?

Most nights, Jesús calls late in the evening. Esmeralda said he likes knowing they are inside and safe before he goes to sleep himself.

From the Adelanto detention center, Jesús struggles to describe life inside.

“It is a grave situation,” he said with a tremor in his voice. “Traumatic and difficult.”

He said he does not share many details with Esmeralda about what he has witnessed there except to say he is always cold.

The separation and incarceration has taken a toll. At first, he suffered from insomnia. Since entering detention, he has been diagnosed with tachycardia (an abnormally fast heartbeat) and depression. He takes medication and sees a therapist at the facility. He has lost weight.

In the months since Jesús was detained, his birthday passed. That night the family sang “Las Mananitas,” a traditional Mexican birthday song, to him. For Mother’s Day, he arranged for the girls to continue his tradition of buying roses for Esmeralda. Paola used money she earned herself to buy the bouquet.

And in early June came another big loss. The family had to tell Jesús over the phone that Pirrin had died. The elderly and blind dog Jesús had rescued from the street had become one of the family. 

After Jesús was detained, Pirrin spent months lying beside his shoes waiting for him to come home. Now the tiny yorkie, wrapped in one of Jesús’s T-shirts that he insisted be used as a shroud, is buried beneath a small tree in the family’s yard.

The family’s journey to the United States began more than a decade ago when Jesús arrived on a work permit to perform agricultural labor in Maine. He later moved to Los Angeles and overstayed his visa. Two years later, Esmeralda and their small daughters joined him on visitor visas that also eventually expired.

Both parents hold university degrees from Mexico. Jesús studied biology. Esmeralda studied international business. They say they came seeking better opportunities, education for their children and safety. Jesús especially worried about the kind of violence he witnessed and experienced in his home state of Sinaloa, his wife said. He did not feel it was much safer in Mexicali, where he met and married Esmeralda.

Jesús said he remains committed to staying in the U.S. with his wife and children despite having endured months in detention, where his health has deteriorated. He is sustained by the hope that his daughters can receive an education and pursue a profession that allows them to earn a decent living. “I want my daughters to have a secure future,” he said.

Ben Poston contributed to this report.

Photos by Jeremy Lindenfeld for Capital & Main.