When Martha Ruiz returned to her home in Gary on Nov. 13 after several weeks in ICE custody in El Paso, she was excited to see her children.
“When I dropped them back 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 fences, managed to elude US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The family claims agents crashed Carrillo’s vehicle on Oct. 13 on the way back from taking their then 14-year-old son Eli Carrillo to school at Gary Lighthouse.
A few days later, immigration agents raided their home in Gary, near the Gary Airport, around 6 a.m. on October 23.
Ruiz said he was sleeping on the couch when officers with flashlights began pounding on the front door.
“I got up but they didn’t give us time to answer the door,” she said.
The agents knocked on the door. Her younger son Eli, now 15, took his diabetic mother downstairs to hide. He hid by their oven and heard a police dog.
“I’m afraid of dogs,” she said in an interview in Spanish. “When they saw where I was, I raised my hands.”
Despite being told he had an injured arm, the agents forced him to his back. Handcuffed to the ground, she asked for help to go to the bathroom. They refused to assist, she said.
“You’re waking up,” she recalled them saying.
Then a dog bit her on the back.
“They said, ‘Our dog doesn’t bite,'” she recalled, to which he replied, “Yes, your dog bites me.”
A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
Dragging her up the stairs, they threw her to the ground, fracturing her ribs, her son, Arnoldo Carrillo said. It was not processed for ribs at the Broadview processing facility outside Chicago or in El Paso. When she took her to a doctor after her release, they said her ribs had started to heal on their own.
In the melee, Arnoldo, 26, was choked and left with a black eye. Their daughter Sarai Carrillo, 24, is accused in federal court of pushing a federal agent, which she denies. Eli spent several weeks in Lake County Juvenile Detention after admitting to throwing a punch. The agents threw him over a porch, leaving him with a bleeding head.
Both Arnoldo and Sarai previously said when they asked for a warrant, agents showed them a folded piece of paper and didn’t give them a document to examine until the family was handcuffed outside.
Carrillo Lopez was taken to the Hammond City Jail. Her 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 were always together as a family, Ruiz said with emotion.
She was taken to ICE’s Broadview processing center for two days, where she estimated she was in a room one day with about 170 people with a single window, some sleeping on the floor. The women’s bathroom was open “without privacy”. They had ham and cheese sandwiches and water. Ruiz’s daughter had taken her diabetes medication, so she had it with her in detention.
Ruiz was then 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, thank you, just take care of my kids.’
In El Paso, he received an injection for pain, but not much other medical care. There, she spent a total of three hours outside in three weeks.
“The routine for some women was just to eat and sleep because they didn’t want to think desperately about their children,” she said. “I thank God I’m here.”
Her son posted a $5,000 bond for her release. When ICE released her on Nov. 12, they took her to a women’s shelter, where she was still handcuffed until she walked in the door, she said. The conditions there were much better and the staff kind.
Arnoldo went to El Paso to take her back to Chicago, then took her home.
She and Carrillo Lopez met at church in California in the 1990s. He was beautiful, 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.
“We honored this country,” Ruiz said, “by giving them (American citizen) children.”
She still sleeps on the couch at night to make sure someone else isn’t out. Her children said the raid traumatized them. She was very proud of how they did. Arnoldo said in an interview that he has no experience with 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 family together.
The family should decide whether to sue for excessive force over the dog bites, Ruiz’s immigration attorney, Alfredo Estrada, said Wednesday.
“We think we have a good case,” he said.
Ruiz was able to get out of immigration court because he originally came to the U.S. legally in the 1990s on an F-1 visa for his religious studies. That made her a relatively rare case, Estrada said.
ICE has always had the ability to grant bond, he said. Instead, the Trump administration has largely taken away the ability of immigration judges to grant bonds for those who crossed the border illegally and faced deportation again. Previously, they had the judgment call to release people who were not a danger to the community or a flight risk.
For Ruiz’s immigration case, they were seeking an “adjustment of status” — hopefully getting his green card in the next year or two. The fact that her son, Arnoldo, has been a U.S. citizen for over 21 years also helps her case, Estrada said.
He confirmed that she was released from ICE custody to a local shelter in El Paso.
“That’s the value they place on human life,” he said. “They let her go and said, ‘Do your best.’
His client was a church-going woman with three US citizen children and no criminal record.
“This is how ICE is concentrating taxpayer money,” he said. The notion that they were going after “criminals” was a “hoax” and a “lie”. People need to “talk to their representatives” because “what they voted for” was to use taxpayers’ money to “upset good families”.
Estrada is facing attorney disciplinary action after a former client’s daughter accused him of trying to initiate a sexual relationship. It is still under investigation.
Asked how it affected his clients’ current 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 “looks forward to the process going through (and uncovering) the truth of what really happened.”
“If they ask us, we tell them we’re not really at liberty to discuss the ongoing process,” he said.
Ruben Garcia, director of Casa Buna Vestire in El Paso, which oversees the Casa Papa Francisco shelter where Ruiz stayed the night after his release, said they typically house 10-11 people a day who are released on bail from immigration custody.
Established in 1974, they had a “wealth of experience” in caring for migrants and refugees who crossed the border, he said. What was relatively newer was the people being detained, 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 securing transportation) to return to their families.”
mcolias@post-trib.com