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As a young mother, Marilú Domingo Ortiz, 28, had learned many things in the nearly month-long aftermath of her husband’s arrest. She had learned how to open herself to the local community, how to accept emotional and financial support for both herself and her son. She had learned how fast the media can pick up a story — especially when it involves a video of federal agents smashing the window of a car.
The Families Left Behind
A special reporting project
But on the eve of her husband’s first hearing, three weeks after his arrest, she still hadn’t learned why U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had taken him in the first place.
Juan Francisco Méndez, 29, was arrested April 14 in New Bedford, as he sat beside Ortiz in their parked car. Federal agents surrounded the vehicle, smashed the back passenger window, and pulled Méndez out. The video of the arrest, first published by The New Bedford Light, spread fast — fueling outrage and drawing national and international attention within days.
On May 15, a month after the arrest, Méndez was released on bond with an ankle monitor. He faces a charge of illegal entry into the U.S. — a charge the government didn’t file until May 9, a day after a judge declared that the government had failed to prosecute him.
By then, the damage had already been done. The weeks of detention had taken their toll on Ortiz and her son, who, at 9 years old, was only beginning to understand his father’s absence. Ortiz, between jobs and struggling to process the trauma, clammed up, distancing herself further and further from the community. “I didn’t know what to do,” Ortiz said. “It has been very difficult to live with this anxiety.”
Starting a life together
Ortiz first met Méndez when she was 18 and he was 19, during Holy Week in the Primavera del Ixcán, a town nestled in the Guatemalan highlands. Their group of friends had decided to spend the holiday along the Rio Chixoy — a spectacular ribbon of cyan water that winds through the mountains.
Méndez had come home for a short vacation from his job in Cancún, Mexico. But after that week, he didn’t go back. “I think that was my fault,” Ortiz said, laughing.
Ortiz was still in school when she found out she was pregnant — worried and unsure of what came next. Méndez, by contrast, was thrilled. He hadn’t finished school himself, but the news gave him purpose. He started working immediately to support Ortiz so she could complete her studies.
They got married right after their son, Abidal, was born. One week after the wedding, Méndez left for the United States to work — at first in Florida, then in New Bedford. “Where we lived there was no work,” Ortiz said. “You can get a good-paying job in the capital city, but they require you to have a degree.”
Seven years later, in 2023, Ortiz and Abidal joined him in Massachusetts. For the first time, the three of them were living together as a family.
Like any marriage, Ortiz said, theirs had its challenges. “It wasn’t all good, of course,” she said. “But we never argued about big things.” Most disagreements were minor, often about parenting. But on one point they never wavered: their son’s future. Education was nonnegotiable. They both believed that in Guatemala, the opportunities were fewer, and the risks greater.
So after President Donald Trump took office, and news of ICE arrests in the area began to spread, Ortiz and Méndez made a pact.
“One day I told him, if they ever deport one of us, we won’t go back,” Ortiz said. “At least one has to stay here for our son.”
One month after that conversation, Méndez was arrested.
A violent arrest
The morning of the arrest, Ortiz and Méndez left home for a dental appointment. As they stepped outside, Méndez mentioned he had noticed two cars parked near the house. Ortiz didn’t think anything of it.
They had only driven about two blocks when they heard a siren. Méndez looked in the rearview mirror. “It’s the police,” he told his wife.
But as Ortiz turned toward the back window, she saw the men getting out of their vehicles. “Amor, no es uno de policía,” she told him. “It’s not the police. It’s immigration.”
Ortiz said the agents walked up to the car, knocked on the window, and asked Méndez if his name was Antonio. He told them no and explained that someone named Antonio lived on the same street. “I told the agents they probably had the wrong person,” Ortiz said.
Then the agents asked for identification. Ortiz remembered what their attorney, Ondine Galvéz Sniffin, had told them about encounters with immigration agents. She refused to hand over her ID. Then she called Sniffin.
“Do not give them documents and do not get out of the car,” Ortiz recalled her lawyer saying. “I’ll be there soon.”
Ortiz relayed the message. “I told the agent, we’ll get out of the car as soon as our lawyer gets here.” She said she asked the agents three times if they had an arrest warrant. Each time, they ignored her.
What happened next was recorded and viewed by hundreds of thousands around the world. One of the agents smashed the car window and arrested Méndez.
As the agents were leaving, Sniffin arrived. Ortiz ran toward her. “They took my husband!” she cried. “They took my husband!”
Coping with the trauma
The night after Méndez was taken, Ortiz lay awake, having spent the day with her lawyer trying to locate him — without success. No one could tell her where he had been taken, or when she might hear from him. Fear gave way to panic.
“What if they kidnapped him? Where would I find him? Where would I find the money to pay the ransom?” she remembered thinking.
And then there was the fear of what this would do to their son.
As a family, they liked going to the park on weekends, playing hide-and-seek, and spending afternoons at the beach. Sometimes they’d pick up a pizza from Domino’s and end the night with a movie. But during the week, it was Méndez who spent the most time with Abidal. Because he often worked night shifts, he was the one home during the day. He’d return in the morning just in time to see his son off to school, then help with homework in the afternoon or simply watch TV with him, before Ortiz came back from work.
“Where is my dad?” Ortiz recalled Abidal asking her the morning after Méndez’s arrest. She said she didn’t tell him right away, trying not to alarm him.
Later, Abidal found the answer on his own. Holding a phone in his hands, watching the video that had been circulating online, he turned to her and said, “Mami, esto es mi papito.” “Mom, this is my daddy.”
The screen showed the moment agents smashed the car window and pulled Méndez out.
He began to cry. “Why are you lying to me?”
Ortiz then told him that his father had been arrested by immigration agents — that it was a mistake, that he wasn’t the person they were looking for, and that things would be cleared up soon.
Abidal stayed home from school the whole week. He gradually lost his appetite.
“He was just eating a little,” Ortiz said. “And he said he would start eating again when his dad came home.” He finally began to calm down two weeks later, when Ortiz brought him to visit Méndez at the detention center in Dover, New Hampshire.
“Everything will be OK, son,” she recalled Méndez telling Abidal. “I will come back home and we will go to the park and play together. But you need to eat.”
While Méndez was gone, life at home ground to a halt, explained Ortiz. She wasn’t working at the time of the arrest, and he had been the one covering all of the family’s expenses — “the food, the rent, everything.”
She managed to get by with help from local organizations, including the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (CCT), Mujeres Victoriosas, the Community Economic Development Center (CEDC), and the Guatemalan consulate. “They provided bags of noodles, sugar, beans, and things like that.”
But emotionally, Ortiz was unraveling. In the weeks after the arrest, she began to withdraw. She avoided conversations — even with people she once leaned on.
Adrian Ventura, executive director of CCT, noticed the shift. When she stopped speaking and began to isolate herself, he encouraged her to attend community meetings, volunteer at events, and eventually speak up on behalf of other families.
“The community really taught me not to live in fear and to talk with people,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz began speaking publicly about her own experience — the arrest, the fear, and the uncertainty that followed.
“I wanted to talk with other families within the community not only because of the injustice that happened to us, that we didn’t deserve,” she said, “but also because of what other families are going through because of the government.”
She now volunteers with CCT every week, helping with events and connecting with others who have lived through similar experiences. Her first public appearances were with the media, shortly after the video of her husband’s arrest drew national attention. “The only thing I felt was worry for my husband,” she said. “And I wanted everyone to know what had happened.”
Over time, speaking out became a way to stand with the immigrant community.
“I think of myself as a survivor, and an advocate too,” she said. “We have the right to speak up. Our rights aren’t worth less than anyone else’s.”
Email Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org.
I want Marilou to know she is not alone, and many people in this community are outraged at the actions of the ICE agents. There may be a few voices who support what ICE is doing, and they may be loud and mean-spirited, but they do not reflect the majority of us who recognize this to be a reign of terror. Opposition to ICE is growing across the country, and we will continue to fight.