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NEW BEDFORD — A Guatemalan worker was detained by federal agents Wednesday, leaving his wife, a U.S. citizen, to care for a mother with advanced dementia and two toddlers, one of whom has autism.
Darwing Xitumul Morales, 28, was arrested as he left for work with a local contractor shortly after 8:30 a.m. One of the agents had been waiting for him since 5 a.m., according to Morales’s wife, Nicolette Rand. The operation took minutes, but two days later, the couple’s black Mazda SUV remained yards down the road, partially obstructing traffic near the intersection of Covell Street and Belleville Avenue.
“I was in shock,” Rand said. “I thought they were just targeting people that were rapists, [in] drug cartels, people that were doing bad things. Not people that were just going to work and taking care of their family.
“I was freaking out,” she added. “I was like: Oh my God! What am I going to do?”
Rand said she received a call around 11 a.m. from the ICE Field Office in Burlington saying that her husband was in custody. They initially said he would be transported to Plymouth County Correctional Facility, the only immigrant detention facility in the state. ICE eventually moved Morales to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. issued a stay of transfer order late Friday afternoon, hours after Rand filed a habeas corpus petition in U.S. District Court Rhode Island. ICE must now notify the court at least 72 hours in advance if they intend to transfer him out of Wyatt.
Morales’ employer declined to comment for the story.
A review of Massachusetts court records by The Light found no criminal charges for either Rand or Morales since he came to the U.S. in 2019. Rand said she was unsure of his immigration status but that the pair had been together since 2021. Rand said the couple “started the process” to regularize his status after their marriage in September.
“He didn’t want to rush too much because he didn’t want [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] or people to think he just wanted to get married for papers,” Rand said. “That’s what he was afraid of.”
Rand added that she did not know his whereabouts for hours on Wednesday.
“They could have taken him anywhere,” she said, describing the state of panic she was in at the time. “There’s a lot of craziness going around with ICE right now, with ICE shooting Americans and targeting everybody.”
She said Morales is the household’s sole breadwinner as she finishes course work to become a certified nursing assistant. She said the approximately $6,000 he brought home monthly barely covered their $1,900 rent, necessities, and care for the couple’s toddlers, Darwing, a 2 year old, and Braylen, a 3 year old on the autism spectrum.
“He pays for basically everything,” she said.
Rand said Morales eventually called at 6:23 p.m. from the Wyatt Detention Facility, emotionally distressed and telling her to not worry and stay strong.
“He wasn’t even really allowed to talk to me that much,” she said. “The only thing he could say to me was his number in the court and to find a lawyer.”
The Wyatt Detention Facility is a quasi-public facility where Jason Ng, a Chinese immigrant, died in excruciating pain after being denied treatment for advanced liver cancer in 2008. The incident resulted in the canceling of the facility’s contract with ICE.
Immigrant detainees returned to Wyatt in 2019, prompting protests outside the facility that resulted in the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation, the municipal board that governs the quasi-public prison, briefly cancelling its contract’s with ICE. That resulted in a lawsuit by bondholders in U.S. District Court Rhode Island that reinstated the contract, which is still in force.
There were 110 ICE male detainees in the facility out of a total population of 643 as of Oct. 20, the most recent figures available in the meeting minutes of the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation.
Helena DaSilva Hughes, president of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center, said the organization is currently helping the family with their necessities and the search for legal representation.
“It’s such a sad situation,” DaSilva Hughes said in Portuguese. “It makes me want to cry.”
Special needs
Rand grew up in Boston and moved to New Bedford with Morales in 2024 to be closer to her parents. Her father, a U.S. Navy veteran, was dying of cancer at the time.
She said her husband’s arrest is causing distress for the family.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” she said. “My son was waiting [for his father] at the door crying.”
She said that neither she nor Morales have family in the area that can help. In addition to her two children, she also cares for her 67-year-old mother, who has advanced dementia.
“I have to feed her. I have to bathe her. She’ll get lost going to the bathroom,” Rand said. “Some days she’ll be fine and some days she’ll think that [it’s] years ago and ask: ‘Where’s my checkbook? I have to go to work!’”
Rand said she still has about a month to finish her coursework and take the test to become a CNA. She said ICE still has the keys to their only vehicle, and told her to pick them up in Burlington. But without a license and no means to undertake the 75-mile drive, it’s just another problem to solve in an uncertain situation.
“My fear is: What’s going to happen?” Rand said. “And if something does happen, what am I going to do?
“I have my kid who needs 24-hour care and my mother,” she added. “I can’t just leave the house.”
Rand said Morales has a scheduled immigration court date on Feb. 23, when she hopes an immigration judge will allow his release on bond.
Return to chaos
DaSilva Hughes said she fears Morales’s arrest is an augur of a surge of federal operations as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Since a chaotic operation in Fairhaven in September when ICE agents detained three men, including 18-year old Luís David Ajtzac Osório, immigration operations locally have tended to occur in more opaque settings. Many are taken into custody when they go for scheduled check-ins at the Field Office in Burlington. Some, such as Candelária Natalia Tzunux Pu, a woman four months pregnant when detained on New Year’s Eve, have been arrested at New Bedford District Court after appearing for criminal proceedings. The court arrests prompted a demonstration outside the court on Feb. 5, a day after agents took Sabino Osvaldo Luís Luís into custody there.
The last confirmed street arrest in the New Bedford area before Morales’s took place on Jan. 9, when agents detained José Tecúm Aguilar, according to advocates familiar with the matter. He has since been released following a habeas corpus petition at U.S. District Court Massachusetts.
“I feel people have been very quiet about it,” DaSilva Hughes said.
There have been 68 confirmed immigrants detained in the Greater New Bedford area or while residing in the area since January 2025. The vast majority of detainees have no criminal record or misdemeanor charges.
And now, with Morales’s arrest, DaSilva Hughes said she fears that ICE has returned to New Bedford’s streets.
“They never left; they’ve just been quiet about it,” she said. “But I think we’re going to see chaos once again.”
Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
Obey laws=no arrests.
That’s NOT how it works.
All laws were obeyed, I assume you are speaking of the individual who was detained. He had no criminal record and no pending criminal charges. Last, he was following the rule of law pursuant to the immigration court. So, I’m confused on this statement.
In addition to the violent tactics of ICE agents, one of the reasons Congress has not yet funded the Department of Homeland Security is the inhumane treatment of detainees in warehouse prisons.
This is part of the February 13, 2026 daily newsletter : Letters from an American
“The administration has dramatically changed ICE policy to assert the right to imprison non-citizens until they are deported, even if they are applicants for asylum. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) made an unannounced oversight visit to the ICE field facility in Baltimore, Maryland, yesterday. He saw “60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets.” Mike Hixenbaugh at NBC News today narrated the life of a Russian family in the U.S. seeking asylum. For four months, they have been incarcerated at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, where there is little medical care and the food is often spoiled with mold or worms. “
In addition to changes in ICE detention tactics, standards and government oversight are needed, not only for existing prisons, but also for those now being planned. The budget for FEMA, Coast Guard and TSA should be passed separately, but not one more tax dollar should go to ICE and BPA until reforms are made. The following article gives more detail.
Letters from an American
February 13, 2026
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-13-2026
And there are millions of actual Americans that live in similar conditions. I have no sympathy for someone who comes here and does nothing but take, while others wait in line and do the right thing.
PS people are only stuck in detention centers because certain sides of our government stopped speedy removals. Jamie Raskin is nothing but a snake.
I think anyone who villifies people and resorts to name-calling should have the guts to identify themselves.
The Obama administration utilized detention centers for immigrants and, in response to a surge of families and minors at the border, significantly expanded the use of family detention centers. During his administration, deportations reached record highs, with over 3 million people removed. What is the difference, humanity. During his administration the centers were humane, not animal cages treating humans like garbage.
Thank you!
Correction: ICE and CPB
Correction: ICE and CBP
How may we as a community help this family? Please share any updates.
Immigrants Assistance Center
https://immigrantsassistancecenter.org/contact/
guatemalan national living illegally in the US for 7 years gets deported after marrying u.s citizen and doing nothing to get permanent status
Fixed your title for you
A reminder that being uninspected or out of status is a CIVIL offense, not a crime.
Yes, and I believe they are entitled to be released on bond. This is being disregarded.
“The worst of the worse!” Anyone who has fallen for this BS needs to go take a test and see if they are perceiving reality or the “Trump alternative reality”
Can’t be in any country illegally sorry.
He had years to do the right thing, and chose not to.
Illegal Alien = Deportation
Illegal is illegal, it’s media like this that try and work people up and cause the division.
When conditions at these detention camps are reported, when the often brutal detentions are described, when the effects upon children being detained or that many of the people were detained while following the process of immigration is revealed, and your only response is illegal = illegal, then some serious soul searching is in order.
It’s so disheartening to read comments that reveal a complete lack of humanity. We do in fact have an amendment that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. We do have amendments about unlawful search and seizures. Conditions at these facilities are atrocious. People are being rounded up with no criminal record. And no, lacking the paperwork is not a criminal offense.People are being kidnapped who are in fact, “doing it the right way.” Children are being detained and are suffering from conditions at these human warehouses. It’s inconceivable to me that people can so easily defend this!
Yes, and the people running them are the same people who will be running the proposed warehouse gulags that are planned with the billions allocated to DHS in the “Big Beautiful Bill” last summer. There is no government regulation or oversight on these for-profit prisons, except for the legal right of congress to inspect at will. Of course, the efforts of our representatives have been largely obstructed, delayed, or denied . The press has been denied access, so there has been precious little media coverage. We have had mostly the accounts of those released , and, most recently, the visit by Rep. Raskin of Maryland that I cited earlier.
Every heartless argument by these diehard Trump supporters is debunked if they bother to read the article.
Argument#1 We want to get these CRIMINALS off of our streets to make Americans safer.
Debunked: Mr. Morales has no criminal record.
(And if you knew the basics of law, you would know that it is NOT a criminal offense, but a CIVIL offense to be in the country without papers.)
Argument #2 They are draining our resources and living here for free.
Debunked: Mr. Morales was working and supporting his family without any public assistance. He was paying taxes.
Argument #3 They should follow the legal process like everyone else.
Debunked: They were following the process. ICE is arresting people who are reporting to scheduled court hearings.
Argument #4 They’re stealing our jobs.
Debunked: Most Americans do not want to do the hard work that undocumented workers do.
Argument #5: ICE is only doing their job and enforcing the law.
Debunked: ICE agents flagrantly disobey the law daily. They break into homes, vehicles without judicial warrants with no probable cause. They hide their identity and refuse to disclose who they are. Most often, they don’t even notify local law enforcement of their activities because local law enforcement officers understand and respect constitutional rights and proper procedures.
In conclusion, the people who are cheering on and celebrating this behavior by ICE, clearly have no valid arguments for doing so. Their racist motives are clear. Their hatred for undocumented workers knows no bounds.
These are the same folks who would be screaming bloody murder if they or their loved ones were treated so abhorrently.
Thank you!
prior to coming to the U.S
ICE has to start using some common sense and stop detaining a man who provides for his wife who is a legal citizen and their children whom are citizens never mind that one or more are disabled. ABSOLUTELY SHAMEFUL.
Thank you for the reporting and reader comments on how this system operates illegally. I think we all acknowledge the necessity of legal immigration law enforcement. That is not what is happening in the current ICE/Border Patrol/Dept of Homeland Security operations.
The US debt and loss of US reputation from this made-for-TV capture operation are incalculable. We are paying for military equipment used by untrained masked individuals to brutally capture non-caucasian people or stake out a worker. Each person, each day, we pay to detain tens of thousands, adults and their children, indefinitely, in horror chamber privately owned/operated contract prisons under conditions that would not be legal standard for criminal detention within a US prison.
This labourer pays into the US Treasury, yet like all without a SSN, they cannot receive a tax refund nor SS/medicare benefits.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, recently reported that immigrants contributed over 30 years a surplus of $14,500,000,000,000 (14.5 trillion dollars) to the US Treasury. Not stealing our resources, but net positive contributing to state and federal coffers. This tax-surplus offset the national debt – the debt that the big bad bill ballooned by $3 trillion that we and our kids can service the interest on each year with our earnings.
The expanded ICE allotment allows each unqualified sign-on to receive $tens of thousands in bonus, drive a fleet of luxury SUVs, stay in Hilton hotels, at our expense. It allows prison operators to provide spoiled food and non potable water to detainees, deny healthcare, provide no bedding, and thus, increase their profits.
We are losing our workers, while a few rich political donors are boat- loading the US treasury and debt obligation into their offshore accounts.
Stop being a dupe to this theft, MAGA.
Thank you!