New Bedford asylee back home after weeklong ICE detention

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NEW BEDFORD — Manuela Morales Gonzales saw the blue lights go off in the rearview mirror at 6:08 a.m., shortly after the 27-year-old and her partner, Pascual Cuin González, 32, left their home in the city for work at a farm.

“We were in the car for maybe two minutes,” she recalled in Spanish. “Then we saw the lights, and at first I thought it was the local police.

“I asked him: ‘Why are they stopping us if you’re driving well?’” she continued. “Then he said: ‘It’s them. It’s ICE.’”

Agents dressed in paramilitary gear with caps and masks swiftly descended on the vehicle near Hayden-McFadden Elementary School on County Street. They opened the doors before the couple had a chance to lock them. They said there were two women and two men, and they spoke Spanish with Mexican and Puerto Rican accents. 

Cuin González, a K’iche’ man born in Guatemala, said the agents asked for identification and he showed them his Real ID.

“For the two women, that was good enough,” he said in Spanish. “But there were two men who wanted more.”

Those minutes on Friday, Sept. 12, were the start of a weeklong odyssey that would bring Cuin González to three prisons in three states, an experience increasingly common as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement races to meet President Donald Trump’s deportation goals, according to advocates. They said it is a strategy based in psychology and courtroom logic.

“Certainly the pattern we’re seeing is to isolate immigrants,” said Javier Luengo-Garrido, deputy field director for regional engagement at the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It completely goes against civil rights, and we’re talking about people who follow the process.”

“We’re seeing more cases where people are being detained and sent from detention in New England to far away and deported,” Luengo-Garrido said.

Events leading up to the arrests

Cuin González’s travails began in June, he said, when he received a letter from Catholic Charities’ immigration department, which had represented him in an asylum case years ago. The letter informed him that the government had reopened removal proceedings against him in the Boston Immigration Court. 

Cuin González said he entered the U.S. as a minor in 2009, claiming asylum through his mother. Twelve years later, in 2021, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted him asylum. Though his asylum papers show his status does not expire, the June 2025 letter from Catholic Charities, which Cuin González shared with The Light, showed ICE restarted removal proceedings against him because he had “not followed through” on adjusting his status to legal permanent resident.

“I wasn’t aware of that,” he said in Spanish. “I lost contact with my lawyer during COVID and we never got back in touch.”

In recent months, immigration detentions have skyrocketed, with those facing deportation often being held in detention indefinitely until they are resolved. In May, the Board of Immigration Review’s decision in the Matter of Q. Li significantly raised the bar for immigration bond hearings and allowed for the indefinite detention of immigrants with pending cases.

By Sept. 7, almost 59,000 immigrants were in detention nationwide, according to the Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse, a data analysis firm.

Cuin González told The Light he applied for a green card about a month ago. His only interaction with the law in Massachusetts, according to records obtained by The Light from New Bedford District Court, was in 2015, when New Bedford police charged him with failure to use his turn signal and driving without a license; a judge found him not responsible in the former charge and the latter charge was dismissed. 

On Sept. 12, Cuin González said, he showed the federal agents his valid Social Security card and work permit, but they didn’t seem to care. Morales Gonzales, an asylum seeker with a work permit, saw that the situation was deteriorating rapidly. She went for her phone.

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Kafkaesque travels

The couple said the agents then brought them in a black van to Fall River. They said the two female agents laughed and listened to “rude” music the whole time.

“I didn’t want to look them in the face,” said Morales Gonzales. “I was so scared.”

“They were checking my ID,” she said. “The only thing I said to them was: ‘Why are you doing this to me?’”

Meanwhile, Cuin González remained stoic. 

“I was quiet because I realized this truly was ICE,” he said. “I stood quiet because I had heard on the news that lawyers were supposedly telling people to stay quiet [if swept up].”

“I have no criminal record,” he continued. “And I knew that if I spoke, that could make my case more difficult for me.”

Insisting upon one’s civil rights, such as that to remain silent, is important, said the ACLU’s Luengo-Garrido. He has given a number of “Know Your Rights” workshops in recent months where he informs community members across Massachusetts what to do if detained by ICE.

“You have rights,” he said, “whether or not you are a citizen in this country.”

Morales Gonzales said she continued to cry and insist on calling her children. The two female agents soon tired of the situation.

“That was all I could think about,” she said. “One of the women yelled at me and said: ‘You need to calm yourself, woman!’” before asking about her criminal record. 

“I didn’t respond to her,” she said. “Eventually, she said that once we got to our destination, they’d let me call my daughters.”

The couple said the agents took them to a soccer field in Fall River behind the city’s police station. Morales Gonzales said she saw them step out and have a conversation among themselves. When they returned, they took the cuffs off Cuin González and placed chains around his feet, hands, and hips, and escorted him to a nearby black van. 

“They told me: ‘You, we’re going to let go. But we’re taking him,’” Morales Gonzales said. “But I started crying harder then because I didn’t know whether they were telling the truth.”

“That’s when they told me they were going to let my partner go,” Cuin González said. “If it weren’t for the girls, they would’ve taken her, too.”

The park the couple described matches the description of Britland Park, a large soccer field situated behind the Fall River Police Headquarters. Though there is a restricted lot for police vehicles, there are also several public lots nearby, according to a representative for the Police Department, who added that the police do not cooperate with ICE on raids.

Morales Gonzales said that as they left to return her to New Bedford, they stopped at a gas station to fill up the vehicle. Agents removed their masks, their hats, and their paramilitary gear, stepped out in civilian clothing, and filled up. They put their uniforms back on as they returned to New Bedford.

“They were laughing and listening to music the whole time,” she recalled. “They were just listening to the music and chatting as if it were all normal.”

She said that when they returned to the site of the detention, the couple’s car was still there. Then two men, apparently ICE agents, appeared. 

“They came up to me and one got in my face and yelled: ‘Do you know why we arrested you?,’” she recalled. “‘It’s because you were recording us.’”

She denied recording them and insisted they did not resist the agents.

“He said: ‘This happened because you did not want to cooperate,’” she continued. “Then he told me: ‘The next time we come to arrest you, don’t resist, so it doesn’t get like this.’

“They left me with a threat.”

‘Nightmarish’

Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Corporation, said she was suspicious about the arrest.

“It’s just a traffic stop, really,” she said. “And it’s nightmarish how it all turned out.”

“He had no criminal charges, he had work authorization; there was no real justification for the traffic stop from what I heard,” she continued. “All of it seems very bizarre and it doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

Urszula Masny-Latos, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, said the details of the arrest match the trends of ICE arrests over the past eight months.

“It happens every day,” she said. “It’s very troubling and it’s very frustrating for us because we feel almost powerless in this situation.

“Most people will do exactly what the agents say and they’ll still say they’re not cooperating,” she added. 

The Guild has been advising people to carry proof of residency with them at all times, like Cuin González did. But that is no guarantee of safety, she said.

“We hear over and over about cases that people have documents they want to show to agents and they completely disregard them,” Masny-Latos said. “It’s a very troubling situation.”

Williams said that she suspects the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing immigration stops based on a combination of people’s jobs, race or ethnicity, and language makes her think that is what’s happening locally.

“Absolutely it was about racial profiling and stopping people who they perceived may be unauthorized in this country,” she said. “But how do you do that just based on appearance?”

According to data recorded by The Light, more than 50 immigrants have been detained by ICE in New Bedford in recent months, the vast majority K’iche’ men from Guatemala. Williams said it’s another injustice added onto a community that has endured innumerable injustices over centuries.

Masny-Latos added that a combination of arrest quotas, the lionization and seeming impunity granted to agents by the Trump administration, and the recent Supreme Court ruling may have contributed to this.

“We can only speculate,” she said. “But it looks like it’s all of the above.”

Sent to Batavia

Cuin González remained in chains for hours in a vehicle near the park, he said. He said that about two hours later, the agents brought in two more men they picked up that day, one from Fall River and another from New Bedford.   

“They let the other two men go,” he said. “They said: “‘We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll bring you back.’”

But Cuin González remained. At one point, he said, the agents took him to a nearby Dunkin’ and got food for themselves, removing their masks in the process. He said he fell asleep handcuffed in the backseat of the van until around 2:30 p.m. — about eight hours after his arrest — when agents finally woke him.

“They said: “Wake up, wake up. It’s time to go,’” he said.

They brought him to the ICE office in Burlington, where they took his fingerprints and registered his personal belongings and the $20 he carried on his person. There, he said the conditions were similar to those experienced by other New Bedford immigrants at the facility. 

For the remainder of Friday, Sept. 12, and most of Saturday, he stood in the cell, fed only crackers and some gelatin. The air conditioning was turned to full blast and he and the other detainees were not provided with blankets or beds, he said.

“It was so cold in there,” he said. “And they gave us nothing.”

Saturday afternoon, he said agents told them to quickly use the bathroom, as they were moving. They were loaded into black vans with no license plates, he said, and escorted by Massachusetts State Police to Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. There, he and 94 other men were loaded onto a 250-seat airplane and flown to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York. They arrived at the ICE detention center at about 11 p.m.

Cuin González said the prisoners knew where they were going only if a “good agent” told them, but most of the guards didn’t say anything and attempted to keep their distance.

He was placed in a dormitory with 54 other men in Buffalo and said he had no bedding during his time there, though he was provided a bowl of cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch. He said throughout his stay in Burlington and Buffalo, he never once had the chance to bathe.

“They never gave us the privilege of shower access,” he said. “I went five days without a shower.”

Cuin González said he wasn’t scared, because he put his faith in his God. 

He remained in Buffalo for another three days, though no one in his family knew his whereabouts. On the third day, his employer filed a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf at U.S. District Court Massachusetts. Judge Leo T. Sorokin transferred the docket to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

The petition claimed his detention was unconstitutional and that he faced awful conditions. His employer also worried that a move away from New England would harm his chances for release and health.

“His detention is in violation of his 5th amendment rights,” the petition read. “I am concerned about his wellbeing should he be transferred out of the region.

“He has been deprived of food and basic sanitation.”

The habeas petition was an astute move, according to experts.

“We’re seeing more cases where people are being detained and sent from one detention in New England and far away and deported,” Luengo-Garrido said. “Habeas has been quite effective [in preventing rapid deportation] in specific cases.”

Williams said habeas petitions need to be done quickly in the current environment. She said it appears the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is moving people swiftly out of jurisdictions like Massachusetts, where judges may be more sympathetic to their cases. The person in question needs to be in the jurisdiction the moment the petition is filed for a judge to have jurisdiction.  

“That makes any kind of habeas petition more difficult,” she said. “We’ve already seen it in this particular case.”

“It makes it that much more difficult to stay a couple of steps ahead.”

The Louisiana experience

On Tuesday, Sept. 16, ICE flew Cuin González from Buffalo to a destination that agents didn’t reveal to him until the plane was already in the air, he said: the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Pine Prairie, Louisiana.

After arriving in Pine Prairie, Cuin González said he finally was allowed to take a shower for the first time in five days. He added that it was the first time he wasn’t cold.

Shortly thereafter, Morales Gonzales went onto the ICE detainee locator page and learned of his whereabouts. When she saw the prison was in Louisiana, her heart sank.

“I was crying every day,” she said. “And when I found out he was in Louisiana, I gave up all hope that he would come back to us.”

She wasn’t the only one. 

“I nearly gave up when they sent us to Louisiana,” Cuin González said. “On the flight over, the other prisoners were saying that Louisiana was the last stop before they deport us.”

On Wednesday evening, the officers called him out by his full name and told him to grab his things. They escorted him out of the cell and he followed the guard. 

“Where are we going?” he recalled asking. “The guard then said: ‘Aren’t you happy? You’re going home to your family.’ That’s when a smile came upon my face.

“‘Of course I’m happy,’” he recalled telling the guard. 

Morales Gonzales said she was confident the habeas petition had something to do with his release. Cuin González said that, at the time, he wasn’t even aware of the courtroom maneuvers on his behalf; he was just happy to return to New Bedford. 

Then, something happened that dampened that happiness: he realized how close he had come to a forced return to his native land. 

Before driving him to Lafayette Regional Airport, the guards handed him a white bag with lettering on it. In black were the words “from” and “to.” Handwritten in red were “Buffalo” and “Guatemala.”

“When I saw that, I realized they had planned to send me back,” he continued. 

As the guards drove him to the Lafayette airport, they told him he had to figure out how to get back to New Bedford. He put them in touch with his boss, who said he’d buy Cuin González a ticket to fly out to Boston the next morning. Otherwise, he would have been stranded with nothing more than the $20 the agents returned to him.

He flew home to Massachusetts on Thursday, Sept. 18, six days after his arrest.

Back in his apartment, Cuin González breathed in deeply and paused for a moment. He reflected on the 64 men incarcerated with him in Louisiana. ICE released only him. He said he knew a number of them had been flown out of the country since then. As far as he knows, he was the only one released in the U.S. so far.

“It scares me,” he said, “to think of how close I was to being on that flight.”

The fear is still there

Now reunited, the couple said they are still traumatized.

“While he was under arrest, I stopped going to work because I was so scared,” Morales Gonzales said. “I worried about seeing those people again.” 

Morales Gonzales said her daughters didn’t go to school for nearly two weeks after the ordeal. The family is too scared to leave each other alone.

“The day they took Pascual, they told me: ‘Mami, we’d die if they took you,’” she said. “I can’t imagine a life without my daughters.”

Cuin González said he is also scared. He has an immigration court date in Boston set for March. He doesn’t know when and if ICE will return.

“In all honesty, I am scared,” he said. “They told [Manuela] that they will be back.”

The atmosphere of fear is intentional, said Luengo-Garrido.

“The level of enforcement is unprecedented,” he said. “And because of the level of enforcement being unprecedented, the violence [is] unprecedented.”

He said there was only one solution in the face of such tactics.

“The answer for the community is coming together, being there for each other, learning your rights,” he said.

Masny-Latos agreed, and added that the whole country should be concerned with the authoritarian turn signaled by such tactics.

“We are all afraid, but some of us are privileged,” she said. “We need to use our privilege to fight for those who are really struggling right now and are being persecuted under this administration.”

Cuin González said he still does not know why ICE arrested him, despite his work permit and his asylum status. The question kept slumber at bay as he waited overnight for his flight at the Lafayette airport.

“They never told me why they arrested me,” he told The Light, “or why they let me go.”
 
Kevin G. Andrade can be contacted at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org