A Durango father and his two children who were detained by ICE, after agents mistook the father for someone else, have signed paperwork to voluntarily deport back to Colombia, immigration advocates for the family said Wednesday.
Fernando Jaramillo-Solano, 45, has been held in an ICE detention center in Texas with his 15-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter for three weeks, since the three were detained Oct. 27 by masked federal agents while on their way to school.
It is not clear when federal officials will release the family, or whether the documents they signed could hasten the process. Immigrants imprisoned for months at the Aurora detention facility have been asking to be deported, yet ICE officials have kept them there with no answers as to when they will get out.
A spokesperson for ICE did not immediately return an email with questions from The Sun on Wednesday evening.
The family has an active asylum case, but according to Jaramillo-Solano’s wife and mother of their two children, the “mental, physical, and emotional trauma” from their detention has “left them unable to continue fighting.”
“They are exhausted and devastated and their 12-year-old daughter is experiencing acute psychological distress,” she told Companeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center, a nonprofit who has been working with the family on their asylum case.
Since the family has an active asylum case, they have the legal right to remain in the country while the case proceeds. They have complied with every requirement of the process, according to advocates.
According to ICE officials, federal agents were looking for someone else when they pulled Jaramillo-Solano over, but arrested him and his two children anyway.
Gregory Davies, Denver’s third-ranking official with ICE, corroborated that account in federal court last month, testifying that the agents did not know Jaramillo-Solano was the person driving the car before they stopped him, the Denver Post reported. Davies took the stand during a hearing in a lawsuit challenging the agency’s arrest practices in Colorado.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers called for the family’s release shortly after they were detained and on Wednesday continued to demand answers from ICE officials.
“The Trump administration turned Fernando and his children’s dream into an American tragedy,” U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday. “They forced a father and his 15- and 12-year-old kids to make an impossible choice: leave their wife and mother behind and return to a country where they don’t feel safe; or remain indefinitely isolated in detention, separated from her.”
Hickenlooper said he talked to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and demanded the family be released, but they refused.
“Our fight is not over. We will continue to demand transparency from DHS regarding allegations of violence, and about what they did to this family,” Hickenlooper said. “Two innocent children will carry this trauma for the rest of their lives.”
The family’s arrest sparked demonstrations in the southwestern Colorado town. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the facility in Durango and blocked the entrance in an attempt to prevent the family from being separated. The protest erupted as federal agents dragged demonstrators and fired rubber bullets and used pepper spray at close range.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation launched a probe after a federal agent was captured on video throwing a 57-year-old woman to the ground outside the ICE facility in Durango. The investigation is still underway.