Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a Texas father of three while he was delivering milk to his newborn in a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, despite his being protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to his wife and local officials.
Juan Chavez Velasco, who was brought to the U.S. from Colombia by his parents as a child, was driving to see his daughter in Weslaco when two unmarked vehicles boxed him in and “yanked him” from his vehicle last month, his wife Stephanie Villarreal, who is a U.S. citizen, said in an online statement.
“My husband always did everything by the book and never had any form of criminal history not even so much as an unpaid ticket,” she said. “This has been devastating and extremely hard for us.”
Villarreal said her husband’s detention was due to a denied asylum case and a related order of deportation that he received when he was 14 years old. He applied for DACA when he was old enough, at 15, and was successful then and in the years renewing it since.
Villarreal shared in a GoFundMe account Wednesday that their daughter remains hospitalized and is currently undergoing a blood transfusion due to low red blood cells.
