She thought she had permission to be in the US. Then ICE arrested her on a jetway. | CNN

Indianapolis —

Indi Veitia walked into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office on Tuesday not knowing whether she would be allowed to leave.

She was entering the nondescript building in a nondescript business park off the I-465 that encircles Indianapolis for the first time to comply with a court order. Any certainty in her life had vanished when she was detained for three weeks this month after ICE officers stopped her while she was boarding a plane home from Atlanta.

After 20 minutes, officers sent her to a location nearby, her stress rising as the morning dragged on. About two hours later, the Venezuelan asylum-seeker emerged from the office of a security firm contracted by the government. She fell into the embrace of friends and began to cry. She had a new weight of a tracking monitor strapped to her right ankle and a ton of stress, emotion and dread on her shoulders, too.

“I’m broken,” the 47-year-old corporate worker told CNN. “There is nothing I can do.”