Their arrests, weeks before TPS is set to expire for many Venezuelans, raised alarms that the Trump administration is again willing to separate parents and children.
The Venezuelan couple — exhausted after a six-week journey north through an unforgiving jungle and gritty cities — waded across the southern border in Texas with their three children in 2022, part of a historic wave of migrants seeking refuge from economic and political turmoil who are now seeing the ground shift beneath them in the United States.
The couple, who The Washington Post is identifying only by their middle names Cesar and Norelia, and their three children were allowed in the country by Border Patrol. Later, the Department of Homeland Security granted them temporary protected status — a legal promise of security against being deported to the country they fled. They settled in a D.C. neighborhood with their children — ages 4, 9 and 13 — received social security numbers, a driver’s license for Cesar and new jobs cleaning hotels. They gave immigration officials their address.
Then on Monday, every legal safeguard they thought was in place was seemingly upended. With two of their children looking on, screaming and crying, the Border Patrol arrested the couple in D.C., removing them from their home in handcuffs on a misdemeanor charge of illegally crossing the border more than two years ago, according to court records, a video capturing a portion of the arrests, and interviews with them and their family. The family was apart for three days. By Thursday evening, the couple was back in their home with an order to appear in an El Paso federal court in 30 days to answer for the illegal border crossing.
The arrests, weeks before temporary protected status is set to expire for several hundred thousand Venezuelans, immediately raised alarms among immigrant advocates that the Trump administration is undertaking a new strategy as it seeks to execute mass deportations. Advocacy groups say they are investigating whether the government is violating a 2023 court settlement that prohibits separating children from their parents based on illegal border crossings, the same minor crime the first Trump administration used in 2018 to justify separating families at the southern border under a “zero tolerance” policy. It was unclear Friday why this couple was targeted for arrest and what it might mean for others who have temporary protected status after they, too, crossed illegally.
“They saw them handcuff their father and mother,” the children’s grandfather, Gregorio, said in an interview, on Thursday. “The children were watching.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Youssef Fawaz declined to respond to questions about why the Border Patrol arrested the couple and separated them from their children for three days, saying he could not discuss individual cases because of privacy concerns.
But the Border Patrol made their names public in court filings that alleged that they crossed the border illegally on Oct. 13, 2022, wading across the river into the El Paso area. The Post is identifying the couple and the children’s grandfather by their middle names because they said they fear for their lives if deported back to Venezuela after having applied for U.S. asylum. After the couple was released, Hilton Beckham, assistant commissioner of public affairs at CBP, issued a statement alleging without evidence that the couple had ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, which the couple’s family and immigration lawyer denied.
American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt, who led the lawsuit against family separations during Trump’s first term, said the organization immediately launched an investigation into the arrests, which were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Cesar and Norelia tried to follow the rules after crossing the border, their attorney and relatives said, paying taxes and filling out applications the government required. But, under the Trump administration, the rules have changed — for them, and millions of others who have entered the country illegally, regardless of whether they now have permission to stay.
The family believed they were safe because they have temporary protected status, which Congress created in a 1990 law to shield people from deportation if their country is engulfed in war or another crisis. Days before leaving office, the Biden administration extended protections for up to 600,000 Venezuelans through October 2026, saying it was unsafe to deport them because of political repression, extreme malnutrition and the health-care system’s collapse.
After taking office, the Trump administration last month rescinded that extension and said thousands of Venezuelans should prepare to lose their work permits starting in April, while others will lose them in September. The Trump administration has made thousands of immigration arrests, reopened migrant family detention facilities that the Biden administration closed, and has sought to fast track the deportations of thousands more in the United States, including those who entered on parole, like the couple.
In another case, a TPS-holder from Venezuela has spent more than 20 days in ICE detention in New Mexico after authorities took the man into custody during his routine check-in appointment last month, his attorneys said.
Maitony Cardenas Barrera, 23, entered the United States legally through the CBP One app in 2023 after waiting for an appointment for parole, according to his attorneys.
While detained for three months, he passed a credible fear interview — the first step in an asylum claim — and was later released. Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center attorney Heidi Cerneka said they have told ICE about Cardenas Barrera’s protected status and submitted their client’s verified documents more than ten times, but authorities have not responded to any of their calls or queries, they said.
“It is abusive and intentional when a person is held for one day or 24 days with no legal basis,” Cerneka said. “I fear there are more Maitony’s that nobody knows about.”
Cesar’s and Norelia’s TPS status, which expires April 7, remained firmly in place when a Border Patrol Agent arrived at their door in Southeast Washington as the couple was returning home from work, their public defender, Tezira Abe, said.
Cesar, a former member of the Venezuelan National Guard, and his family fled Venezuela because he objected to detaining people who opposed the Nicolás Maduro regime, his father Gregorio said. They joined relatives in Ecuador, but faced discrimination and felt compelled to move north to the United States. Their children went to school and learned English and Cesar found a second job as an Uber driver.
Since settling in D.C. in 2022 — part of the thousands of South American migrants arriving to the city that year — they have volunteered with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid advocacy group’s efforts to aid others with donations of food or furniture, even helping to plan a holiday party, said Amy Fischer, a volunteer with the group.
Fischer said this was the first time she has seen people who had settled in the United States face prosecution for illegal entry — the same charges that Trump officials used in his first term to separate families.
A cellphone video of the arrest taken by one of their children from behind a partially closed window shade shows plainclothes officers taking Cesar into an unmarked vehicle as their son shouted, in English: “We didn’t do anything!” In the background, another child can be heard crying, saying in Spanish, “He is my dad.”
The government’s decision to pursue charges under the circumstances appeared to puzzle the judge at the couple’s first appearance hearing in U.S. District Court on Wednesday.
“It’s my first case like this,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey at the hearing, after rejecting the Trump administration’s request to keep the couple incarcerated longer on the misdemeanor charge. He wondered if it “might be the first of many.”
During the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan McFadden asked Harvey to order the couple held longer, saying that the government hoped they could be seamlessly transferred to ICE for deportation proceedings. She said they “may flee” because they did not report to the nearest ICE office within 60 days after crossing the Mexican border, as required.
McFadden said she was unaware the defendants had temporary protected status. The judge later said he was “underwhelmed” by her knowledge of the case. He was also unmoved by her claims that the couple posed a flight risk.
Abe said she had “never come across” such a case during her time as a public defender, and argued that her clients were not trying to hide from the government. To the contrary, they had applied for Social Security numbers, pay taxes and passed background checks by applying for temporary protected status.
Abe noted that federal officers had found the couple easily. She said they would report to Texas and understood that failing to appear would lead to another arrest and, possibly, another separation from their children.
“They don’t want to be without their children,” Abe said.
As a Spanish interpreter translated the lawyer’s comments about their children, Cesar and Norelia, who were participating in the hearing via separate online feeds from the D.C. jail, could both be seen wiping away tears.
The judge ordered the couple to report to federal court in Texas within 30 days of their release to face the charges.
The couple remained in federal custody Thursday morning and were taken to an ICE office in a Virginia suburb of D.C., they later recalled.
After The Post and others asked ICE and CBP why they were arrested and separated from their children, officials released them that evening. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not answer questions about their detention.
On Thursday night, they were back in Gregorio’s sparse apartment in Southeast D.C., where a single blue balloon floated in the corner, part of a last-minute birthday celebration for their eldest son, who was turning 13.
Cesar began to tremble as he predicted what might happen if he was deported to Venezuela, resting his 4-year-old son on his knee. “They see me as a traitor,” he said. “It’ll be six months in prison right away, or worse.”
The court date in Texas loomed large, riddled with uncertainty.
They would have to pay their own way, Cesar noted. Would they just end up getting detained again? Would it all be over? Would they see their children again?
Norelia cut in, saying to her husband “we have to be optimistic.”
“You’re still traumatized,” Gregorio told him. “We have to get you to a therapist.”
The family had fled to the United States because they hoped the government would treat them better, they said.
“It’s like we built a castle here in two years and in one hour, they knocked it all down,” Gregorio said. “We lost everything, even if it’s not much. Everything we have done here we have worked for.”
The birthday balloon clung to its corner of the white stucco walls. On a black kitchen table, crumbs of the child’s birthday cake had been wiped down.
Border patrol grabs Venezuelan parents in D.C., despite protected status
