Jesús Alberto Ríos Andrade is married to a U.S. citizen. When he was detained on February 1 by immigration authorities, he had already started multiple U.S. immigration processes: permanent residency, a work permit, and even Temporary Protected Status.“
To begin with, my husband is not a gang member,” said Angie González, Ríos’ wife, who spoke to El Faro via telephone from El Paso, Texas. “He left home when he was 15 years old. He sold fruit on the street in Colombia and then sold accessories for phones. He learned to cut hair to get into barbershops and cleaned stoves in restaurants. Whatever he could get his hands on, he did,” González said. In the U.S. he was working in construction.
Angie told El Faro that Jesus also has no criminal record, but she believes he was targeted by authorities because of a rose tattoo on his neck. U.S. authorities have used tattoos as evidence of gang membership. But experts such as journalist Ronna Rísquez, author of a book on the Tren de Aragua, maintain that these gang members do not have identifying tattoos, unlike Central American gangs.Prior to starting the other paperwork to adjust his immigration status, Jesus had entered the United States in July 2023 as an asylum seeker. “He did not enter illegally; they [migrants] were being allowed to enter because they were seeking asylum,” Jesus had listed a Maryland address on his application, she says, but stayed in Texas after meeting her. They were married on Sep. 10, 2024.
A missed appointment in immigration court put him on file with authorities. “He had an electronic GPS bracelet and had to report in with a photo every day. The immigration people came to visit,” Angie said.On February 1, González and her husband had been taking clothes out to wash. “He stepped outside to help me put baskets in the car. I was getting ready and I heard voices, but I thought he was talking to the neighbors. I looked out the window and saw that they were already taking him away in handcuffs. I ran out and one of the immigration officers told me that he had an arrest warrant,” she says.
By then, it had already been three weeks since González sent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services the Form I-130 Petition for an Alien Relative.
According to a document shared by González, Ríos had an appointment for biometric data capture the next day, February 2, in Houston.Ríos was sent to a detention center in New Mexico. They made plans to see each other in Colombia while the residency was being processed. “I told him, ‘If they deport you to Venezuela, it doesn’t matter, because when they fix your papers you can come back here.’”While in detention, González was able to communicate with her husband. She also kept tabs on his location through ICE’s detainee tracker. From New Mexico he was transferred to the El Paso and El Valle detention centers, both in Texas.
The last time González spoke to her husband was on Saturday, March 15, at 8 a.m. Ríos told him that he was getting ready for the plane in which he assumed he would be sent to Venezuela. After that call, González called the two facilities where her husband had been. In El Paso, a man who answered left the phone off the hook. “I heard him say: ‘Oh, that's the guy they took to the ugly prison in El Salvador,’” González said. “I felt like I was dying.”The next day, Jesus disappeared from ICE's detainee tracking system. “I was looking for him in the videos and in the photos, but I didn't see him.”She confirmed he was in El Salvador only upon reading his name on the list published by CBS. “I’m an American. I have the right to be told where my husband is,” says González. “How can they have a citizen, who has done things the right way here in the U.S., suffering for the man she fell in love with?”“I say to my government: Okay, deport them, but to their country. This is a monstrous thing, a thing of the devil. I have nightmares. Sometimes I think he’s dead,” she added.
In her letter to Congresswoman Escobar, González wrote: “This is not just about my husband. It is about whether the U.S. government is following due process or conducting mass deportations in secret that violate fundamental human rights. If ICE cannot provide concrete, verifiable evidence that my husband was a danger to public safety, then he and others like him are being unjustly detained in a foreign prison under false pretenses.”#bluetrianglesolidarity(Story from El Fero, credit Nelson Rauda Zablah)