As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, works to keep up with the Trump administration’s deportation goals, some of the people they’re detaining end up stuck. They’re unable to be deported to their home countries, and unwilling to self-deport to a country where they have no family, connections, or history.
38-year-old Waldo Rodriguez-Garcia left Cuba when he was 19. Soon after he made it to the U.S., he found himself in trouble. He was trying to help 20 other Cubans flee their communist nation by boat, with hopes of reaching America.
After his arrest, ICE gave him a deportation order. But because the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Cuba, officials couldn’t send him home. Instead, he was ordered to check in with ICE each year, “I have no clue about immigration status. I’m a citizen. So I had no idea how he could obtain all of that.” Waldo’s wife Sylvia said the couple worked together to figure out paperwork. “Within time, he obtained his work authorization. And with that comes his social security. I think he got that in 2012. I help him renew that every year.”
Earlier this month, on July 3rd, they made the annual trek to Dallas for his appointment with ICE. Migrants aren’t allowed to take phones or family into the meeting. Sylvia says the usual 30-minute wait–dragged on for a couple of hours. Eventually, an ICE agent found her in the waiting area and collected Waldo’s phone so he could call Sylvia to explain what was happening.
“He said, ‘You know I’ve been having this order of deportation for 15 years now. I guess it’s time, with all this that’s going on,” Sylvia recalled. “I was like, ‘No, they can’t do this!’ You know, I broke down crying. He did too. I just felt like everything stopped, everything just changed in a second.”
Waldo’s boss, Baird ISD Superintendent Tim Little, was shocked that ICE locked him up. He says district staff has reacted to the news with a range of emotions, from intense sadness to anger, bordering on rage.
“Waldo was the epitome of what the American Dream is supposed to be,” Little said. “Someone who came to this country with nothing and had a family and was building a life and was giving back to his community. And it was just snatched away with no explanation for why.”
Later that day, on July 3rd, while ICE took Waldo to a detention center in Alvarado, Sylvia drove home to Goree. It’s a tiny town, an hour and a half from Abilene, situated among fields full of cattle and wind turbines. Sylvia spent the three and a half hour drive figuring out how to break the news to their six kids.
Waldo had been the sole provider for a decade, working the last three years at Baird ISD. This allowed Sylvia to stay home with their young children. She just recently completed her Associate's Degree and returned to the workforce. Sylvia says she doesn’t make enough to provide for the family, and she’s not sure how much longer she’ll be able to send food packages to Waldo’s parents in Cuba.
Waldo’s detention is also hitting the Baird school district hard.
“I’m devastated,” shared James Stevens, principal of Baird High School and Junior High. “I’m upset you know about him. He’s a friend. He’s a worker. We’re gonna suffer. The kids love him; stuff gets done. Stuff’s not gonna get done in the time that it got done before. You’re not gonna replace him. You need about four people to replace him.”
The district reached out to Sylvia to offer help. Principal Stevens says she told them that almost everyone checking in at the ICE facility that day was detained. “To me, that’s just a bad focus. I’m all for let’s get the criminals out of here, but people who are going in to do paperwork, to do the right thing…why are you setting up shop there? I’m sorry that doesn’t make sense to me. Criminals are not going to go to the office to do the right thing.”
As they organize support for the family, Waldo’s friends and co-workers are reaching for any source of help they can think of. Baird Superintendent Tim Little says he was disappointed when his Congressman Roger Williams declined to get involved, citing ethics rules.
“I followed that back up with an email pointing out that I was aware of those ethics rules, but there are also a number of things a sitting Congressman could do, and I enumerated those things. I didn’t get a response back for two or three days. And when I did, again it was just a flat refusal to even look at the case.”
One of Waldo’s colleagues at the Baird school district, English teacher Heather Guthrie, expressed strong feelings about his detention: “Waldo’s a good man, and he deserves better than this.”
Guthrie described Waldo’s dedication to getting projects done well, and the consideration he showed when he worried his repairs would disrupt classes or planning time. “We love him. We’ve lost a member of our family and, if this can happen to Waldo it can happen to any of our immigrant community.”
More than anything, Superintendent Little wants to know why immigration officials haven’t been able to resolve Waldo’s status over the past two decades.
“How many millions of people are sitting out there in the same situation because we can’t have a sane immigration policy that actually keeps criminals out and keeps people like Waldo, who are hard working, good people, who give to this community and this country, security of knowing they’re safe here. I don’t know why we can’t do that.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to KACU’s request for more information on the case.
According to Waldo’s wife Sylvia, he remains in the Prairieland Detention Center south of Fort Worth, and he’s declined to sign papers allowing the U.S to deport him to Mexico.
The Department of Homeland Security recently revoked humanitarian parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, leaving hundreds of thousands of people like Waldo in limbo.
Sylvia says she doesn’t pay attention to the news and hadn’t been concerned about Waldo being targeted for removal, but she says Waldo was worried.
Walking to the back pasture behind their home, Sylvia said Waldo set up a safety net in case something happened to him. He had started working with her father raising chickens, goats, and a handful of black Angus cows.
Sylvia and her father recently sold two of the young cows. She says her share of the sale will help cover the loss of Waldo’s income this month. But there’s no extra money for a private attorney, so she’s scheduled a meeting with Catholic Charities legal aid.
Sylvia says she’s holding out hope that sooner or later ICE will release him to resume life with their family in North Central Texas.
