The couple, who own a Grand Prairie dry cleaning business, has been detained and faces possible deportation after a traffic stop in West Texas.
The arrest raises questions about the selective use of state and local police departments to check on the immigration status of the people they pull over.
It was a proud moment when Arcadio and Veronica Ortega dropped off the youngest of their four children for her senior year at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
But on the way back home to Grand Prairie, they were pulled over in Eastland County for what their children say was “…a routine traffic stop.”
“But instead of letting them go on their way, the officer contacted ICE to verify their immigration status. Without warning or clear reason, my parents were taken to the county jail,” Yolanda Ortega, the detained couple’s daughter, said in a statement. “In a few hours, ICE picked them up and transferred them to the South Texas Detention Complex, where they are still being held. They are separated from us, scared, and facing an uncertain future.”
The Ortegas have operated the dry cleaners on Carrier Parkway in Grand Prairie for eight years.
Their daughter said they entered the country 25 years ago without visas. That means they will likely be denied bond and held for months.
“It breaks my heart every time I hear ICE taking hard-working Mexican people,” said Bianca Duron, a longtime customer of the Ortegas’ laundromat.
Longtime customers like Duron are among those sending recommendation letters, donating to an online account, and speaking out on behalf of the detained couple.
“This is just a cleaner,” said Duron. “They are good for the community and they help out. So, I’m sorry, I just don’t understand why.”
The couple’s children are struggling to keep the dry cleaning business operating while the owners remain detained in South Texas.
“They said it would only be dangerous criminals, but I don’t see that; that’s not the case,” said immigration attorney Tessy Ortiz.
Ortiz says if the couple had been pulled over on a traffic stop in DFW, most police agencies would not have checked their immigration status.
“This is also because ICE is enforcing anything that comes to its plate, anything,” said Ortiz. “So, with old policies for a minor traffic violation, ICE would not pick up an alien unless they had criminal records.”
It’s possible the Ortegas will never return to their business and adopted home.
“This situation has torn our family apart. We are devastated and trying to understand how our loving parents could be taken from us so suddenly,” Yolanda Ortega said in a statement posted online. “My sister, who just started college, now carries the weight of this trauma and uncertainty when she should be focused on her studies.”
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