Marilú Domingo Ortiz says Monday, April 14, started like any other uneventful weekday.
“My husband had a dentist appointment, which we were driving to,” said Marilú.
Marilú says she and her husband, Juan Francisco Méndez, were stopped while driving on Tallman Street in New Bedford. That’s where two unmarked cars pulled in front of them and blocked them from moving. Men got out and approached their car window. Marilú says they were asking for a man named ‘Antonio’ and they didn’t have a judicial warrant.
“We showed them our papers to let them know that they were mixed up; he wasn’t the person they were looking for,” Marilú said. “They didn’t say anything to us and after a while, they told us to get out of the car. So we called our lawyer, telling her we’d been stopped by immigration. She said we shouldn’t get out until she got there.”
Marilú was recording the encounter with the ICE agents when one took out a large iron axe and geared up to strike the rear window. The axe crashed through the window in one blow and glass shattered onto the car floor and into the road.
“I felt shocked at that moment, I didn’t know what to do,” Marilú said. “They got us out. Well, they grabbed my arm and brought me down and they grabbed my husband from behind, thinking he was going to try to escape.”
Since her husband was detained that day, Marilú says she hasn’t been able to sleep a full night. She’s gotten a few calls from her husband, letting her know he’s alright and that he’s being detained at the Strafford County Department of Corrections in New Hampshire. She thinks his arrest could be a case of mistaken identity but she isn’t sure.
“I don’t know how to explain it, this anguish. I can’t rest well and neither can our son. He spends the night sobbing. He doesn’t eat and always asks about his father, ‘When will he come back to be with us?’” Marilú said. “Or he’ll say that he’ll eat only when his father returns. That’s stressful for me to see what he’s experiencing.”
ICE didn’t respond to questions from The Public’s Radio, but a spokesperson told the New Bedford Light that Juan Francisco is “an illegally present Guatemalan alien” who “refused to comply with officers’ instructions and resisted apprehension.”
Marilú said her husband doesn’t have a criminal record. She, her husband and their nine-year-old son came to the U.S. in 2023 seeking asylum, fleeing persecution from gangs in Guatemala. After moving to New Bedford, her husband worked at a fish processing factory and Marilú stayed at home. She and her son have both been granted asylum, but Juan Francisco’s case is still pending.
Marilú says she has been struggling to pay for his legal fees on top of rent and food. She’s been relying on the support she’s getting from local immigrants’ assistance groups.
“This has been extremely difficult. My husband is not the first person this has happened to. There have been others who’ve been detained unjustly without trials. Sometimes I feel that I just can’t do it,” Marilú said. “But they, these organizations, tell me that I need to, that I need to keep fighting, that I need to raise up my voice and continue forward and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Juan Francisco’s arrest comes amid heightened ICE activity in the South Coast of Massachusetts. In March, federal agents raided the Minit Man carwash in New Bedford and detained three men. Then, later that same month, ICE and DEA agents used a battering ram to break into a house in New Bedford’s South End and arrest two men. The news has spread through the immigrant community, putting people on high alert. Adrian Ventura is the executive director of the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (CCT) in New Bedford. Ventura says that detentions are nothing new, citing previous arrests from past administrations. But he says the Trump administration has been much bolder.
“We’re not saying there haven’t been raids here in New Bedford before. The daily bread of the Biden administration and previous ones was detention and raids,” Ventura said. “The difference is that this administration is doing much more aggressively.”
Ventura said that CCT – and other organizations like Mujeres Victoriosas, CEDC and different catholic charitable services – have been working to help people after family members get taken away with things like getting connected to social services and mental health resources, or launching GoFundMe campaigns to help pay for rent and other bills. That includes Marilú.
“Right now we are waiting to hear back from someone that will fix her car, and we’re also helping raise funds for her,” Ventura said. “Because, imagine, he was the main breadwinner, paying for rent. He didn’t come here asking for government handouts, they worked!”
According to Marilú, Juan Francisco is awaiting a May hearing on whether he can be removed from the country. If he gets deported, she says she’ll start to look for work. But in the meantime, she sees herself spending most days in places like the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, figuring out what she can do to be reunited with her husband.
