Every time someone knocks on the front door, little 3-year-old Emmanuel thinks his dad is on the other side. Every time the door opens, he isn’t there.
Weeks ago, his father, Yonquenide, was detained by masked ICE agents at Federal Plaza at what was supposed to be a routine asylum application hearing. The detainment ripped the family apart, leaving Yonquenide’s pregnant wife, Franyelis, struggling to provide for Emmanuel and their other son, 8-year-old Yoneifer, with a third child on the way.
The family — whose last name has been withheld by amNewYork due to the sensitivity of the case — now resides in a Brooklyn apartment with Yonquenide’s sister. Franyelis, 28, fights back tears when recalling the moment her husband was ripped away from her arms.
Yet the most painful part for the family might be the hope Emmanuel has when someone is at the front door. During amNewYork’s visit, the tot — who believes his father is at work rather than in ICE captivity — held up a photo of his father and said, “Papa! Papa!”
Franyelis said he keeps expecting his dad to be on the other side of the door, only to be disappointed when he isn’t there.
Yet the child is still eager for his dad to come home; Emmanuel hasn’t seen his father in more than three weeks.
The pain of ICE family separation
Yonquenide, 27, came to 26 Federal Plaza on Sept. 18 to attend a court hearing regarding his asylum application. But after the hearing, he found himself suffering the same fate as hundreds of other immigrants at Federal Plaza in recent months: In the clutches of masked ICE agents who hastily dragged him away from his loving wife and family.
“He started to cry,” Franyelis recalled to amNewYork as she sat at her kitchen table, the raw, visceral moment almost visible just behind her welling eyes.
“We had no idea they were going to catch him right there, right outside the door of the court,” Franyelis added. A religious leader volunteering his time during the incident warned her not to put herself in danger.
“I felt like I wanted to leave with him where he was, but I couldn’t. The pastor said that it would be difficult, that they might take the boys away from me,” she said.
Frenyelis is often unable to communicate with her husband since detainees are charged for each call. In one instant, another detainee gave him minutes from their call to ensure he could check in on his wife and the kids. Although she can purchase additional minutes through an app, she lacks the funds to do so.
The family arrived in the United States in August 2024 after their food store business came under persecution from a violent mafia, “Los Pachenca,” which made their daily life unsafe. Los Pachenca is reported to be in control of the Caribbean coastline of Colombia and is involved in the cocaine trade, among other organized crimes.
“They took money from him for the store, and if we didn’t give him anything, they would do something to him, so we went to Colombia,” Franyelis said.
Seeking a better future, they had embarked on a journey of thousands of miles, through several countries in Central America — often walking for days, with minimal food and water. Her husband carried their youngest boy while the oldest developed sores on his feet from the long trek.
‘We wanted to do things right here’
During the Biden administration, the family was granted access to the United States through the CBP One app, a tool once used by immigrants to schedule asylum appointments at the U.S. border. Now, this app is used to process voluntary self-deportations.
Once in the U.S., the family stayed in a Texas shelter for a month before flying to New York and taking up residence in another shelter, where they remained until they moved in with Yarelis, Franyelis’s sister-in-law.
“We wanted to do things right here. The papers, work, the education for the kids. That’s why we went to the court, to do the right thing,” Franyelis explained.
Despite their best efforts, Franyelis says doing things “right” led her to this moment, an ICE family separation in immigration court that has not only left the family distraught, with the patriarch detained the family is struggling to afford groceries and even rent.
Even with the hardship, Franyelis says she tries to stay strong for the kids, putting on a brave face and telling them everything will be fine. Yet these financial and emotional struggles are made even worse as a pregnant mother with a history of miscarriages.
“Last December, I lost one. To have this baby, I had to take care of myself a lot,” she said.
Franyelis is one of many immigrant families facing separation under the Trump administration, as well as a struggle with language, not being able to afford legal assistance, and shared trauma with loved ones.
On top of it all, she told amNewYork that her husband’s asylum application has now disappeared from view in their online portal, leaving her to fear for the worst. She says if Yonquenide is deported, she doesn’t know how she will survive or what she will do.
Franyelis asked Trump to think about immigrants as human beings; they need an opportunity, too.
“There are many families who are also going through the same thing. I am not the only one. Husbands are taken away in front of their children, and they have to see all those ugly things. Stop with all these awful things,” Franyelis said.
A GoFundMe was created to help Franyelis and her family.
Yarelis, who lives with Franyelis, also shared concern over the situation, noticing how hard it is for her to manage everything alone while pregnant. She reflected on watching a video showing her brother’s detention — he was seen crawling on the floor, crying, screaming for his kids. She compared this experience to living in Venezuela.
“We came fleeing persecution in our country. We came seeking a better future to have better protection, a safe country such as the United States,” Yarelis said. “Now, here, we are experiencing the same [thing]. With fear.”
