A Key West landscaper who arrived from Nicaragua four years ago, has a five-year work authorization, a blemish-free asylum case pending, no criminal record and two jobs is now awaiting deportation back to Nicaragua.
Last month, the Keys Weekly brought readers the story of a young Nicaraguan couple — we called them Antonio and Carmen. Antonio had been detained July 5 after ICE agents followed him and two coworkers in a landscaping vehicle to a job on Stock Island on a Saturday morning.
He has been detained in a Broward County center since then.
The couple has asked the Keys Weekly not to use their real names or the names of their employers for fear of government retaliation. After verifying their authentic names through identification documents, we agreed.
Antonio had video hearings in front of an immigration judge on July 21 and Aug. 7. His next asylum hearing in Miami had been scheduled for Aug. 21, but that won’t matter.
“The judge denied his monetary bond, so he’ll be deported,” Carmen told the Keys Weekly on Monday, Aug. 11 through a close friend of the couple, who was translating. “Now his only choice is whether to self-deport or wait for them to deport him.”
The federal government has been telling some immigrants they’ll receive $1,000 if they self-deport, but many immigrants are wary of believing anything the government tells them these days, the translator said.
“I watched Antonio’s hearings via Zoom and the judge and prosecutor kept telling his attorney that he was missing documentation. But Antonio’s attorney had all the receipts for each piece of paperwork that had been mailed via certified mail and signed for by someone in the state attorney’s office. So they had the paperwork, but it didn’t matter. Bond was still denied,” the translating friend said. “They don’t care. The judges, state attorneys don’t care about the law. They’re just puppets.”
Carmen plans to self-deport back to Nicaragua to be with Antonio and will leave once his deportation order and date have been set.
“The only chance we may have to come back to the Keys will only happen when Donald Trump is no longer president,” Carmen said. “The only crime we’ve committed is the color of our skin.”
The couple will return to Nicaragua, where initially they’ll stay with Carmen’s sister and her 7-year-old son, who has autism.
“It’s not like they left Nicaragua because the situation there was so great. But now they have to start all over again,” the translator said.
Antonio came to the U.S. from Nicaragua in August 2021. His brother, an electrician, was living in Key West with his wife, who is an American citizen. Antonio came across the border through Mexico and immediately turned himself in to ask for asylum, “as President Biden was allowing people to do at the time,” Carmen said through her interpreter. “He was detained for a short time in Texas, then they gave him paperwork for the asylum process and a phone that can track where he is.”
Antonio, who graduated college in Nicaragua, then headed for Key West, where his brother and sister-in-law were living. He had a work authorization, a social security number, a driver’s license, health insurance, pay stubs and tax returns. He attended every asylum hearing and immigration interview that were scheduled in Miami.
“He recently was given a five-year work permit and didn’t have to be back in court to update his status for another two years,” his wife said.
Carmen followed the same process as Antonio three months later, in November 2021, seeking asylum in Texas, after having been college-educated and licensed as a pharmacist in Nicaragua.
Now, she rides to work each morning hidden in the back of her friend’s car, terrified of being stopped and detained by ICE agents.
“I’ve never seen anything like this hatred for immigrants that is happening in this town in my 35 years here,” Carmen’s friend and coworker told the Keys Weekly during the interview, where she was helping to translate for Carmen.
The woman is a Cuban-born American citizen, who came to the U.S. more than 50 years ago. She owns a home and a business in Key West and considers Carmen and Antonio her family.
“This is a terrifying time. It’s destroying families and lives. These people are not criminals. Antonio has no criminal record here or in Nicaragua. Nothing.
“What’s happening on the streets of Key West and Stock Island is 100% racial profiling,” the Cuban woman said, adding that she now carries her U.S. passport with her everywhere she goes.
“Carmen’s immigration attorney told us that she doesn’t even know how her profession will survive because the laws are changing so fast — either that or the other side just ignores the laws anyway.”
