A terrified Nicaraguan woman in her mid-30s, we’ll call her Carmen, sat with her phone in her tidy Key West living room, showing photos of her husband, whom we will call Antonio.
She smiled at memories of Christmas, birthdays and other events, then teared up at a photo that showed her proud and pregnant, just a few weeks before she lost the baby.
But Antonio, who came from Nicaragua, has been living and working in Key West for four years, wasn’t there to put his arm around her as he usually would, and reassure her about the lost pregnancy and their commitment to trying again.
Antonio has been in an immigration detention facility in Broward County since July 5, having been followed in the landscaping truck he was driving to a work site that Saturday morning around 8:30. Upon arrival at the site, ICE agents began questioning Antonio and two of his coworkers. Deputies from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office arrived a short time later, as did Antonio’s brother, who is married to an American citizen.
Antonio’s brother began asking the ICE agent what they were doing with his brother, and trying to tell them he has a work visa and a pending asylum case.
“But the ICE agent, the big, bald one who is terrifying everyone in town, told Antonio’s brother,
‘You are interfering in a federal investigation. Get the f out of here.’”
When Antonio’s brother reached for his own wallet to show his own green card, the agent pulled his gun on the man, then checked his green card and told him to go away. The brother pulled his car around the corner and watched his brother get handcuffed and taken away.
The couple 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 came four years ago from Nicaragua to Key West, where his brother, an electrician, was living with his wife, who is an American citizen,” Carmen said through a close friend and colleague who was translating her limited English. “He came across the border through Mexico and immediately turned himself in to ask for asylum, as President Biden was allowing people to do. 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 they are.”
Antonio then headed to Key West. He has a work authorization, a social security number, a driver’s license, health insurance, pay stubs and tax returns. He has attended every asylum hearing and immigration interview that’s been 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,” Carmen said.
She arrived in Key West a year or so after her husband and followed the same process 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 the same thing will happen to her.
“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. I’d estimate that at least 100 to 200 people — mostly Haitian and Nicaraguan — have been picked up and taken away from Key West. 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. “The ICE agents saw three Hispanic men in a landscaping truck, then followed them. This is unbelievably terrifying.”
Meanwhile, up in Broward County, Antonio does not want his wife and brother to worry, so he says on a video call that he’s doing OK, although he has “lost his belly.”
It’s been nearly two weeks since he was detained, and Antonio, like thousands of others, is waiting to see an immigration judge, who he hopes will allow him to post a bond and continue his pending asylum case.
But in today’s America, there are no guarantees.
“Nobody knows what could happen,” Carmen said, looking again at a picture on her phone.
