Three women opposed to President Trump’s intense immigration raids in Los Angeles were indicted Friday on charges of illegally “doxing” a U.S. Customs and Immigration agent, authorities said.
Ashleigh Brown, Cynthia Raygoza and Sandra Carmona Samane face charges of disclosing the personal information of a federal agent and conspiracy, according to an indictment unsealed late Friday.
Brown, who is from Colorado and goes by the nickname “AK,” has been described as one of the founders of “ice_out_ofla” an Instagram page with more than 28,000 followers that plays a role in organizing demonstrations against immigration enforcement, according to the social media page and an email reviewed by The Times.
According to the indictment, the three women followed an ICE agent from the federal building on 300 North Los Angeles Street in downtown L.A. to the agent’s residence in Baldwin Park.
They live-streamed the entire event, according to the indictment. Once they arrived at the agent’s home, prosecutors allege the women got out and shouted “la migra lives here,” and “ICE lives on your street and you should know,” according to the indictment.
“Our brave federal agents put their lives on the line every day to keep our nation safe,” Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said in a statement. “The conduct of these defendants are deeply offensive to law enforcement officers and their families. If you threaten, dox, or harm in any manner one of our agents or employees, you will face prosecution and prison time.”
An attorney for Samane, 25, of Los Angeles, said she intends to plead not guilty at an arraignment next month and declined further comment.
The Federal Public Defender’s Office, which is representing Brown, 38, of Aurora, Colo., did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Court records did not list an attorney for Raygoza, 37, of Riverside.
Footage published to the ice_out_ofla Instagram page seemed to capture Brown’s arrest earlier this week. The video shows a man in green fatigues and body armor saying he has a warrant for her arrest, while reaching through what appears to be the shattered driver’s side window of her car. Brown asks what the warrant is for while the man can be seen holding a collapsible baton. Then the video cuts out.
Posts on the Instagram page describe Brown as a “political prisoner.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to questions about whether the women specifically shouted out the agent’s address online or what the defendants specifically did to “incite the commission of a crime of violence against a federal agent,” as the indictment alleges.
Federal law enforcement leaders have repeatedly expressed concern about the “doxing” of agents with ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as residents of Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities continue to protest the Trump administration’s sprawling deportation efforts.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem threatened to prosecute people for publishing agents’ personal information last month in response to fliers in Portland that called for people to collect intel on ICE.
But the indictment returned Friday appeared to be the first prosecution related to such tactics.
Critics of the Trump administration’s operations have expressed outrage over ICE and CBP agents wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves in public while hunting undocumented immigrants throughout Southern California.
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that forbids federal law enforcement from wearing masks while operating in California. The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law, leading some legal experts to question whether state officials can actually enforce the legislation.
If you thought Jimmy Kimmel saved free speech, think again.
To hear President Trump tell it, no one, especially law enforcement officers, is safe from the dangers caused by opposing his policies — and he’s ready to do something about it.
“This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically,” Trump wrote in a new executive order. “A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.”
Of course, despite his menacing tone, I agree with Trump that politically motivated violence against law enforcement — or anyone, be it Charlie Kirk or immigrant detainees — is reprehensible and completely unacceptable.
The deadly shooting in Dallas this week, which Trump referred to in the order, is a tragedy and any political violence should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the many laws on the books that protect our public servants, and the public at large.
But criticizing government overreach is not inciting violence, and calls for Democrats to stop attacking Trump’s policies are just calls to silence dissent — one more attack on free speech at a moment when it’s clear this administration is intent on demolishing opposition.
If we are serious about preventing further political violence, trust in our justice system must be a priority. And you know what’s really eroding trust? Scary masked agents on our streets who refuse to even say what agency they work for.
The anxiety brought on by an unaccountable and unknowable federal force, one that is expected to grow by thousands in coming years, is what is raising the temperature in American politics far more than the words from either side, though I am not here to argue that words don’t have power.
Ending the fear that our justice system is devolving into secrecy and lawlessness will reduce tension, and the potential for violence. Want to protect officers — and our democracy?
Ban masks.
“Listen, I understand that it being a law enforcement officer is scary,” former Capitol police officer Harry Dunn told me Wednesday during a press event for the immigration organization America’s Voice.
Dunn was attacked, beaten and called racial slurs during the political violence on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Nobody ever signed up to be harassed, to be targeted. That should never happen,” he said.
But Dunn said he’d never don a mask, because it harms that public trust, that mission to serve and protect.
When officers cover their faces and demand to be nameless and faceless, “They are terrorizing … with something just as simple as a mask,” he said.
Which is why California just passed a law attempting to ban such masks, effective next year — though it will likely be challenged in court, and federal authorities have already said they will ignore it.
“We’re not North Korea, Mr. President. We’re not the Soviet Union. This is the United States of America, and I’m really proud of the state of California and our state of mind that we’re pushing back against these authoritarian tendencies and actions of this administration,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom before signing the bill.
The argument in favor of masks is that some officers are afraid to do their jobs without them, fearing they or their families will be identified and targeted. The Department of Homeland security claims that assaults on officers are up 1,000%, though it’s unclear what data produced that figure.
“Every time I’m in a room with our law enforcement officers, I’m talking to them before they go out on our streets, I’m just overwhelmed by the fact that all of these young men and women have families that they all want to go home to,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. “(P)eople like Gavin Newsom are making it much more dangerous for them just to go do their job.”
Federal immigration authorities are not required by their agencies to wear masks. Not ski masks, not balaclavas, not even medical masks — which many officers refused to don even during the pandemic.
Like the choice to become a federal law enforcement officer, hiding their identity while doing their duty is a personal decision. Some agents aren’t masked. There is no rule to bring clarity, only leaders pushing the false narrative that protecting officers is impossible at this moment of unrest, and they must do what they see fit to protect themselves.
Which raises the question, why not help all officers feel safe enough to go unmasked, rather than allowing some to work in a fearful environment? Surely, if some officers feel safe enough to go about their duties in a regular fashion, there must be something their leaders can do to promote that sense of strength among the ranks rather than cave to the timidity of anonymity and helplessness?
“Things can be done,” Gabriel Chin told me. He’s a professor of law at UC Davis and an expert on criminal procedure.
“The nice thing about being a law enforcement officer is if somebody does something illegal to you, you have the resources to investigate and have them criminally charged,” Chin said. “But you know, this kind of thing has happened to judges and police and prosecutors, apart from ICE, for some years, unfortunately, and yet we don’t have masked judges and masked prosecutors.”
Salas did not respond by demanding judges become faceless. Instead, she successfully lobbied for greater protection of all judges nationwide.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a Republican-appointee who was the first to block Trump’s executive order axing birthright citizenship, has spoken publicly, along with five other federal judges, about continuing threats facing his brethren, including both a recent “swatting” incident and a bomb threat against him and his family.
“It’s just been stunning to me how much damage has been done to the reputation of our judiciary because some political actors think that they can gain some advantage by attacking the independence of the judiciary and threatening the rule of law,” he told Reuters — an attack coming from the right.
Speaking at the same event, Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island said that like many other judges, he’s been harassed with pizzas being sent to his home address — including “one in the name of Daniel Anderl,” Reuters reported. That’s the name of Salas’ murdered son.
But McConnell’s face is still visible when he takes the bench, as is Coughenour’s and every other judge and prosecutor. They face those who come before them for justice, because that is what justice requires.
What ultimately keeps them — and our system — safe is our collective belief that, even if imperfect, it has rules, stated and implied.
The most basic of these is that we face each other, even if we are afraid.
At 3:25 in the morning of July 24, Milagro Solis Portillo was woken up and booked out of B-18, ICE’s basement detention facility in the downtown L.A. courthouse. She was not told where she was headed as she was put onto a commercial flight along with two immigration officer escorts. A few hours later, she was booked into the Clark County Jail in Jefferson, Ind.
Ming Tanigawa-Lau, an attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center representing Portillo, said her transfer was retaliatory, especially when there was open space at nearby facilities. The 36-year-old’s encounters with ICE had caused a local stir. She suffered a medical incident during her arrest outside her home in Sherman Oaks that required treatment at Glendale Memorial Hospital.
While at the hospital, she was monitored constantly by immigration officers. Local activists and representatives held events protesting her treatment. After two weeks, ICE forcibly removed her from the hospital against the advice of her medical team and sent her to B-18 and then across the country.
State Sen. Sasha Renée Perez (D-Alhambra) speaks at a news conference in front of Glendale Memorial Hospital where Milagro Solis Portillo was treated after being arrested by ICE on July 7.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Portillo isn’t the only detained immigrant flown across the country. The Times analyzed ICE data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Deportation Data Project and found that transfers between facilities in the first half of this year are happening faster and more frequently compared with the same period last year. The typical detainee is transferred at least once. From January through July, 12% of those detained have been transferred at least four times. In the first half of 2024, 6% of detainees were transferred 4 or more times.
Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, said transfers have been used as a retaliatory tactic for those who make requests, file complaints or stage protests such as hunger strikes. Transfers move people from places where they may already have an attorney or where there are established legal-services organizations to a place that is unfamiliar and where there may be fewer resources for detained migrants.
ICE moves people from temporary holding spaces to more long-term housing as they prepare detainees for deportation. But, as a result, they could be sent far from loved ones, professional organizations, church groups and other community networks. They miss out on in-person visits from family and instead have to pay for phone or video calls. Ghandehari said she believes this isolation is deliberate.
“Conditions are bad because it’s meant to be a deterrent,” Ghandehari said. “So it’s also part of the way the system is set up. And I think transfers play into that more than people realize.”
On July 18, a 20-year-old man was deported from the Alexandria Staging Facility to Honduras. Two months prior, on May 13, he was arrested outside of Orlando and then transferred 15 times back and forth across the country between facilities in Florida, California, Arizona, Hawaii and finally Louisiana.
He had no criminal history. Public ICE data do not show whether he had an attorney or was fighting his case to remain in the country.
15 transfers. 11 facilities. 4,800 miles.
A man first detained in Florida spent 30 days in a federal detention center in Hawaii.
Broward Transitional Center, Fla.
Alexandria Staging Facility, La.
Florence Staging Facility, Ariz.
Florence Service Processing Center, Ariz.
Golden State Annex, Calif.
Bakersfield hold room, Calif.
Honolulu Federal Detention Center, Hawaii
Arizona Removal Operations
Coordination Center, Ariz.
July 18 – Deported to Honduras
Arizona Removal Operations
Arizona Removal Operations
Facility placement is not to scale.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement data from the Deportation Data Project
LOS ANGELES TIMES
The journeys from one facility to another can be difficult. On Aug. 15, ICE moved Portillo from Clark County Jail to Louisiana through a flight out of Chicago. First, she spent about 12 hours in a holding room in the nearby Clay County Justice Center without access to communicate with anyone. Around 1:30 a.m. the next day, she and nine other women were put into a van headed to Chicago, five to a bench on either side.
“It was a very scary trip,” Portillo said, speaking with The Times through a translator. “We couldn’t be comfortable because our hands and feet were handcuffed. It was dangerous because it seemed like the officials driving were falling asleep. We could feel that the van would sway one way and another way at dawn.”
According to Tanigawa-Lau, it can take days after a transfer for family and legal representatives to find out that a person has been moved. The online system that is meant to show where detainees are located is not updated right away. The families of detainees typically find out where their loved one has been sent from the detained person — once they are able to place a phone call.
The abrupt relocations of her clients have led to missed appointments and court hearings, Tanigawa-Lau said. When a client is transferred, it becomes more difficult to mount a legal defense.
In the Los Angeles area, Tanigawa-Lau and her organization have knowledge of the judges and how to contact detention facilities to communicate with clients.
States such as Louisiana don’t have the same kind of immigration defense infrastructure. On the Immigration Advocates Network site, California has 205 resources listed to help migrants and their representatives find local legal services. Indiana has 16. Louisiana has 10. The Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana, which has deported the most immigrants this year, routinely limits access to attorneys, according to reporting by the Guardian.
Portillo recounted a comment made on the flight from California to Chicago by one of the ICE agents escorting her that it was thanks to the laws in California that she was being brought to Indiana. Indiana’s Republican Gov. Mike Braun is a strong supporter of the Trump administration’s immigration strategy.
ICE did not respond to questions about what considerations are made when transferring detainees or about why Portillo was sent to the Indiana facility.
Jason Houser, former ICE chief of staff during the Biden administration, said the goal of transfers is to optimize for removals, which typically happen from Louisiana and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
They also have to consider facility capacity. ICE is operating under a policy to fill all beds. Additionally, with bond hearings being denied, immigrants are stuck waiting for their cases to be resolved in detention. As many facilities reach, and even exceed, their bed capacity, Houser said this means that folks that need to get to Louisiana are stuck because there aren’t open beds along the way.
“If you fill every bed, can I move somebody from Northern Virginia through Tennessee to Louisiana? No, because the Tennessee field director will tell the Virginia field director, ‘I have no empty beds.’ Your person must just continue to sit there,” Houser said.
Most detention stays for those arrested in 2025 lasted about 24 days and resulted in removal. So far, 63% of those booked into a detention facility were deported. But some are held in detention much longer. More than a quarter of those booked into a detention center this year are still in custody. About 24% were held for more than two months. Nearly 9% for more than five months.
“If there is someone in an ICE bed that isn’t a convicted criminal and has no foreseeable way to be removed within 30 days, that isn’t a criminal, they should not be in a … bed,” Houser said. “They should be out at their job being a thriving member of the community until they’re humanly able to be removed. But that’s not what this administration is about.”
In the first half of 2024, more than 45,500 immigrants were released from detention on bond, through parole or under supervision while they went through immigration proceedings. This year, 13,800 received similar treatment. The vast majority have had to wait for their cases to conclude while in detention.
Portillo still gets emotional talking about her experience in ICE detention. She had been in California for 15 years. Her family was in Los Angeles. When she was transferred to Indiana, she lost all hope of winning her case and returning to them.
Upon arrival at the jail, it was clear to her that this was not a detention center. She was being held with people who had committed crimes. For weeks, as her mental health declined, she felt like she was being tortured.
Milagro Solis Portillo was transferred 2,000 miles away from her family and her attorney
Glendale Memorial Hospital, Calif.
Anaheim Global Medical Center, Calif.
Clay County Justice Center, Ind.
South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, La.
Aug. 29 – Deported to El Salvador
Clay County Justice Center
Glendale Memorial Hospital
Anaheim Global Medical Center
South Louisiana ICE Processing Center
Clay County Justice Center
Glendale Memorial Hospital
Anaheim Global Medical Center
South Louisiana ICE Processing Center
Facility placement is not to scale.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement data from the Deportation Data Project
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Ghandehari says that the transfers create an environment of “fear and anxiety” as a tactic to encourage people to self-deport. She says that it is an explicit strategy for this administration but it is not new. This year, however, the number of voluntary returns and departures more than doubled.
“It is about efficiency for ICE on their end, but with a total disregard for the people that they’re detaining and ripping apart from their loved ones,” Ghandehari said.
For Portillo, her treatment in detention became too much to endure.
“I decided to give up. We weren’t going to keep fighting … not because I didn’t want to stay but because of health reasons. … My mental health since being in Indiana started to suffer. When I was in L.A., it was one thing. I knew that my family was close and I had access to my attorney,” she said.
Ultimately, she decided it would be better to return to El Salvador.
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Jerardyn sat quietly on the bus, her mood relaxed as her eyes scanned the fleeting horizon of Southern California one August afternoon.
But as the U.S.-Mexico border wall, a towering barrier of steel pillars, came into view, she began taking big, deep breaths. Her heart began to race as she clutched her immigration documents and tried to hide her anxiety from her two youngest children traveling with her. She caught what she believed would be her last glimpse of the United States for now.
A refugee from Venezuela, Jerardyn, 40, entered the United States last year with her family, hoping to obtain asylum. But this was before President Trump took office and launched immigration raids across Southern California, shattering her sense of safety. She lived in fear that immigration agents would detain her or, worse, send her family back to Venezuela, where they risked facing retribution from the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Jerardyn bathes Milagro in the basement of a church in South Los Angeles, where she found refuge with her four children, daughter-in-law and the family’s dog.
So after eight months of living in the basement of an L.A. church, she made a painful decision. She would migrate again. This time she’d voluntarily move back to Mexico with her two youngest kids, leaving behind her two eldest, who are applying for asylum.
She planned meticulously. She withdrew her asylum application from immigration court. She found an apartment outside Mexico City. She filled two boxes with toys, clothes and shoes to ship to Mexico ahead of her departure. She bought bus tickets to Tijuana and plane tickets to Mexico City.
The bus ride from Los Angeles to Tijuana had been smooth, but as they pulled into the National Institute of Migration, Mexico’s border immigration office, she felt a sense of dread.
Milagro plays with Pelusa, the family’s dog, in the church basement.
Jerardyn, right, prepares for their move to Mexico as her daughter-in-law styles Milagro’s hair.
Jerardyn and son David, 10, say goodbye to his brother Jahir, 18, at the bus station in Huntington Park on Aug. 16, 2025.
Milagro holds onto her eldest brother, Jesus, at the bus station as she prepares to move to Mexico in August.
“I’m panicking,” she said.
She hadn’t expected to face Mexican immigration officials so soon. She tried to self-soothe by telling herself that no matter what, she would figure it out.
“I’m going to make it in any country because I’m the one doing it.”
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Gathering her bags and suitcase, she shepherded Milagro, 7, and David, 10, into the empty line and handed her Venezuelan passport to an immigration officer. He gave her a stern look and pulled Jerardyn and her children away from the counter and into another room.
Would Mexico deport her to Venezuela? Or grant her some mercy? All she knew was that the doors leading to Mexico were, for now, closed.
Jerardyn grew up in a comfortable, middle-class family in a seaport city, the youngest of eight, and was doted upon by her father. She had aspirations of becoming a social worker, but at 15, she became pregnant. Her parents initially disapproved, but her father, a former police officer, came around after she told him she would name her firstborn after him.
Jerardyn asked that her last name not be published, for fear of retribution for fleeing Venezuela, an act viewed as treason by the government. Her children are being identified by their middle names.
With help from her parents, she earned a certification to become a medical technician. But after her second son, Jahir, was born, her father died, upending her life.
When she was 22, Jerardyn said, she was assaulted by a man who had hired her to do some office cleaning, an ordeal that left her scarred. Violence became rife in Venezuela, as family members got caught up in illegal activity. A nephew she helped raise since he was young was shot by a police officer in front of her, she said.
Jerardyn comforts Milagro on the bus bound for the border with Mexico, after they said their goodbyes to family members.
Conditions in Venezuela continued to worsen. The economy collapsed, bankrupting an auto parts shop she had been running with her husband. By the time Milagro was born in 2018, their relationship had become strained, and they were no longer a couple.
As corruption ran rampant in Venezuela, Jerardyn learned that government officials were kidnapping teens. It wasn’t long before her oldest son, Jesus, then 17, became a target.
During a nationwide power outage in 2019, Jesus went out to buy gasoline around 10 a.m. but never returned. Panicked, she went looking for him, but no one knew where he was.
Frantic, she prayed to God for his safe return. At midnight, government officials released him.
Jerardyn and her children David and Milagro wait at Tijuana International Airport for their flight to Mexico City on Aug. 17, 2025.
Jerardyn, who lovingly refers to her children as her pollitos — baby chicks — concluded they were no longer safe in their homeland. So without notifying her family, she fled with the children to neighboring Colombia. Milagro was 4 months old.
“No one knows what you live through in your country,” she said of her decision to escape Venezuela. “If I had stayed there, my kids could have died from hunger, suffered psychological torture, kidnappings, so many things…. I’m just trying to save them.”
Aid workers in Colombia helped the family relocate to Lima, Peru, where Jerardyn worked as a server and in clothing stores.
Jerardyn, center, sleeps on the flight to Mexico City with her two youngest children, David and Milagro.
David and Milagro bundle up while Jerardyn waits for the landlord to let them into their new apartment in Texcoco de Mora, a town northeast of Mexico City
She made one foray back to Venezuela during that time — attempting to obtain passports for her children. But that effort backfired. Government officials detained her and her children in a white room and forced her to pay the equivalent of $3,000 to be released, with no passports for David and Milagro.
Peru did not prove to be a refuge either. The country was growing increasingly hostile to Venezuelan immigrants, and her sons faced bullying in school. So after four years of living abroad, she began researching what it would take to travel through the Darien Gap, the dangerous strip of jungle linking Central and South America.
She made a list of what they needed to pack to survive.
Altogether, there were six on the journey through the Darien Gap — Jerardyn, her four children, her daughter-in-law, and Pelusa, a dog they had found in Peru. She was especially worried about David, who was 8, and Milagro, then 5.
The jungle was “a living hell,” she recalled, a place where people lost their humanity. Migrants robbed other migrants. Travelers were left injured and abandoned by their families. Jerardyn and her kids had to hike past decomposing bodies, an image she cannot shake. They could hear snakes slithering past their tent when it was not raining, which it often did.
It took the family five days to cross the jungle. She was certain that if one of them died, she would have stayed behind too.
After a month traveling through Mexico, they arrived in the capital covered in dirt, their sandals worn down from the miles behind them. Jesus’ feet were bloody. A taxi driver recommended they visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They arrived at 6 a.m., exhausted and penniless.
After the morning Mass, Jerardyn kneeled and prayed for her family’s safety and a pathway to a life in Mexico, while they waited to enter the U.S.
A pathway soon emerged. A friend helped her settle in Texcoco de Mora, a town northeast of Mexico City. Jerardyn began working at a salon and enrolled Milagro and David in school. Jesus and Jahir hawked vegetables at street markets, and her daughter-in-law worked at a restaurant. Every day, they tried to land a CBP One appointment, which would allow them to enter the U.S. legally to seek asylum.
By a stroke of luck and persistence, the family secured a coveted appointment on Dec. 11, 2024. They continued north to Nogales, Mexico, and suddenly Jerardyn was seeing the U.S. southern border for the first time.
Moments later, she heard a U.S. immigration official voice the words she had long awaited: “Welcome to the United States.”
Immigration raids had been roiling Los Angeles for more than a month when Jerardyn went to Mass one Sunday in July. Having just finished her overnight shift cleaning up a stadium after a concert, she smiled tiredly as she joined her children in the front pew at the church in South L.A. She hugged them as Pastor Ivan began preaching about immigrants and how they shape communities.
Before the raids, the pews would be filled with dozens of families. Now, only a handful of people sat scattered around.
Pastor Ivan’s voice boomed as he urged the congregation to pray for families torn apart by the raids. After a prayer, Jerardyn stood, picked up the collection basket and began gathering donations for the church. She had given Milagro and David a few dollars, which they dropped into the basket.
Milagro walks down the aisle at the South L.A. church.
The church became their haven in January after Jerardyn spent a night homeless. Along with her kids, she had originally been staying with the father of her children, who arrived in the U.S. from Venezuela on his own years ago. But after an argument, he kicked her out of the apartment, forcing her to find a new refuge for herself and her kids.
Pastor Ivan, whose church The Times is not naming because Jerardyn’s family members still reside there, said the church has a history of sheltering immigrants, including Afghans, Haitians, Mexicans and Venezuelans. The pastor said he lived in the U.S. for a decade without documents and knows firsthand the plight of migrants.
“They feel that everything is closing up around them,” he said. But the church’s role is to not stay silent, he said, and instead, to offer help and compassion.
That is why Jerardyn and her family began to slowly build a semblance of a normal life in the church’s basement. David and Milagro attended school nearby, where Milagro was praised for picking up English quickly.
But the family found everyday life stifling. In the basement, Jerardyn felt like they were hiding from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Once, when the school notified her that immigration agents were nearby, she panicked, she said, wondering whether they would seize her children.
David sits at the kitchen table as Jerardyn cleans up in the church basement.
In the eight months they lived there, she had taken her children on public transit only six times. Once, on the metro, a homeless woman pulled her pants down in front of them and urinated. Another time, on a bus, a man became visibly irritated while she spoke Spanish to another passenger.
In the most jarring incident, Jerardyn and David watched from a bus window as immigration agents detained a woman. Suffering panic attacks, the boy would wake up crying from nightmares in which Jerardyn was the one arrested. She shed tears thinking of the stress she was placing on her children.
In the church, she spent several nights mulling over whether to leave the U.S. She would lie on the carpet, alone, in tears, and ask God for answers. But the choice became clear, she said, when David told her he wanted to return to Mexico.
In her request to close her asylum case at immigration court, she carefully wrote out a translated version of a plea to the judge.
“I am requesting voluntary departure because my children and I are experiencing a very stressful situation,” she wrote, recounting how she and David watched a woman get detained. Milagro loved going to school but suffered from anxiety too. “For me it is difficult to make that decision, but it is preferable to leave voluntarily and avoid many problems and even so in the future I can get my documents in the best way and return to this country legally. Thank you very much.”
The judge approved her request. Jesus, 23, and Jahir, 18, would continue to seek asylum and live at the church, with support from Pastor Ivan, who assured Jerardyn they would be safe.
When it came time to say goodbye as they boarded the bus for Tijuana, Jerardyn told Jesus to look out for Jahir. She hugged Jahir, caressed his head, and told him to listen to his older brother. Milagro pressed her small face into Jesus’ stomach and held him tightly until it was time to board. She then sobbed quietly in her mother’s arms as the bus pulled away.
There are no clear numbers yet on how many migrants have opted to self-deport this year. In a statement, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that “tens of thousands of illegal aliens have utilized the CBP Home app.” The app offers to pay for one-way tickets out of the U.S., along with a $1,000 “exit bonus.”
Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said the Trump administration has pushed hard to get people to leave on their own, as the White House appears to be falling short of its goal of 1 million deportations a year. The raids, courthouse arrests and threat of third-country removals are compounding a climate of fear.
“Some of the high-profile moves that this administration has taken [have] been aimed at trying to scare people into self-deporting,” she said.
At the immigration office in Tijuana, Jerardyn, Milagro and David were placed in a white room with one window and told they would be deported because Jerardyn did not have a visa to stay in Mexico.
As they waited, Jerardyn started to pace the small room, which was reminiscent of the one Venezuelan officials had placed her in when they extorted money from her. She had no luggage or phone. Mexican officials had taken them.
As the officials questioned her, she said, she maintained that she had committed no crimes and that she knew she had rights to travel into the country. Somehow, Milagro and David remained calm, eating tuna and crackers provided by the officials.
Jerardyn and her children were released by Mexican immigration authorities after being fingerprinted at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border in August.
The family waited for more than three hours before the officials returned with news: They could stay. All were granted temporary status for a month while Jerardyn sought legal status. Officials fingerprinted them, staining their fingers green, took their pictures for documents that would allow them to travel freely and — 12 hours after leaving Los Angeles — let them leave for their flight to Mexico City.
Because of her preparations, Jerardyn had a job lined up at the hair salon where she previously worked. But a big question mark was Gonzalo. She had met him in Texcoco and they had become close. He showered her children with adoration and care. He asked to marry her, and she had said yes. But when she departed for the U.S. just days later, the distance became too difficult, and they broke off their engagement.
When she and the kids returned, Gonzalo met them at the airport in Mexico City, and the children hugged him in greeting.
Now that she was back, Jerardyn hoped that she and Gonzalo would rekindle their romance. At first they did, easily falling back together, holding hands while strolling through the streets.
Jerardyn, Gonzalo, Milagro and David, center, walk through the town after dinner in Texcoco, Mexico, on Aug. 17, 2025.
Jerardyn, left, chats with a neighbor at her family’s new apartment in Texcoco, Mexico.
Jerardyn shares a laugh with Gonzalo during a family dinner in Texcoco, Mexico.
Jerardyn and Gonzalo walk through town after dinner in Texcoco, Mexico.
At her new two-bedroom apartment, Jerardyn unloaded air mattresses that would serve as beds until she could afford real ones. She made a note of what she would need to buy. A fridge. A trash can and bath mat. A couch for the kids to relax on after school.
One Sunday, the family walked through Texcoco’s crowded central plaza, the air warm and scented with cooking meats and sweets. They navigated around the vendors and chatting families sitting on benches and enjoying snacks. Her children were smiling, and Jerardyn was at peace, something she hardly ever felt in the U.S.
She was finally back in “mi Texcoco,” she said. This feeling of tranquility reminded her of the first time she left Venezuela, when she no longer feared that the government would take her children from her.
“I feel free, complete peace of mind, knowing I’m not doing anything wrong, and I won’t be pursued,” she said.
Jerardyn stares out of the bedroom at her new apartment.
During her first week back, Jerardyn and the children made the trek into Mexico City, where she found herself nearly asking for directions in English, only to remember that everyone spoke her language too.
She returned to the Basilica, her family’s first stop in Mexico City, and gave thanks to the Virgin Mary for guiding her safe journey. The three bowed their heads and knelt in prayer. David prayed for the well-being of his brothers.
That first week, she signed her children up for online English classes at a nearby academy. She worked on a client’s hair, her first gig. She also started therapy to begin sorting through everything she has lived through.
Milagro roller-skates outside her family’s new home in Texcoco, Mexico.
One crisp August morning, Jerardyn helped Milagro slip into the in-line skates Jesus had given her as a parting gift. The little girl had carried them in her pink backpack all the way from L.A., and she wanted to show them off.
In the safe, enclosed space of the apartment complex, where the buildings were painted vibrant shades of red, yellow and blue, Milagro went slowly at first, using a pillar to make turns and the wall as a stop. But as she settled into a flow, she began to speed up, making the turns smoothly on her own.
Milagro cuddles up to a new stuffed toy, a gift from her cousin, right, inside her family’s new apartment in Texcoco, Mexico.
A few times, she fell with a huff. But with her mother looking on, she’d pick herself back up and keep going.
