‘All I’m guilty of is being an immigrant’

Luis’ day was full. His life was full.

In the morning, he visited his wife in the hospital. She’d given birth to their son two days prior and, for the first time, he was able to hold the baby in his arms.

Afterward, he returned to his house in the Monroe County suburbs to get some paperwork for the hospital and to see his older son, a young boy, who was there with Luis’ sister. He then left to go to his local public library for an English language lesson, after which he would return to the hospital.

A few blocks from his house, Luis noticed a car following him. At the corner, its lights began to flash and three men emerged wearing masks. They were from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they said, and were looking for people in the country illegally.

Luis showed them an expired work permit. It didn’t help. They took him to the Customs and Border Protection station in Irondequoit, and then quickly from there to the ICE detention facility in Batavia.

Just like that, his full life—his family’s life—had been turned upside down.

Luis is charged with being in the U.S. without proper documentation; he is now out on bond, thanks to the intervention of a well-resourced friend, William, and a clear criminal record that includes no previous encounters with the law. Just a few weeks later, though, his sister Esperanza was detained at the very same intersection while driving the same white roofing van that they believe represented an obvious target for ICE.

Esperanza didn’t have a criminal record either, but unlike Luis, she didn’t run her own business and didn’t have children in school. That made it harder to prove she wasn’t a flight risk, and the speed with which she was transferred out of state made it impossible to mount a legal case.

After more than a month in a federal detention facility in New Mexico, she agreed to return to Ecuador, a place where she knows nearly no one.

Luis, William and Esperanza are pseudonyms, and some details of their story have been withheld to protect their anonymity. The entire situation unfolded in the first half of 2025.

“All I’m guilty of is being an immigrant,” Luis said in an interview in Spanish this summer. “I thought that by not causing problems, I would be OK. … If they start treating us all equal, criminals and not criminals, it makes me very nervous.”

From Ecuador to America

Luis, Esperanza and their mother came from Ecuador to the United States in 2004. They paid $15,000 for passage on a small boat to Guatemala, then walked and took trains through Mexico and across the U.S. border.

Luis and Esperanza were not yet adults but could see that they had no economic prospects in Ecuador— “little work and little pay,” as Luis put it. Their father had died when they were young, and they needed to help provide for the family.

The family first settled in the Hudson Valley, where Luis worked in construction. In about 2018 he came to Rochester based on connections he’d made with contractors. Before long, he opened his own roofing company, relying almost exclusively on other men who, like him, lacked documents but were eager to work.

Soon after arriving in Rochester he met William, a white Rochester native who runs a construction company of his own. They got to know each other on job sites and quickly developed a personal and professional rapport.

“He’s a hustler; I’m a hustler,” William said. “There’s a reason we met each other.”

William was one of the first calls Luis made when he was arrested, and their relationship is the main reason why Luis is now back home instead of sitting in Batavia. There are many other men detained there on the same charges, but few can muster the resources to hire a lawyer or post bond. William considers Luis a family member and said he has spent tens of thousands of dollars to help regain his freedom.

Part of Luis’ case at his bond hearing was a packet of letters of support from co-workers, neighbors and fellow church members. They described his work ethic, his economic contribution to the community and his dedication to his family.

“I am an older fella and at times (he) has stepped forward giving me a hand with some of the physically challenging tasks required of me. He’s a kind and considerate man,” one of Luis’ co-workers wrote. “I would be proud to have (Luis) as an American citizen. He is a man of good character and solid values.”

Lives in the shadows

To his great frustration, Luis has not been able to continue with his roofing business since his release. A group of brown-skinned men on roofs would be an obvious target for ICE agents, and so he finds whatever indoor work is available.

The same is true for Juan (also a pseudonym), a Honduran man living in Monroe County. His son was detained by ICE earlier this year along with several other Hondurans who had been working with him, he said.

“For me, everything has stopped,” he said in Spanish. “At least if you don’t have papers—and almost no one has papers.”

Irene Sanchez, executive director of the Western New York Coalition of Farmworker Serving Agencies, said persistent ICE raids on construction sites will eventually bring the entire industry to a halt.

“The vast majority of the workers in roofing are Hispanic and immigrants,” she said. “If you remove the labor force, what’s going to happen to the industry? How’s that building going to get built?”

Her organization’s resources are stretched thinner than ever, she said, as the staff attempts to counsel clients through a legal and practical landscape that sometimes seems to be redrawn daily.

ICE is most active on the weekends, she believes, to reduce the chances of a lawyer or advocate arriving in time to stop a transfer. Building trust with clients is more difficult than ever, and even those with valid working papers, including agricultural laborers with H2-A visas, are leaving their work and returning home to avoid being harassed.

Sanchez is also concerned that forcing undocumented immigrants into the shadows will lead to an increase in human trafficking.

For the last three years, her organization has investigated cases of human trafficking among undocumented immigrants. They initially expected about 35 cases a year but are now well past 200.

As an example, she described a crew recently hired on a construction site in Monroe County. Once the job was done, the employer only paid a portion of their wages and told them they’d need to help on another site before they received the rest. The same thing happened several times. When they complained, the employer threatened to call ICE.

“We are seeing how there’s a huge potential for employers who don’t care much for their workers to (take advantage of) the fact that people are so scared to come forward,” Sanchez said.

That anti-trafficking program was grant-funded. The grant expired this year and was not renewed, she said.

As part of the regular intake process, Sanchez asks undocumented immigrants whether they have ever been persecuted or threatened with harm.

In the last six months, nearly every single person has answered yes, she said—but they’re often not talking about their country of origin. Instead, they’re referring to their experience in the United States.

“The U.S. has always been a beacon of hope for so many people,” she said. “For people to be treated like (this) is unbelievable.”

Fear, the constant companion

Luis and his wife come from rural Ecuador and are native speakers of Kichwa, an indigenous language, rather than Spanish. They are soft-spoken and reserved among strangers.

That cultural background, together with the shock of his arrest and his sudden separation from his infant son and the rest of his family, made Luis’ time in detention especially challenging.

His wife could not visit because she, too, lacks legal status. William went as often as possible, trying to reassure Luis through double-thick glass that he would get him free.

“He looked like he was broken, physically and mentally,” William recalled.

One of the hardest parts of their ordeal has been its impact on their older son, who attends a local suburban elementary school.

According to a letter of support from his principal, the boy is a model student in his class, and Luis and his wife are “actively engaged in his education, demonstrating consistent support for his academic growth.”

Nonetheless, William said, ICE called Child Protective Services to inquire about him after Luis was detained. The boy still doesn’t know the full story of what happened; while Luis was in Batavia, his mother told him that his father was taking a class out of town.

Siana McLean, Luis’ attorney, says he is seeking permanent residency by filing an application for “cancellation of removal,” based on the “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” it would cause his children, who have birthright citizenship.

Luis doesn’t know when his case might be resolved, or what that resolution might be, or whether he might be arrested again in the meantime. He and his wife have made a plan for how they’ll ensure their son is supported if they’re both arrested together, a precaution they hadn’t previously realized they would need.

Concrete information about ICE activities is hard to come by; in its absence, rumors run rampant. Part of the reason Esperanza was driving the roofing truck on the day she was detained is that they had heard that women weren’t being arrested.

Luis’s understanding of things has hardly been sharpened by the events that befell him. Life for an immigrant is always difficult, he said, and fear is a constant companion.

The advice he offers to other people in his situation is the same as it would have been at an earlier time: Pay taxes and establish proof of residency. Stay out of trouble. Keep fighting.

The only thing he can add is a sigh at the end. A trailing off, a downward gaze, a clenching of the jaw.

“It’s hard, but you have to provide for your family,” he said. “Until you get detained. Because, then. …”

That uneasy ellipsis holds Luis’ life’s journey, from Ecuador to New York. His roofing company, now effectively shuttered. His sister, who was obligated to purchase her own plane ticket to deport herself back to a country she barely knows. His older son, who wakes up with nightmares some nights. And his infant son, a native Rochesterian whose short life story began with painful separation and now crawls forward on an uncertain path.

Justin Murphy is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer. He is the research and communications coordinator for Our Local History and a former reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle.

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