How a Violent, Warrantless ICE Raid Devastated a Memphis Family |
Cesar Alexander Antunes-Maradiaga, pictured with his son, was detained by the Homeland Security officer (right) on November 24.Courtesy family
A few weeks before Christmas, six siblings huddled around a phone in their mom’s bedroom to talk with their dad and grandpa, who’d just been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Memphis.
Camila, 16, the oldest girl, seemed tense as she sat next to Saraya, 13. Their grandpa tried to lighten the mood, at one point singing to them, but Camila was unusually quiet. “I could barely speak to him, because I would burst out in tears,” she told me later.
Camila (like Saraya, a pseudonym) is tall and athletic, with long brown hair. She’s the fiery one of the bunch, the protector, always ready with a quip. “I wish I could go to the White House and smack Donald Trump,” she said, a little more like herself.
She’d been sleeping almost all day of late, yet still she was exhausted. Camila worried about everything, everyone: Her mom, who came home sobbing after her dad was detained and was now struggling to pay the rent. Saraya, who has darker skin and was constantly getting harassed by cops. Their 12-year-old brother, who’d been withdrawn ever since ICE officers busted into their house, guns drawn, sans warrant. Their grandpa, 75 years old, who said the detention facility where they took him wasn’t providing the blood pressure and diabetes medications he needs. And, of course, her dad, who always used to cook Camila the most delicious frijoles and pinole, and warm arroz con leche at bedtime to help her sleep—but can no longer do so.
With their breadwinner gone, the family has been eating lots of spaghetti. “We’re out of money, and I’m trying to help my mom, but I can’t because I’m a minor,” Camila told me over the phone. “I’m trying to look for a job.”
“If I could get therapy, something,” she added, “because I’m tired. I’m on my last string.”
The family’s troubles began on November 24. It was a Monday night, and father Cesar Alexander Antunes-Maradiaga had been home getting ready for dinner when he realized they were out of cream, which the recipe called for. The store was a short drive away, and he hopped into their 2013 Honda Civic with his father-in-law and uncle-in-law, who lived with them.
It should have been an easy errand, but one of his headlights was out. On his way home, at the corner of Jackson and Gragg, lights flashed behind him: Tennessee Highway Patrol. The cops, as I witnessed myself, had been everywhere lately. On September 29, the Trump administration launched the Memphis Safe Task Force, consisting of around 1,700 officers from a mix of local, state, and federal agencies—including ICE—supposedly to crack down on crime.
Antunes-Maradiaga is an asylum seeker from Honduras. His father-in-law, also Honduran, is undocumented. Terrified, he FaceTimed his wife, Nicole Amaya, who watched events unfold on her phone’s tiny screen: An officer approached the car, and Antunes-Maradiaga held a piece of paper up to the window, a Know Your Rights flier saying he didn’t have to open the door. Unimpressed, the officer smashed the car window and pulled him out, putting a gun to his head.
The officer demanded identification, but Antunes-Maradiaga didn’t have a driver’s license, so Amaya provided his passport number and Alien Registration Number to the troopers via FaceTime. By the time she got to the scene in person, she told me, more than two dozen officers from different agencies were there. Antunes-Maradiaga and her dad, Jorge Fidel Mejia, were in the back of one of their vehicles. Heart racing, Amaya approached an officer from Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE.........