Exiler On Main Street

Trump said he would target ‘bad hombres,’ but the U.S. is arresting immigrants without criminal records

- Erin Banco

JUST BEFORE 7 a.m. on May 11, Jonatan Palacios quietly closed the door to his apartment in Haverford, Pennsylvania, to avoid waking his wife. In the parking lot, he got into his car to drive to the restaurant where he works as the head cook. But as he pulled out of his parking space, Palacios saw two law enforcement officers in his rearview mirror walking toward his car. As they got closer, Palacios, who is an undocumented immigrant, could see the small logo on the upper-left side of their chests—and knew they were from immigration. He checked the door handles and felt a moment of relief when he realized the doors had locked automatically.

The immigration agents knocked on the window and asked him to get out of his car. Palacios froze. After a few seconds, he told the agents through the glass that he needed to make some phone calls. He called his boss to tell him he wouldn’t make it to work, his lawyer and his wife, an American citizen, who was still asleep in the apartment. She came to the parking lot to ask the agents if they had a warrant to arrest her husband.

They didn’t have an arrest warrant, they told her, but they did have a deportation order issued by a judge in 2008—a couple of years after Palacios had arrived in America from Honduras when he was 17. Seeing no way out, Palacios opened the car door, hugged his wife and allowed the officers to bind his arms behind his back with plastic zip ties. They brought Palacios to a processing center in Philadelphia before moving him to Pennsylvania’s York County Prison. “I was so panicked,” Palacios says. “I was trying to think through every little detail. Eventually, there was nothing else we could do, and I just got out of the car, gave Lillie a hug and went with them.”