The American immigration system is broken, and the arrest and detention of a Fresno mother poignantly illustrates this tragic reality.

On Oct. 8, Maria Francisca Villanueva Caballero, accompanied by her lawyer, followed the rules set out by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and showed up at the Fresno office expecting to walk out with a legal residency status. Instead, she was handcuffed and led away by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Villanueva Caballero, 49, now sits at the recently opened ICE detention center in California City uncertain of what will happen next.

If Fresno Congressmember Jim Costa, a Democrat, and a slew of local officials get their way, federal officials would review Villanueva Caballero’s case and approve her ongoing petition for adjustment of her immigration status. A petition demanding her release has received more than 6,000 signatures in less than 24 hours. One hundred letters testifying to her character and community involvement have been collected.

“The immigration system should serve as a pathway to stability and belonging, not a trap door that punishes compliance,” said Kerman Mayor María Pacheco at a Friday morning press conference outside the federal courthouse in downtown Fresno. “Every person who steps into a government building seeking to follow the law deserves dignity, transparency and safety, not detention.”

Pacheco’s interpretation of how immigration cases should be handled would serve communities such as Fresno and all of America, much better than our present reality.

Instead, President Donald Trump’s deportation forces have the green light from the U.S. Supreme Court to racially profile their targets. White House advisor Stephen Miller is leaning on agents to arrest more than 3,000 per day and immigration czar Tom Holman declaring he doesn’t “care what the judges say.”

Under Trump, dignity and humanity are trampled daily in favor of indiscriminate arrests, detentions, and deportations of people who are neither drug dealers nor lawless criminals. As Villanueva Caballero’s case illustrates, good people are being swept up and jailed by our government.

That is sad, because people like Villanueva Caballero have gone through the legal processes laid out to become legal residents only to have the tables flipped on them by a system that needs the trust of immigrants to succeed.

Villanueva Caballero’s story

Firebaugh Mayor Freddy Valdez called Villanueva Caballero’s story: “one of love, sacrifice and hope.” Her eldest daughter, a UCLA graduate, is a third-year medical student in Chicago. A second daughter, a UC Berkeley grad, has a goal of becoming a veterinarian. Another son, a UCLA grad, is preparing for law school. Her youngest son, 15, just started high school and is also enrolled at West Hills Community College.

“She has raised four extraordinary children whose lives reflect the values we hold dear,” said Valdez, who noted she has no criminal record.

Villanueva Caballero came to the U.S. in 2000, and settled in Firebaugh the following year. She has worked at a packing plant in the city. The mayor said she has been active in the Catholic Church and has supported youth sports.

Her oldest son, Omar Álvarez, speaking at the press conference, said he carries the community’s pain of not having his mother out and about.

“The love we have for our respective (career) fields is rooted in the love and belief that our mom has always had for our dreams,” he said. “She sought her adjustment of status through the proper venues.”

Similar story in San Joaquín

A family in San Joaquín, a half-hour south of Firebaugh, is feeling the same pain while Leticia Nevarez Payán is also held at the California City facility. She was also detained while keeping an appointment at the Fresno USCIS office.

San Joaquín Mayor Adam Cornejo said the Villanueva Caballero and Nevarez Payán situations “reflect a troubling trend that’s impacting families across our region.” Their families were ready to celebrate their mothers’ legal status and instead, that joy is converted into a nightmare, Cornejo said.

State Sen. Anna Caballero (no relation to the Firebaugh woman) called it “bureaucratic cruelty.”

Nevarez Payán has lived in San Joaquín for four decades, while volunteering at the local church or supporting the Salvation Army. The youngest of her three children is in elementary school. Even while in detention, she interprets for other detainees, said her son Steven Rodríguez.

“She has committed no crime. She is constantly helping neighbors, family, taking people of the church to doctor’s appointments to get their medication,” said Rodríguez. “She’s even given end of life care to the elderly. And she is now in prison.”

What can be done?

To be fair, Trump is not solely to blame for the injustices visited upon immigrant families integral to communities in the heartland of California and beyond. Democrats and Republicans utterly failed to reform our broken immigration system for decades before Trump was ever elected.

How broken is the system? Undocumented people whose work is essential in the Fresno area have few legal avenues to adjust their immigration status so that they can contribute to our economies and live without the fear of deportation.

“To the extent that the U.S. government allows legal immigration, it is based almost exclusively on selection or sponsorship by the U.S. government or U.S. families, employers, or other sponsors,” said David J. Bier, a Cato Institute research fellow in testimony before Congress in 2021.

“Thus, the question could be restated: Why can’t Americans let immigrants get into ‘the line?’ The answer to this question is that the government effectively bans them from doing so.”

Despite this reality now decades old, some of our immigrant families try to petition for legal residency while contributing to our economies with their valuable labor. But under Trump, who gained political currency by conflating hard-working laborers with criminals, good people lifting our communities are paying dearly for the bipartisan failures to create an immigration system that works for everyone.

Democratic Congressmembers Jim Costa of Fresno and Adam Gray of Merced, blame a zealous deportation effort by the Trump administration and the lack of immigration reform for what has happened to Villanueva Caballero and Nevarez Payán.

“We have a broken immigration system. We are working on incremental efforts since the opposition party doesn’t want to pursue comprehensive reform,” said Costa. “There are other incremental steps.”

As long as Congress and the Trump administration refuse to act on well-defined legislation to fix this travesty of justice, more immigrants who go through the proper channel to get legal status will find the government misled them into thinking they could grab a piece of the American dream.

We encourage federal officials to release the two women, and to reopen their applications.

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