When Ester Muñoz stood up on January 1, full of plans for the new year, she never imagined that in less than six hours, she would be arrested by the Border Patrol, and that everything she had worked for for six years in the United States would go overboard.
“We had stayed up late and got up at 12 noon. I told my partner, who had come from Argentina to visit me, that we should go out to eat somewhere. We set a direction toward Bellingham (a coastal city in the state of Washington) and decided to walk for an hour. If we don’t see a restaurant, we’ll turn back,” Ester remembers telling her partner.
They never stopped at any restaurant, what they did find was an immigration booth, where they detained her for being in the country with a tourist visa that had expired six years before.
Ester was born in Argentina fifty-three years ago. In December 2020, he came to Seattle, Washington on vacation.
“When I was here, my friends offered me a job. Come! Yes! And since I had heard that Washington was a sanctuary state that protected immigrants, I said ‘I’ll stay.'”
He soon settled into three jobs in Seattle: he worked as a cleaner at an adult school; in a restaurant; and he was beginning to do very well in his small business of empanadas and Argentine food.
On a sentimental level, she was in a long-distance relationship with a 68-year-old man who used to travel from Buenos Aires to Seattle once a year, and stayed with her for about four months.
At Ester’s request, the name of her now former romantic partner was omitted from this story.
That morning of January 1 that changed everything, she remembers that while her partner was driving, she told him, ‘look there’s a place to eat’ ‘look, there’s another one there, stop’, but he didn’t seem to listen to her, and continued driving aimlessly.
“I stopped at a place to ask for hot chocolate for him; and I took the opportunity to tell him that the road we were going on was not right, that the GPS indicated another route,” he says.
However, the man remained firm, he assured her that he knew the way.
“Everything was very dark; there were a lot of trees; and about an hour and 20 minutes into continuing on the road, I told her in a panic that we were at the border and that we couldn’t walk there.”
‘I was petrified’
But it was too late, his companion had crossed the border line and entered Canada; When trying to return, they came across a United States immigration booth, where they were made to get out of the car and go to an office.
“I was petrified. My partner had no problem, he showed his tourist visa, and his plane ticket back to Buenos Aires for March. They let him go quickly. The only thing I had to show the officers was a Washington driver’s license.”
She was fingerprinted and given a sworn statement.
“Unfortunately, you are going to be detained, because you do not have an ‘inexperienced card’, a permit to work, and your tourist visa has expired,’” the immigration agent told her.
Ester ended up on the first day of the year 2026 locked in a cubicle with a cement seat as a bed, a mat and a blanket.
“I knew that they could detain me and deport me, but I did not know the process and what I was about to experience.”
She remembers that that first night in detention, she felt dazed.
“It wasn’t me that was there; my body was there, but not my mind.”
Tacoma Jail
When she had barely slept about two hours, two people came for her, handcuffed her from the waist to her hands and put her in a vehicle to take her to the Northwest Detention Center of the city of Tacoma, a prison for immigrants of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), operated by the private group GEO.
“When they went to pick me up to take me to Tacoma, I started to cry; until now I can’t speak, the tears choke me, one goes full of anguish into the unknown.”
Ester says that in the detention she met about 200 immigrant women, and what impacted her most was the solidarity between them.
“All the ladies help you, they hug you, they encourage you.”
She says she encountered women who had been detained for up to 20 months, and the most complicated cases were those from countries like Russia and Cuba, who had to look for a second country that would accept them.
It was seven days before he could contact his partner because his phone number was from Argentina.
“The daughter of a detained woman helped me, who called my partner and explained that she had to buy a Washington chip for her phone.”
Finally when he spoke to the man, he asked him to hire a lawyer who was paid $5,000; and after not getting results they looked for another, but it was too late.
On January 31, she was informed that she would be deported to Argentina, and then things became complicated because her partner refused to take her passport to the Tacoma Detention Center.
“He answered me badly, he told me that he didn’t want to hand over the passport; and he gave me excuses that the lawyer had it; my friends had to intervene, they formed a group to pressure him. They forced him to go to the detention center to take the document.”
From plane to plane
Ester says that for a week, immigration agents flew her around the country and put her on five planes.
“On January 31, they put several women on a plane, but instead of going to Argentina, they took us to El Paso, Texas, where we spent the night on the floor in rooms made of canvas. Before 24 hours had passed, they put us on another plane.”
Later, on another plane, they took her to Arlington, Texas, where – she says – they were locked in cramped conditions in small cubicles.
“It was very dirty there, and I became desperate. I cried a lot. I thought they were going to leave us in that place for two or three years. They gave us a wet sandwich and an apple or a tangerine. Some of them got a bad sandwich.”
She says her appetite vanished, she felt a knot in her stomach, and she was truly scared.
When they were taken out of that place to be put on a third plane, he felt relief.
“Most of the women on board were from Colombia, Peru and Brazil, I was the only one from Argentina.”
The third plane landed in Fresno.
“They took us to a place with cubicles with cement seats; at least they gave us blankets; they gave us a sandwich, fruit and bottles of water. There the guards were Latino, they were very kind, and they let us talk on the phone. I felt calmer, and I fell asleep, thinking that now they were sending me to Argentina.”
The next day, after several hours of flying on a fourth plane, as they were descending, he opened his eyes and couldn’t believe what he saw through the window.
“I saw Rainier Mountain, and I said, ‘I’m back in Seattle.’ I thought the lawyer had gotten me back, and I felt some relief.”
Back to Tacoma
In total, he says he spent six days flying, from Seattle to Texas, from Texas to Arizona, from Arizona to California, and from California to Seattle.
Returning to Seattle, he felt at least closer to what had been his home for six years.
Ester returned to the Tacoma Detention Center, where she says it was the place where she was treated best.
“I snore a lot, and I asked for a spray to stop snoring so much, and they gave it to me. They gave me a complete medical check-up, and since they thought I might have tuberculosis, they put me in a pressurized room for 24 hours until they ruled out that I was not sick.”
He says they also gave him a tablet to communicate with his partner, and they had a microwave to cook and heat water for coffee.
“Of course, he always asked for everything, as kindly as possible, everything please. The last thing he wanted was problems.”
But she noticed that there was a lot of racism from the guards against her brown-skinned colleagues.
“There is a lot of difference in treatment based on skin color. Dark-skinned Mexicans and Colombians were mistreated very harshly. It helped me that I have light brown hair, green eyes; although I can’t see with one eye that looks like glass; and since I have osteoarthritis in my knees, they only handcuffed my hands, and they helped me climb the stairs of the airplanes.”
But more than a month of confinement began to take its emotional toll on him.
“When they brought me back to the Tacoma Detention Center, I had two panic attacks. Sitting on the bunk, I started rocking, crying, feeling claustrophobic. I have to admit that an employee came over to give me water, and held my hands, trying to calm me down.”
Destined for Argentina
It was on Wednesday, February 18 when they told him that on Friday, February 20, he would leave for Argentina on a commercial airline flight.
And so it was, two ICE agents took her to the airport, put her on a flight from Seattle to Houston; and from there they put her on another plane that went from Houston to Buenos Aires.
“When they left me in charge of the innermost part of the plane, they told me that I was now free.”
Ester says that in Seattle she left her furnished apartment, two cars and a motorcycle. “He managed to give a power of attorney to his partner, so that he could hand over his rental apartment to the landlord and sell his belongings.”
But when the partner returned to Buenos Aires, he beat her up when she complained to him why he only gave her $92 of the $20,000 she kept in the bank and the belongings she sold.
“When I asked him for the money, he hit me, threw me to the floor on my knees, hit me on the head, I had to go to the hospital, I contacted a group of NGOs for domestic violence and they are going to help me file a lawsuit for the abuse,” he says.
Desolate and sad
Today Ester is more sure than ever that the man handed her over to Immigration, and that she crossed into Canada on purpose, knowing that her tourist visa had expired.
‘I told him to stop and stop, when we were heading towards the Canadian border, and he didn’t listen to me, he didn’t want to listen to me. I even asked him if something was wrong.”
In an interview from Buenos Aires, Ester does not hide that she feels very sad, desolate and demoralized, because she has no one in Argentina, no siblings, no children and her parents have already died.
“I don’t know why my partner handed me over to Immigration. I have no doubt that his intention was to leave me inside the ICE prisons and keep my money with the power of attorney that I gave him. Maybe he was envious that I was doing so well in the United States, with two trucks, a motorcycle and an armed house.”
And she concludes by saying that what happened at ICE, with everything and the panic attacks she suffered, is nothing compared to the disappointment that her partner of 20 years handed her over to immigration.
“I never thought about it,” he says.
psychological game
Immigration lawyer Alex Gálvez says that what happened to Ester is very worrying.
“This type of transfer for so many days is unnecessary, it is a waste of government resources. To deport someone, a maximum of two flights is needed; a day or two.”
He says that it seems to him that in this case they were playing psychologically with the Argentine immigrant.
“When people learn about this story, they will say if I have to suffer all that for a voluntary deportation, I better deport myself.”
However, these quick trips across the country, from one center to another, and from one state to another, are not exclusive to Ester; many other immigrants arrested by ICE have experienced them.
There is the recent case of Badar Khan Suri, from India, a teacher and student with a visa at Georgetown University, arrested by federal agents in Arlington, Virginia in March, and subjected to a week-long tour that spanned several states and culminated in a rural jail more than a thousand miles away. His case led to a lawsuit.
On its website, it says that these transfers are not punitive.
Lawyers have complained that these continued transfers limit their ability to defend immigrants, and their contact with their families.
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