‘They Were All Just Gone’: How ICE Rounded Up a Guatemalan Family in Texas crackdown 

By Gabrielle Caumon 

Reporting Texas

A Guatemalan immigrant was driving home from work in San Antonio when he came upon a checkpoint manned by U.S. immigration authorities. They detained him — and then went to his home in Austin the next day to seize his wife and children. 

Their deportations came as Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities conducted a 10-day crackdown in Texas, announced by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. 

Mullin called the operation an “incredible success,” with 4,170 arrests, and the Department of Homeland Security’s news release featured mugshots of five detainees whom it called “some of the worst illegal aliens arrested in Lone Star Mission.”

Lawyer Elizabeth Coleman said the Guatemalan family detained in Austin and San Antonio were among those swept up in the crackdown. She told the family’s story to Reporting Texas to illustrate the gaps in the deportation system and the lengths that DHS is taking to deport families in Texas. 

“The fact that the children were gone — the fact that they picked up this guy and then went after his family 60 miles away was crazy,” Coleman said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. They coordinated; San Antonio ICE coordinated with Austin ICE to pick up this family.”

Coleman requested that the family, who had lived in Austin for about two years, not be identified by name for their safety. She referred to the parents as “the mother” and “the father” to protect their identities. 

She said the father was picked up on Friday, Oct. 23; the mother and the kids were picked up at home on Saturday morning, Oct. 24. By Tuesday, Oct. 27, the family was back in Guatemala, Coleman said. 

Mullin’s Lone Star Mission operation took place from Oct. 19-29 and was carried out in collaboration with federal immigration agents, Texas sheriff’s offices and police departments from Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Harlingen, the DHS said.

Coleman represents parents and kids in Child Protective Services cases. She had represented the Guatemalan mother in a CPS case for about two years, which involved the children’s placement in foster care. The father was detained on the day the children were scheduled to return home.

Coleman and the other attorneys involved in the case could not locate the family for five days after ICE detained them.

“We couldn’t find them,” Coleman said. “And when they were picked up, we didn’t know where they had gone either. So we were all trying to figure out and organize the kids coming home, and then they were all just gone.”

She didn’t hear from her client until the mother called Coleman the next Wednesday and sent a picture of the children in Guatemala. She learned that ICE had kicked in the family’s door in Austin. A neighbor recorded a video — later viewed by Reporting Texas — that shows the family’s empty apartment as the neighbor informs the father that his family is missing.

Coleman said the family was then held at a hotel without their location being disclosed to the attorneys.

“But they could have been in the hospital; they could have been trapped,” Coleman said. “There is no accountability whatsoever.” 

Austin immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said that while the four-day deportation is a “typical timeline,” being held in a hotel instead of a detention center is rare.

Coleman said at least one of the family’s children was a U.S. citizen under 3.

This family is not the first reported case involving U.S. citizen children who left the country with parents deported by ICE. In January, a 5-year-old U.S. citizen girl was deported to Honduras with her mother. The two were detained in Austin and held in a hotel near San Antonio without public contact allowed or access to an attorney. The mother wanted her daughter to remain in the U.S. with relatives, according to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.

The Department of Homeland Security addressed two similar cases that happened in April 2025 in Louisiana with a statement called Fact Check — DHS is NOT Deporting American Children. The department accused media outlets and Democratic politicians of spreading false information about U.S. citizen children being deported to demonize ICE enforcement agents. DHS said in both cases — the deportations of Jenny Carolina Lopez-Villela and her 2-year-old daughter and Reachel Alexas Morales-Valle and her two U.S.-born children — the mothers had chosen to take their children with them to Honduras when ICE gave the option to designate relatives in the United States.

Lincoln-Goldfinch said it’s not uncommon for U.S. citizen children to leave the country with their parents who are deported. 

“There isn’t some sort of documented right that parents have,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “Sometimes parents are given the choice to bring their children, and sometimes they aren’t. And it fluctuates.”

Homeland Security officials declined to discuss the Guatemalan family’s deportation in Austin unless their names and other identifying information were revealed. But it did say that “ICE does not separate families.” 

“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates,” the department said in a statement. “ICE does not assume parental or guardianship responsibilities. This is consistent with past administration’s immigration enforcement. When criminal United States citizens are taken into custody, they do not get the opportunity to be placed with their minor children.”

DHS said parents “who are here illegally” can control their departure.  

“The United States is offering aliens illegal aliens $3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now,” DHS said in the statement. “We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live (the) American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.”

But the Guatemalan family’s case comes amid broader concerns about immigration agents detaining U.S. citizens.

A ProPublica investigation in October found that 519 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents across 33 states during the current Trump administration, between January 2025 and October 2026. Among them, 20 were detained in Texas.

The investigation, which compiled cases from court records, social media and local reporting, noted that the number of deported citizens was likely an undercount because the government does not track these detentions.

The difficulty of tracking people in immigration custody is something Coleman has experienced firsthand. 

The family didn’t appear in the detention system and went instead straight to deportation, she said. Coleman contacted the Dilley Family Detention Center, where she believed the mother and her children might be held. But the staff couldn’t confirm they were in custody there.

“They’re not keeping track of people,” Coleman said. “There’s no way to check where people are. And there was at least one U.S. citizen baby who wasn’t in the system anywhere.”

Coleman said locating someone maintained by ICE generally requires the detainee’s A-number, date of birth or last name. She said, however, a lot of Latino families’ last names get entered incorrectly in jails’ and facilities’ systems, making it impossible to find them. 

For things to change, Coleman said, the government needs better records.

“And they don’t want people to know how they got picked up because they don’t want people fighting it,” Coleman said. “So I don’t see things changing while there’s still so much secrecy that they’re putting on everything.”