Since being released from the Northwest ICE Processing Center, Sebastian Zurita Villanueva, 33, has mostly stayed at home. That’s because he has to wear an ankle monitor, and he isn’t allowed to work.
“I can’t work, so I’m trying to support the family as much as I can,” he said in Spanish.
He and four cousins, all from Mexico, are haunted by memories from the detention center, but they're happy to be home, spending time with their families again. It may be temporary though.
The Snohomish County men were released in recent weeks after friends and neighbors helped pay their bonds. Court dates lie ahead for all of them.
The five were arrested on Sept. 5 in the middle of a Labor Day weekend camping trip. Their families were staying at Red Bridge Campground on Mountain Loop Highway in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest when agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accompanied by U.S. Forest Service rangers raided their campsite just after 11 p.m., after everyone had gone to bed, and seized the men from their tents.
Bernardino Ramos Villanueva, 29, said he spent a month-and-a-half in detention racked with worry for his wife and two children.
“I was clueless about what to do with my family,” he said in Spanish. “I felt like I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t do anything.”
The men were released one by one between Sept. 30 and Oct. 19. Friends and neighbors helped pay their bonds, which ranged from $10,000 to $15,000.
Zurita Villanueva said his family, including his wife and four children, ages 19, 13, 9 and 7, have struggled to stay afloat since his arrest. He worked in construction before he was arrested.
“We're trying to cope with my wife’s income right now and out of savings as well,” he said.
But his wife makes less than he did.
Since their release, the men are required to attend ICE check-ins and meetings about their ankle monitors. As they peer into uncertain futures, they said they’re grateful people know about their experiences and have been willing to help.
News of the nighttime raid made rounds in the media and on the internet last month, sparking outrage from Democratic lawmakers and environmental advocacy groups and prompting questions about the Forest Service’s role in immigration enforcement. Thousands have donated to a GoFundMe to support the men's families and hire immigration attorneys.
A statement from the Forest Service read, “Although Forest Service law enforcement officers and criminal investigators do not enforce immigration law, they collaborate with agencies that do, as well as with state and local partners responsible for enforcing hunting and fishing regulations, drug laws, and other non-resource-related laws.”
The five men are now looking back on their time in detention and how they were separated from their families.
Zurita Villanueva said he saw people in detention develop rashes on their face and neck.
“Everybody was using the same washing machine. They probably didn’t wash very well,” he said.
The men said sickness was rampant.
“We were prisoners,” Alvaro Robles Villanueva, 29, said in Spanish. “The food was not good. They didn’t give attention to those who are ill. It was so easy to get ill.”
He said he had a fever, headaches and a stomach ache, but nobody tended to him until the next day.
Some of their children started their first day of school without their fathers there to say goodbye or walk them there, according to a family member who spoke to The Seattle Times.
Robles Villanueva said he didn't know how to explain to his young children where he was and why he couldn’t be at home. At first, he told them he was traveling for work, until his family paid him a visit at the detention center.
“My son realized where I was, and he asked me if I was a bad person,” he said. “I had to tell him, ‘No, I’m not a bad person, but they still locked me up.’”
Zurita Villanueva said he was honest with his children from the beginning.
“They came to visit me a few times, but it was really hard because I could only see them through a screen,” he said.
He said he told them: “The reason I’ve been arrested here is because I’m not from this country like you are.”
Since their release, the five men have been plagued with confusion about why federal immigration agents targeted them.
Four of them have no criminal records. State records show the other was convicted in 2016 in Snohomish County District Court for negligent driving, a misdemeanor.
“They’re going after people like us,” Ramos Villanueva said. “We’ve never committed a crime. Our records say so. We work. We don’t hurt people, yet they still go after us.”
He said he was shocked to learn children were killed in a shooting at an Oregon elementary school after his release.
“Those are criminals,” he said. “These are the people they should go after, but I can’t help but think they go after people like us because of our skin color. It shouldn’t be that way.”
Seattle Times staff reporter Manuel Villa contributed to this story.
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