Surviving ICE: Letty’s Story

Leticia’s family (l–r): son Marco Salazar, grandson Adrian Martinez, Leticia Carmona, husband Marco Salazar, daughter Cynthia Salazar, and grandson Damian Martinez. Photo Sarah Whiting

October 7, 2008, started out like most workdays for Leticia “Letty” Carmona at Children’s Village Montessori in Minneapolis. She had worked with children ranging from a few months to school age. For several years, as on this day, she was a teacher in the school’s toddler room. The day started out with the usual routines: activity stations, reading, changing diapers, and feeding students.

As with most day care centers, visitors needed to be let in by a staff member. When a group of unexpected visitors asked to see Letty that day, a coworker let them into the building. The visitors asked to speak to Letty privately, in a small teacher’s room, where they disclosed their real intent — they were ICE agents and were there to arrest her.

Letty complied and left with them. She was taken to an office in Bloomington, where she was led to believe she might be able to go home. But officers eventually told her she would instead be detained at the Ramsey County jail.

By 4:30pm, days before her birthday, Letty was shackled on both her hands and feet, connected at her waist. At the jail, she was given a purple wrist band that categorized her as an immigration detainee. She was given one phone call, which she made to her husband, who had not known where she was. He advised her, “Don’t sign any papers.”

The Chance for a New Life

Letty was born and raised in Mexico City. At 17, she moved to Tijuana for work and met her husband Marco, who attended dental school and some law school. Their first child, Cynthia, was born in California in 1989. After returning to Mexico for two years, they moved to California, overstaying their visa as they pursued opportunities for work and stability in America. 

With $150 in their pockets, they relocated to Maryland for work. About a year later, Marco heard a radio ad for workers needed in Alaska with a job that included day care. The family relocated until that work ended, then moved to Washington State. 

While Marco worked in Seattle, the family survived in shelters, before locating to Minnesota. It was in Minneapolis the family stayed and, for the first time in a long time, called a city home.

In the years that followed, Letty and Marco purchased their first home in North Minneapolis, and then a home in Brooklyn Center. Letty gave birth to their son Marco, worked full-time as a day care provider, and was a second-shift seamstress. Life seemed normal, part of the American Dream through hard work and perseverance.

Inside the Detention Walls

When Letty was detained by ICE, she was still undocumented, terrified by the possibility that she could be returned to a country she hadn’t lived in for decades, without her family. 

If people in detention made too much noise, guards restricted them to their cell for one to three days. Women were denied menstrual products. Letty felt the humiliation of a body cavity search after attending a Bible study class.

She could speak to her family by video call three times a week. “It’s hard for your family, and for the one who is incarcerated,” she says. “The one in detention feels the support, but it is suffering on both sides.”

Each week she met with immigration representatives, who asked her to sign papers that would initiate her deportation. Every week, Letty refused. She was told if she signed and “went home,” she would be able to try to return “legally.” But she didn’t believe that, and started working with an immigration attorney who believed she could make a case for staying in Minnesota.

Letty’s Village

For months, Letty remained in custody. Since Marco was also undocumented at the time, the family was very worried he could be detained as well, leaving their school-aged children without parents. “My kids, they slept with me all three months because they don’t want to stay alone in their rooms,” Marco says.  

“I wanted to be in her bed because I wanted to feel like she was there,” Cynthia explains today.

Cynthia was a teenager at the time, attending school and working; the family missed Letty’s income.

Letty had a village of families and peers at her job who sprang to action. Some parents whose children attended the school wrote letters to local and state government officials, pleading Letty’s case. The school’s owner advocated for her release. Friends and neighbors helped Marco with meals and filled the void of the holidays with gifts for the children. 

Letty’s immigration attorney believed she qualified for a U-Visa that would allow her release and protect her from deportation. Eventually, Letty’s application — out of thousands filed that year — was approved.

Three months after being detained, Letty was told on January 8, 2009, around 5am, that she was being released. She was made to wait, in chains, in a holding room for several hours. She did not sit down — not because of excitement, but because of the cold. “You need to stay up walking to keep your body warm.” 

When Letty was transported back to the Bloomington office she had originally been in three months earlier, she was 30 pounds lighter. Around 6pm, she was finally able to leave. Her arrival home was an unforgettable and emotional moment for her family.

“When I saw her, I couldn’t believe it,” Cynthia says. “I could not believe I was touching her.”

Letty says others detained with her were not given similar options, sometimes deported quickly. “I was lucky to stay there for three months and then be released,” she says.

A Journey That Still Hits Home

It’s been 18 years since Letty was detained by ICE. She and her husband are now naturalized United States citizens. The memories of those three months haunt her in today’s ICE climate.

She wonders, in a country that became filled with immigrants over hundreds of years, why some people were allowed to come without question.

With high ICE presence in Minnesota, Letty wants other immigrants to not feel pressured to sign deportation paperwork without representation, resources, and options offered.

Inspired by her parents’ journey and her mother’s story, Cynthia attended the University of Minnesota. Today she works as an immigration paralegal at Paula Schwartzbauer Law and plans to apply to law school. She hopes to become an immigration attorney. 

“I am giving back to the community what I can,” Cynthia says.

Letty’s son Marco graduated from Dunwoody College with a degree in architecture and is now engaged.

Letty continues to teach full-time at a different school.

“I think everybody deserves a chance,” Letty says. “I’m one of the lucky ones who got the opportunity to stay in this country, but I think everybody deserves a chance at a better life.”

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