The fate of this family of 8 is in ICE's hands. Will they get 'mercy'?

One in a series detailing how Trump's immigration policies are transforming America.

HUNTSVILLE, AL – It was a Sunday like any other for the Brunty-Barojas family. Breakfast croissants for six kids. Keurig coffee brewing in the kitchen. Video games in the living room. Soccer in the backyard.

But while the kids ate and played, Chelsea Brunty-Barojas was frantically piling clothes and belongings to fill a 40-gallon container in the garage, preparing for the likelihood that her husband, Antonio Barojas Solano, the family's sole provider, could be detained by ICE within days and deported to Mexico.

She was struggling to comprehend it.

"He doesn't meet the criteria of what people are saying, like the ones that need to be deported in this mass deportation," she said. "He's not a criminal."

But their application to legalize her husband's immigration status is unfolding against the backdrop of President Donald Trump's sweeping effort to deport millions of immigrants. And a chance encounter with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August landed Barojas Solano in detention for six weeks, upending his legal process and leaving them terrified that he could be detained again.

It didn't seem to matter that he had been brought to the United States by an uncle when he was 14, a year older then than his eldest son is now. Or that he had been abandoned here.

Barojas Solano, now 33, has worked ever since, in landscaping and construction. He and Brunty-Barojas, 37, married in 2022, had a child together – 2-year-old Colette – and forged a blended family. They were in the process of submitting his paperwork for a green card when agents detained him.

An immigration judge released him on a $5,000 bond, but ICE appealed his release and then ordered him to show up for a check-in on Oct. 29 in Birmingham, two hours away.

Now each normal day together feels like a blessing laced with fear.

"We're trying to prepare, mentally before anything else," he said in Spanish. "I still have hope, faith, but if the worst is going to happen, we have to be strong."

A chance encounter

On Aug. 6, Barojas Solano left the construction site in Huntsville where he and his team were hanging drywall. He needed to make a stop before heading home.

Two cousins had died in a car accident overnight, and he wanted to offer condolences and lend a hand to their families.

When he arrived, there were police outside the house. He assumed they were there to investigate the accident, he said. But ICE agents had come looking for a man with a criminal background at the same address. They arrested the man and then began asking every Hispanic man there for an ID, Barojas Solano said.

He told the agents he had an American wife and an attorney and was applying for legal status. A USA TODAY review of court records showed he had no prior interaction with law enforcement. They arrested him anyway.

He tried to call his wife before the agents took his phone away.

Brunty-Barojas saw the missed call. She tried him over and over, but he didn't pick up. Something was wrong, she thought. She checked his phone location and drove to it.

"My kids were in the car, like, 'Where's Daddy? What happened?'" she said, wiping tears. "I was calling my parents who were out of town. I was like, 'They took Antonio. I don't know where he is.'"

That chance encounter with ICE agents heaped complications onto Barojas Solano's application for legal status, which he can pursue as the husband of an American woman.Brunty-Barojas said they had spent months gathering evidence of their intertwined finances; that they had a child together; that he provided for his own three boys and her 15-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.

The couple met in 2020, after connecting through mutual friends on Facebook, she said. They were both single parents at the time and found they shared the same family values.

Brunty-Barojas liked that he took his kids on weekends and paid child support. He was building his drywall construction career. He didn't smoke or drink. "It’s hard to find a good guy once you have kids," she said. "He was kind and ambitious."

Barojas Solano credits fate and a higher power. "I thank God for putting her in my path," he said. "Besides being beautiful – her heart, her feelings – she is a good person, and she accepted my children."

Packing for the unknown

Brunty-Barojas packed haphazardly that Sunday morning for a worst-case scenario. She knew little about Mexico and couldn't imagine life in the pueblo where her husband was born. So far, she had gathered up some of the family's clothes, a vacuum cleaner, a space heater, a Keurig coffeemaker and 80 K-cups in case they didn't sell those there.

She packed as if she really didn't want to go but couldn't imagine surviving without him.

There were the doctor's appointments. Every three months, Brunty-Barojas has been undergoing surgery to remove colorectal tumors that, left unattended, could turn cancerous. Her eldest daughter, Camille, has a brain lesion that causes severe epilepsy and needs to stay close to her neurologist.

And the language barrier. Brunty-Barojas speaks Spanish with her husband, and Colette, the youngest, is learning. But Camille and 9-year-old James don't.

And the house. Who would pay the mortgage on their four-bedroom home with the grassy backyard and slender white columns out front?

Barojas Solano had sent money home to his parents over the years to build a two-bedroom concrete-block house in the mountains of Veracruz, on Mexico's east coast – mostly because he could afford it, not because he ever dreamed of moving his family there.

He hosed down the 40-gallon container and tipped it over to dry on the front porch. Colette played in the grass. Brunty-Barojas stood with one hand on her hip, surveying the bags of toys and clothes in the garage.

A proud Southerner, Brunty-Barojas has traced her family ancestry to before the American Revolution, and to family members who fought on both sides of the Civil War.

"I never thought after so many of my family members are patriots … that my government can come in here and take my husband because he came here when he was 14," she said. "It's ridiculous."

The effect of quiet policy changes

The Trump administration's mass deportation is playing out on several fronts, some more public than others.

There have been splashy workplace raids like the ones that occurred at a Georgia Hyundai plant and a California legal marijuana farm. Videos of street arrests in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York are all over TikTok, X, Instagram and Facebook.

But behind the scenes, quiet policy changes are putting new pressures on the nation's already troubled immigration system.

On Aug. 19, an immigration judge ordered Barojas Solano be released on bond, according to court documents.

When ICE attorneys appealed his bond, they did so in part because the agency is challenging immigration judges' jurisdiction over immigrants who entered the country illegally.

A pivotal legal challenge has set a new precedent. In a case known as the Matter of Yajure-Hurtado, the Trump administration argued immigration judges can't grant bond to undocumented immigrants, who the administration contends are subject to mandatory detention.

The Board of Immigration Appeals sided with the administration on Sept. 5.

In Barojas Solano's case, the judge recommended ICE use an "alternative to detention," such as an ankle monitor, at the agency's discretion. But the Trump administration has cut back on lower-cost detention alternatives, and Barojas Solano was released without one.

Brunty-Barojas' parents drove more than six hours each way, from Huntsville to Natchez, Mississippi, to pick him up from the nation's largest permanent ICE detention facility, Adams Detention Center.

He had lost weight and was sick with bronchitis. He wore a new blue bracelet on his wrist, a gift from a Nepalese detainee who, using threads from plastic bags in the cafeteria, wove it with a name: Colette.

'We just want mercy'

When her husband was detained, Brunty-Barojas shared a letter with the Huntsville City Council in hopes of finding support in her community. She got no response from her elected officials.

"Here in the South, hearing how people talk about immigrants, I knew it would affect my husband and my relationship," she said.

Colette pranced by, her curls dangling in a ponytail. She pointed to her toes to show off red polish.

"Painted nails!" she exclaimed.

"Who painted your nails?" her father asked her.

"Daddy did!" she said proudly.

"We just want mercy," Brunty-Barojas said, sitting in the living room beside her husband. "We're just asking to be together as a family and to be able to continue to fight our case and do it the right way, the legal way, without him having to be in jail and treated like a criminal."

Barojas Solano interlaced his fingers with hers.

"I don't know what will happen now," he said. "The truth is, we're in their hands. Maybe they'll give me a chance to stay. Maybe they won't."

Lauren Villagran covers immigration at USA TODAY can be reached at [email protected].