Exclusive: She survived ICE custody; her husband died during detention
Guatemalan immigrant shared a hug and encouraged her husband to "cheer up" as they were detained by ICE. It was the last time she saw him alive.
Jeff AbbottSANTA EULALIA, Guatemala ‒ An altar in Lucía Pedro Juan’s modest home here pays homage to her husband of 25 years.
There are candles and photos of Francisco Gaspar Cristóbal Andrés, surrounded by vases of white daisies and calla lilies. A banner on a nearby wall depicts him with his arms outstretched and Jesus at his shoulder.
She and Cristóbal Andrés left their childhood homes and built lives together in Homestead, Florida, owning a nursery and raising five daughters. He sent money home to his parents to build the concrete home where his memory is now enshrined.
But though the pair paid American taxes, they never managed to become citizens.
On Labor Day, heading to the grocery store, they were stopped by the Florida State Highway Patrol and when they couldn’t produce paperwork, turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Pedro Juan expected to be deported back to the home she hadn’t seen in more than 18 years. She expected Cristóbal Andrés to be there with her.
Instead, he became a statistic, one of at least 30 people to die in ICE custody this year.
According to an ICE news release, he died from liver and kidney failure on Dec. 3 – a week after his 48th birthday. Cristóbal Andrés had suffered from medical issues since his detention, ICE officials said. Pedro Juan insists he was healthy before being detained.
Now, after the family raised money to bring his body home, she's waiting to see him one more time.
The couple last saw each other when they were detained on Sept. 1. A guard, taking their fingerprints, ordered them to stay apart.
A tearful Pedro Juan ignored him.
"I broke away like that, but with such courage that I had the strength to go to him," Pedro Juan said. "And I hugged him, I tickled him on his ribs, and I gave him a kiss on his cheek."
"Cheer up, Papi," she told him.
"It's OK, Mami. You too, cheer up," Cristóbal Andrés replied.
'It's there in Texas where we suffered'
The pair was initially held in Florida and then flown to Texas, becoming among the first to be held at Camp East Montana in El Paso.
"It's there in Texas where we suffered,” Pedro Juan said.
Nearly 3,000 men and women were being held at the Camp East Montana detention facility as of Dec. 1, according to the office of U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso.
When the camp opened, the Trump administration said it would hold detainees for up to five days only. But Pedro Juan was held there for nearly three months.
She described the treatment in El Paso as cruel and the conditions as so dirty that the women were getting sick. “We asked them to bring us a broom. They didn’t,” she said.
Human rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Escobar, have also raised concerns about the detention facility and Cristóbal Andrés’ death.
"This kind of detention is only going to accelerate that harm, and it is gravely unfortunate that this man has passed," Marisa Limón Garza, the director of the El Paso-based immigrant rights advocacy group Las Americas, said during a Dec. 12 news conference. "I am confident that this will not be the last [death in the facility]."
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin described claims of mistreatment in ICE detention as "fear-mongering clickbait." McLaughlin also said that immigrants are allowed to meet with lawyers and family members and are receiving dietitian-approved food.
"No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States," McLaughlin said. "Get a grip.”
But Pedro Juan described guards mocking detainees in English, describing them as animals.
"That's what happens when you are a donkey," she remembers the guards saying. They also called the detainees pigs and told them they were feeding them dog food, she said. The insults came from guards whose "parents are immigrants like us."
"I don't know why you treat us like this," she told them.
She said she repeatedly begged to see her husband, who was being held in another part of the same facility.
"I told them, crying, 'Please, I want to talk to my husband. I am heartbroken,' " she said, breaking into tears again as she recounted the events. "They said nothing. Not even 'Wait' or 'Let me check.' Nothing. 'No visits allowed.' "
'Constant, high-quality' medical care
Cristóbal Andrés received medical attention from the day he was detained, ICE officials said in a Dec. 5 news release.
"From the moment they were notified of his health crisis, ICE medical staff ensured he had constant, high-quality care," officials said.
He was treated for alcohol withdrawal days after his detention, according to officials.
Cristóbal Andrés received medical attention at the El Paso facility on Sept. 27, Oct. 2, Oct. 9, Nov. 3 and Nov. 13 for a variety of ailments, including feeling lightheaded, flu-like symptoms, bleeding gums, sore throat and body aches. He was also treated for fever, cough, swelling in his left leg and high blood pressure, ICE said in the news release about his death.
A 911 call was made from the ICE detention facility on Nov. 16 for a "47-year-old suffering from low blood pressure and swelling to legs," according to call logs provided to the El Paso Times, part of the USA TODAY Network, through a Freedom of Information Act request to the city of El Paso.
He was taken to the Hospitals of Providence East Campus, where medical staff diagnosed him with hyponatremia, dangerously low levels of salt in the bloodstream. He was placed on a liver transplant list and received dialysis and palliative care toward the end of November.
Ninety-three days after being detained, Cristóbal Andrés was pronounced dead from liver and kidney failure, according to the ICE report.
Pedro Juan said she was shocked by his spiraling ill health. Her husband did drink from time to time on the weekends with his friends, she said, but she was unaware of any preexisting health conditions.
"About a year ago, we took him to the doctor," Pedro Juan said. "He never complained to us, even when he was sick, nothing."
She blames detention for his health problems and death.
A typical hardworking immigrant story
Cristóbal Andrés came to the United States in 2002 in search of work, like many other residents of his highland town. Pedro Juan and their four daughters joined him in Miami in 2007.
"I went with him after many hardships in life,” she explained. “[Guatemala] lacks money.”
Over the years, their four oldest daughters married men from El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico. Their youngest daughter was born in 2010 in Florida, making her a U.S. citizen.
Pedro Juan worked at a nursery, cultivating plants for eight years.
“Then my husband and I started our own little business,” she said. "I was very close to him. We were always together."
The pair invested in their business, Lucy Nursery, buying tractors and other machinery and paying taxes, she said.
They attended two Catholic churches over the years, with Lucy Nursery providing poinsettias to the churches for Christmas celebrations.
Cristóbal Andrés was detained by immigration officials in 2017. The family hired a lawyer and had him released to pursue his immigration relief case, paying $15,000, Pedro Juan said. She thought they were following all the rules.
"He was going to court, he was going to take care of everything that the requirements ask for, and then we were working, struggling with life with the family," said Pedro Juan, whose formal education ended in the equivalent of third grade. "And we never imagined that we were going to go through this situation that we are going through now."
He wanted to provide his family with a better life
María Andrés remembers when Cristóbal Andrés, her firstborn son, left for the United States. He wanted to give the family a better life.
"I'm going to look for opportunities, and I want to help you,” he told her, the 68-year-old said through a translator in their native Q'anjob'al language.
She had 15 children, but only seven survived. Of those, Cristóbal Andrés is the third she has lost in the last 10 years.
"I want to see my son," Andrés said.
Cristóbal Andrés’ body is due to arrive in Santa Eulalia on Dec. 29, so his family can give him a proper Catholic burial in his hometown.
Meanwhile, Pedro Juan is worried about the daughters she left behind in America and is struggling to adjust to being a stranger in her hometown. So much has changed since she left.
She calls her suffering and her husband’s death an American tragedy.
She stresses that her family members didn’t come to harm the United States. They weren’t criminals who needed to be swept off the streets by the Trump administration.
"I hope the government, or the ICE agents, who detained us, understand that we are people ‒ we give our labor to the world," Pedro Juan said.
The widow described her husband as a man who deeply loved his family and who fought to provide for them.
“He was very hardworking,” Pedro Juan said. "May God give him peace."
(This story has been updated to correct an error. The name of the Florida town where the family lived has been corrected.)
Jeff Abbott covers the border for the El Paso Times and can be reached at: [email protected]; @palabrasdeabajo on Twitter or @palabrasdeabajo.bsky.social on Bluesky.