A dad's ICE arrest and the Seattle nurse who took his family in

On a late afternoon, two kids are taking a little downtime after an especially long day at school. Their mom, Alejandra, snuggles on the couch with her 7-year-old son, reading a children’s book in Spanish and sounding out words together. The boy fidgets with a beaded bracelet, ready to finish the lesson.

Alejandra’s daughter, 11, is napping in a room down the hallway. Recently, the kids have needed to start their days extra early to commute from this house in South Seattle to their school in Tukwila, where the family had lived since late 2023.

The quiet time doesn’t last long. Soon the kids are sliding across the hardwood floors for a game of tag, or plucking the guitar and piano in the living room. Alejandra and her kids have been temporary house guests here for more than a month, ever since ICE agents detained Alejandra’s husband.

“I received a call from my friend saying that [Alejandra’s] husband had been detained, and the mom and kids didn't want to go back to the apartment,” said Karina, a single mom and nurse who invited Alejandra’s family to come stay with her.

“So, without hesitation, I was like, they're coming to my house,” she said. “They're coming tonight.”

Karina and Alejandra had met a few times before through a mutual friend, but they barely knew each other.

“I had to remind her who I was,” Karina said, who also shares a home with her two teenage kids.

KUOW is not using the women' s full names due to the legal status of Alejandra’s family.

The arrest happened four days before Christmas, when Alejandra’s husband returned to their apartment with a load of presents. Their apartment complex is full of immigrant families, and he told his wife that ICE agents seemed to be scoping out the parking lot and spotted him when he pulled in.

When Alejandra’s husband called her from the Tacoma ICE detention center about an hour after the arrest, he told her ICE officers there forced him to sign self-deportation papers and said they would return to the apartment in four days to detain her and the kids.

“My nerves overwhelmed me and I just cried desperately and asked him what could I do,” Alejandra said. She was cleaning a lady’s house in Seattle when he called and tried to finish the job fast.

RELATED: Inside ICE Detention, a KUOW Documentary

On that phone call, Alejandra and her husband decided the family would all return to Venezuela together and that she should quickly pack up their life and apartment in Tukwila.

“The next day, we went back to the apartment and scanned the parking lot for ICE,” Karina said. “And we went in and we just started like quickly sorting things. What do you want to keep? What are we donating? Then she was feeling a lot of urgency about sending money to Venezuela, so we did that.”

Seeking asylum

Alejandra’s family came to the U.S. in October 2023 and presented themselves to border officials to request asylum. They made their way to Washington and initially landed at Riverton Park United Methodist Church in Tukwila, which had become a hub for an influx of Venezuelan migrants.

Immigration and court records KUOW reviewed include an asylum application they filed, stating military police in Venezuela had threatened to kill Alejandra’s husband. Records show they followed the legal process, attending court hearings and ICE check-ins until a Seattle immigration judge dismissed their case in 2024. That removed the immediate risk of deportation but they would’ve needed to file a new asylum application to keep the process going. It’s unclear if that happened.

“Our idea coming here was for the kids to study and continue on this path so that they could become someone in life,” Alejandra said in Spanish. “But if God decides that we should return, then let it be his will.”

RELATED: Tukwila is swelling with asylum-seekers. What can be done?

Elizabeth Benki, a directing attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project who reviewed the husband's case, said he does not have a criminal record and it’s unclear why ICE detained him. It’s possible agents picked him up based on suspicion that he’s undocumented — a profiling tactic recently approved by a federal court, which lawsuits continue to challenge.

As her husband’s first court date at the detention center approached in late January, more than a month after his arrest, there was still a possibility the family could apply for some legal option to stay here, Benki said.

Benki said her organization offered to file a habeas corpus petition for him in federal court, so he could get out of detention and try to fight his case. Benki said he had a strong case and would've likely prevailed, however the process could take a month or two. But Alejandra’s husband planned to ask the judge for voluntary departure rather than be stuck in detention longer.

ICE did not respond to questions about his case.

Saying goodbye to school, friends

Alejandra’s husband called her every day from detention. When he talked to their son, he would tell him he was away at work. His daughter knew the truth, and Alejandra suspects her son did, too, but it was easier not to talk about it.

Both of their children have thrived in school here and clearly made strong connections with teachers at their separate Tukwila schools, where the son is now in second grade and the daughter is in sixth.

Several teachers jumped in to help the family after the ICE arrest, which happened just as schools began a two-week winter break. Some teachers helped clear out and clean the apartment. Others watched the kids while Alejandra and Karina ran errands day after day.

Alejandra’s son has gravitated to the guitar in Karina's home. He held it on his lap, gently strumming before dinner one night, and another night in his Bluey pajamas before bed. He first played guitar at school here, in music class. The family had a piano in their apartment that his sister played.

“I also do flag football, volleyball, track, soccer, and basketball,” Alejandra’s daughter rattles off in flawless English, her long hair swept up in a ponytail.

“And I have track I'm starting the 27th,” she catches herself as she mentions that future date, knowing the family’s bags are packed.

She’ll miss her friends here, she said, friends who helped her learn English.

“Because I have a lot of friends, and they're from other countries," she explained. "So, I have a friend that's from Russia, Ukraine, Mexico, Italia.”

RELATED: A Seattle fourth-grader and his family self-deport to Guatemala

It’s not the first time she’s gone through this type of goodbye. Her parents first left Venezuela together when she was 4 and their migration route has taken the family to Peru, Brazil, and now the U.S. in search of work opportunities for Alejandra and her husband and education for their children. Alejandra’s daughter said she felt at home in Seattle, but she also seems at peace with the return to Venezuela where they still have family.

“When I feel like home, real home, I feel my country,” she said. “That’s Venezuela.”

But her younger brother burst into tears at the news they were leaving. Partly, he didn’t want to return the way they had come — a month-long journey, including three days in the jungle to cross the Darien Gap.

In Venezuela, political instability, violence, and economic collapse has forced millions of people to leave in the past decade. Now, the country faces another time of uncertainty following the recent U.S. military operation there to capture former President Nicolás Maduro. Alejandra says if they feel unsafe there, or the kids are not able to get a good education, they’ll leave Venezuela again -— but not back to the U.S.

“Sometimes I tell my husband, ‘That’s it,’ and I want to be done with all this moving around because I feel like I'm hurting my children,” Alejandra said, holding back tears. “But if we have to keep moving, then we’ll go all four of us together as a family. And in each country, we start from scratch and try to achieve something, little by little.”

Preparing for the next move

Alejandra and her husband pieced together work here. He delivered food through Doordash. She cleaned houses.

In these last few weeks, Alejandra and Karina have done what they can to cushion the family’s next landing. Karina has taken them to various medical appointments, got the kids glasses, helped them ship money and packages to Venezuela. One prized item they sent is a Playstation for the kids — a symbol of this hard-fought time in America, bought with money the parents earned through their jobs.

Living together and navigating this chaotic time, these two moms have grown close.

“I’m so grateful for everything my friend is doing for us, for my children, for my family," Alejandra said. "She was like an angel.”

For Karina, it was an easy choice to open her home to Alejandra’s family.

“Because it's the right thing to do, and they have nowhere to go, and I have space and capacity, and my heart is absolutely broken by what is going on,” Karina said.

Now, a departure date looms. At the Jan. 27 hearing, a judge granted Alejandra’s husband’s request for voluntary departure. Now he’ll wait in custody for a flight out.

An ICE official at the detention center called Alejandra to say his flight could happen within a few days but they were not allowed to share specific travel information. Alejandra and Karina have been trying to figure out how to use the government’s self-deportation program through the CBP Home app, and the official helped clarify that process.

Karina described it as a surprising moment of humanity in a dark time.

“[This person] was incredibly compassionate," she said. "Their kindness was remarkable.”

Alejandra is still looking into travel arrangements, and the kids are still keeping up a routine going to school each day.

As the afternoon turned to evening, Alejandra’s daughter was excited to show off a domino maze she set up on the living room floor, arranged in a circle. She pushed the first piece to set it in motion and a few blocks toppled over. But the path was not a smooth line and when the maze inevitably stalled, she jumped in with a helping hand to keep it going.