WASHINGTON ― Federal immigration authorities arrested a 22-year-old woman in Jackson, Mississippi, on Wednesday shortly after she spoke to the media about the detention of her family. Law enforcement had initially declined to arrest Daniela Vargas, who was previously granted deportation reprieve under the Obama administration’s deferred action program.
On Feb. 15, Vargas was half-asleep at home when Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents came for her family. Her father, a house painter, kissed her goodbye on his way to work and was apprehended in the driveway, Vargas told The Huffington Post last week. She says she never saw her brother, a construction worker who was also detained.
Vargas’ family came to the U.S. from Argentina over 15 years ago. She’d previously had protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The program now has an uncertain future under President Donald Trump.
When the agents arrived, Vargas had a problem: Her DACA status, which has to be renewed every two years, had expired ― and because of the high cost of renewal, $495, her application had only been received on Feb. 10. (Vargas provided HuffPost with a copy of her receipt.) Scared, Vargas went into her house, locked the door and hid in a closet for hours while she sobbed and called her mother. Eventually, she says, ICE agents forced their way in with a warrant, guns raised. The house was searched ― officers had previously found a gun, which Vargas said the family owned for protection ― and she was handcuffed. As local news reporters arrived, she was eventually released.
Agents declined to arrest Vargas at that time, she told HuffPost. Her father and brother were sent to a detention center in Louisiana, where they now await deportation. (An ICE spokesperson at the time described their detention as routine enforcement.)
When Vargas last spoke to HuffPost, in an email on Tuesday, she said she was scared she was being watched, and was moving around because she was “afraid to stay in one spot and be taken back to Argentina.”
Vargas told local news outlets about her story. On Wednesday, she spoke at a news conference organized by local immigration advocates to highlight immigrants’ contributions to the community, according to her attorney, Abby Peterson. Afterward, she was pulled over and arrested, and is now being processed by immigration authorities.
“It could be retaliation,” Peterson said. “They had been reading about her in the news, they had seen her at this press conference... [maybe] they didn’t want to hear it anymore. Maybe I’m mistaken on that, but common sense would certainly imply that’s what happened.” Peterson said that Vargas did not have a criminal record, but had minor traffic offenses.