Aug 8
2025
ICE separates parents, 2-year-old child
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Carlos Molina Manzaneda, Rebeca Ferreira Castillo and their child, Ines. Photo provided.
On a late July morning, immigration authorities in Western New York targeted the Fredonia Walmart, ultimately detaining a husband and wife.
The action separated the parents from Ines, their two-year-old child.
For two weeks now, the toddler has cried nightly, her father said, and has at times refused to eat, not understanding why her parents haven’t come home. A member of the couple’s extended family is caring for the child, who was born in Buffalo in 2023.
“It’s like a piece of you is ripped out, like a kidney. Like a part of your heart is missing,” Carlos Molina Manzaneda, the girl’s father, told Investigative Post in an interview from the ICE facility where he’s detained. “It’s quite heavy living in a situation in which you don’t know what’s going to happen. You’re living in fear for your baby.”
Immigration advocates said they believe the arrests are evidence that the Trump administration has reinstated a policy of separating immigrant families, a program that sparked national outrage when it was in place during the president’s first term. An August 5 report from the New York Times identified nine other cases nationwide of immigration agents separating parents from their children.
“Outrage doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Jennifer Connor, executive director of the advocacy group Justice for Migrant Families, said of the case. “I feel what I see in our administration is a profound inner darkness such that they would go after children like this.”
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomConnor said she was aware of at least one other child, a boy who had been living in Buffalo, who was separated from his parents due to ICE arrests. The child had been living with one biological parent and a step-parent, both of whom were detained, she said. The child’s other biological parent, who lives out of state, has since taken custody of the boy.
“It’s a threat they’ve started using,” she said. “Under Biden … they definitely were leaving a parent with the kids. When there were encounters, that’s what was happening.”
“It’s a consequence of their arbitrary quotas per day that they have to hit now,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, referring to a White House-set quota of 3,000 immigration arrests per day. “It’s happening, actually, across the country.”
In the weeks since their arrest, Molina Manzaneda has languished at the ICE detention center in Batavia. He does not know when he will be permitted to see an immigration judge. His next scheduled hearing, part of his asylum case, is in 2027. His wife, Rebeca Ferreira Castillo, meanwhile, is now detained at an ICE facility in Richwood, Louisiana.
The couple’s lawyer, Niagara Falls-based immigration attorney Bob Graziano, has filed a legal motion with the Department of Justice to get Ferreira Castillo relocated to New York and is seeking to have at least one of the parents released so they can take care of their child.
On Thursday, Carol Giarrizzo Bridge, the top attorney for ICE in Buffalo, told Graziano the couple was not eligible to be released on bond, according to an email obtained by Investigative Post.
According to both Graziano and legal documents, the couple entered the United States in 2022 as asylum seekers from Venezuela. Both have pending asylum applications that are under review by immigration officials, and both have attended numerous hearings in immigration court as a result. Neither have criminal records.
Graziano said he hopes the couple can be released on parole, which was their legal status prior to their arrests. But he fears the Trump administration is seeking to deport the couple as fast as possible without regard for their child.
“They’re expediting the whole process, taking away their rights to testify together with the same case, and they’re also abandoning a two-year-old child,” he said. “There’s just a complete disregard of the welfare of children, as there was in the first administration.”
A spokesperson for the White House referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security. Spokespeople for that agency and ICE did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Arrested at Walmart
The weather was “beautiful” outside their Dunkirk home two weeks ago, Molina Manzaneda said. He greeted his neighbors like he often does. His wife left for the Walmart where they both worked as delivery drivers around 8 a.m. He followed shortly after, around 8:30.
Once in the parking lot, he noticed a vehicle he believed to be a U.S. Customs and Border Protection van. He found the vehicle’s presence odd, but said he didn’t worry because he and his wife hadn’t broken any laws.
As he waited for a delivery order to be prepared, he grew more anxious, he said. He called his wife to see if she knew anything about it. She didn’t pick up. Then an agent approached his car and asked where he was from. Molina Manzaneda said he presented documents showing he was an asylum seeker and had a court date scheduled for April 2027.
“So I said, ‘We’re all good, sir. What’s happening?’” he said.
He then learned that the agents were there to arrest him and his wife. Molina Manzaneda described his wife as crying, pleading with the agents that she had a young child at home. An agent, he said, promised that only one of them would be arrested.
“‘We’re going to let Rebeca go,’” he said the agent told him. “‘We’re going to let Rebeca leave.’”
They did not.
Molina Manzaneda was arrested and taken to the Batavia facility later that day. He was classified as a non-criminal detainee and given a blue uniform. A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection referred questions to ICE.
Ferreira Castillo was taken to the Niagara County Jail, Graziano said. Niagara County Sheriff Michael Fillicetti, under an agreement with Immigration Customs Enforcement, is paid $148 per person per day to house immigration detainees, primarily women. Around 2 a.m. on July 27, Graziano said, Ferreira Castillo was flown to an ICE facility in Louisiana, where she remains.
Graziano has filed a legal motion to get Ferreira Castillo brought back to New York so that she can continue her asylum case alongside her husband.
“Ines remains in Dunkirk forcibly separated from her parents who have both been taken from her,” he argued to Buffalo Immigration Judge Walter Hammele Ruehle. “This young girl must be reunited with at least one of her parents as soon as possible.”
Ruehle has not yet issued a decision on the matter.
Prior to their detention, court records show, the couple had filed necessary paperwork for their asylum claim and attended the required court hearings. At a June 25 hearing in Buffalo, Ruehle advised them of their next steps and ordered them to return in April 2027.
“My goal right now is to really try to see if we can get them both to be back [for] the Buffalo case that they had together as a couple, because now … they’re going to have separate cases,” Graziano said.”It’s going to be very hard for them to testify for each other because they’re locked up in different facilities.”
Molina Manzaneda, having never been incarcerated before, said he’s trying to remain resolute.
“I try to be strong and have faith,” he said. “I’m trying and trying to give Rebeca some strength too.”
His wife, he said, “tries to smile, but inside she’s devastated. She’s missing her daughter, her baby. It’s rough.”
From Venezuela to Western New York
Originally from Venezuela, Molina Manzaneda and Ferreira Castillo both experienced threats from guerrilla groups and the government, according to their application for asylum in the United States.
In 2012, the application states, Ferreira Castillo’s uncles and aunts “were kidnapped by the guerilla.”
“They were tortured, mistreated, tied up and hung up for 8 hours in the mountains … for no reason,” the application states. “They just wanted a copious amount of money which had to be delivered within 24 hours otherwise they’d be killed.”
As a college student, Molina Manzaneda wrote in the application, he was part of a student union involved in protests against both the administrations of President Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicholas Maduro. His participation in the protests, he wrote, “[caused] me to be targeted by the government.”
“My family and I have received threats, mistreatment and physical damage due to my participation in the protests,” he reported to U.S. immigration officials. “Some of our closest family and friends were detained and interrogated because of past participation in protests.”
In an interview, Molina Manzaneda said he trained to become an accountant but that his country’s economic collapse made finding work difficult. His protests against the Chavez administration eventually turned into protests related to the collapse, which began in 2010.
He and others again took to the streets when Maduro moved to amend the nation’s constitution so that he could remain in power.
“We protested against this, against this reform,” Molina Manzaneda said. “Then came the riots, food shortages, fuel shortages. The government began to attack everyone.”
He reported on his asylum application that he was active in protests from 2007 to 2015.
He and his wife eventually fled to Panama in 2016, according to their asylum application. They remained there for six years, but ultimately faced hardships there, too. As foreigners, he said they faced “xenophobia,” including poor medical care.
“We both emigrated from Panama because Rebeca was pregnant and the xenophobia was even greater due to her state of pregnancy,” he reported to U.S. officials.
Molina Manzaneda said he fears he cannot return to Venezuela due to his past participation in the protests. He said he attempted to return in 2017 but faced threats.
He and his wife, sponsored by a relative, were permitted to enter the U.S. as asylum seekers in 2022. They obtained work permits and began working as independent contractors for Walmart, driving delivery orders to customers. A Walmart spokesperson declined to comment on their employment or arrests.
In an interview, Molina Manzaneda described himself as being at “rock bottom.”
“When we hit rock bottom, we start to value everything, each moment, each second of our lives, all those things which we don’t appreciate outside [of detention],” he said.
“Well, when we’re here, we miss it.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a response from the White House.
