Aug 26
2025
ICE deports West Side restaurant owner, family
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Katherine Gomez stands outside of Sabores De Mi Tierra, which she purchased from her deported client. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker.
During the four years William Murcia Henao owned Sabores De Mi Tierra — literally, “flavors of my land” — his West Side Colombian restaurant was celebrated.
Opened in 2021, the Niagara Street eatery quickly earned local media attention, praise from a local blogger and a nomination for a state Business Council award from Assemblymember Jonathan Rivera. The restaurant won particular acclaim for its traditional Colombian dishes, which Rivera and others said was missing from Buffalo.
But then, in May, Murcia Henao was deported to Colombia, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Several months later, his wife and two children, including one born in the United States, opted to follow him via a self-deportation process.
Murcia Henao, his wife and their eldest daughter had arrived in the United States as asylum seekers and were permitted to live and work in the Buffalo area as their case wound its way through the courts. A panel of federal judges rejected their asylum bid earlier this year.
“They were the true meaning of hard-working people, living the American dream, coming here, opening a business, you know, paying their taxes on time, no criminal record whatsoever,” said Katherine Gomez, a legal representative for the family.
Gomez and Rivera’s staff both attempted to intervene with immigration officials, but to avail.
“We did beg ICE, and we did provide a bunch of documentation stating that these people pay taxes on time. They didn’t care, and it was devastating,” Gomez said.
Murcia Henao’s wife, Adriana Botina Rodriguez, while free, was stuck in the family’s Orchard Park home, under surveillance by a black SUV — a hallmark of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She and her children had to sneak to New York City and back under cover to obtain the needed travel documents so they could leave the country without being detained, Gomez said.
The family has since reunited in Colombia. Gomez, meanwhile, purchased the business from Murcia Henao. She’s reopened the restaurant and is working to renovate it. She’s also working to bring a branch of her legal services nonprofit, La Victoria Foundation, to the Hispanic Heritage center currently under construction several blocks away on Niagara Street.
Gomez and Rivera both said the story of the Sabores restaurant highlights the new reality of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration: Law-abiding migrants are now targeted by authorities, leaving their families, businesses and communities at risk, too.
“All this is, is loss,” Rivera said. “It’s children being taken away from their parents. It’s haphazard and chaotic. It’s truly destroying communities.
Had Gomez not purchased the restaurant, he said, “we would have just had an empty storefront on Niagara Street. And who benefits from that?”
A failed asylum bid
Murcia Henao and his family arrived in the United States in 2014, fleeing threats from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as FARC. In court filings, the family said the paramilitary group began targeting Murcia Henao’s brother in 2013 “for working for a hydroelectric dam project that the FARC opposed.” When the soldiers couldn’t locate his brother, Murcia Henao and his wife became their target.
“[Murcia Henao] testified that a man came into a clothing store where he worked, pointed at him, said ‘I found what I was looking for,’ and after buying clothing, said that he knew Murcia Henao’s brother, and that Murcia Henao had two daughters,” federal judges wrote in a filing in his deportation case.
Murcia Henao further alleged that FARC members left a condolence card at his home with a note that read, “We have one of these for each of your family.”
The family also faced extortion from local gangs, Gomez said, who wanted a percentage of the money he earned as a business owner. Eventually, she said, the family couldn’t keep up with the payments.
“So he closed his business, moved to another city, and still they were looking for him, looking for his family,” she said.
The family landed in New York City and lived and worked there before ultimately relocating to Orchard Park. Rivera said Murcia Henao has a brother who lives in the area. There, eldest daughter Salome played flag football and junior varsity basketball. Murcia Henao opened Sabores De Mi Tierra in 2021.
That same year, court records show, an immigration judge in Buffalo denied his application for asylum. Under past administrations, however, such a ruling didn’t mean immediate detention, and Murcia Henao was allowed to pursue appeals of his case as a free man. His restaurant flourished as he did.
Murcia Henao, however, lost before the Board of Immigration Appeals. In early 2023, he appealed his case to a panel of federal judges. His case languished for nearly two years. After a flurry of paperwork filed in 2023, records show, the case sat idle until Trump administration lawyers took over in February.
In March, judges in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Murcia Henao. Citing a 2016 peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC soldiers, they argued conditions in the country were now safer than they were and that Murcia Henao had failed to demonstrate that he and his family would be persecuted if forced to return. The panel argued that “occasional flare ups of FARC violence” were not enough evidence to prove the family would be at imminent risk.
He was detained by ICE agents in mid April.
After several months in ICE custody, first in Batavia and then at a facility in Louisiana, Murcia Henao was deported to Colombia. Gomez described the detention conditions as “bad” and said his wife and children wanted to avoid detention if possible.
That meant they had to travel surreptitiously to New York City. Gomez said she arranged for the family to leave home at 2 a.m., drive to the city, acquire the needed paperwork, and arrive back home in Orchard Park undetected by the agents parked near their home. They departed for Colombia shortly thereafter, unable to sort out their affairs before they left.
“They left with nothing. They didn’t take all of their clothes or their furniture or their anything,” Rivera said. “They have to start from scratch, despite having a profitable business here.”
Future of the restaurant
After the family arrived in Colombia, Gomez said, Murcia Henao attempted to sell the restaurant. One set of prospective buyers offered $30,000, paying $10,000 up front and the rest later. That deal eventually fell through, however. That’s when Gomez stepped in. Murcia Henao, she said, called her from Colombia.
“Then I told them, ‘Well, how much is it?’ And he was, you know, he was very shy,” she said. “[I said] ‘Well, let me make calls, make a loan, and I’ll buy it.’”
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Gomez has big plans for the restaurant, which reopened July 18.
First came new flooring. Next up are repairs to the ventilation system. Gomez wants to update the menu, too, and open for breakfast. By the fall, she said, she plans to offer traditional Colombian coffee, croissants and eggs.
She’s also in talks, she said, to open a branch of her legal services nonprofit, La Victoria Foundation, down the block. Assisting Murcia Henao, she said, made her realize that many Latinos here don’t know their rights. Among other work, she wants to host “know your rights” trainings at the restaurant.
“I think people in Buffalo have no clue in regards to how immigration works,” she said. “I want them to know: These are your rights, and this is how you can have successful goals.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated.
