Oct 22
2025
Migrant family flees after pursuit by ICE
- Share on
Anderson Contreras-Hernandez leaves Cheektowaga Town Court. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker.
After months of uncertainty — and detention for a father and son — a family of asylum seekers that briefly called Buffalo home has resettled in their native Venezuela.
The Contreras-Hernandez family spent just 18 months as U.S. residents before finding themselves caught in the maw of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. Over the summer, as arrests and detentions spiked across Western New York, both 20-year-old Anderson Contreras-Hernandez and his father ended up in ICE detention, facing the prospect of deportation.
His mother subsequently elected to self-deport with her other son so that the family would stay together.
Catharine Grainge, an attorney who represented Contreras-Hernandez, said the family followed every rule as they sought to resettle in the United States. Had it not been for the Trump administration, they might still be here, she said.
“I think lamentation, or lament, is how I’m feeling,” she said. “This is what we have right now, and it sucks, and it’s not working for anyone. And here’s this family that really got the brunt of it.”
In June, Investigative Post reported on Contreras-Hernandez being under guard by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents while receiving treatment for his sickle cell disease at Oishei Children’s Hospital. He had been handed over to federal immigration authorities by the Cheektowaga police, who accused him of shoplifting from the Walden Galleria Mall. A judge later moved to dismiss those charges.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomAround the same time, Contreras-Hernandez’s father, who had been working as a house painter, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The detentions convinced Contreras-Hernandez and his family that America was not a welcoming place, and they elected to return to their native Venezuela, even though they’d fled violence and an inadequate healthcare system.
“I decided to leave because I spent many days as a prisoner. My mom was suffering,” Contreras-Hernandez told Investigative Post in a July interview. “I made the decision to self-deport, to return to my country. There I’ll be in a better place. And for my mom, I don’t want her to suffer anymore.”
In a statement July 31, an ICE spokesperson said Contreras-Hernandez had been “medically cleared to travel and [had] agreed to a stipulated removal paid for and executed by the agency.”
Investigative Post kept tabs on Contreras-Hernandez and his family throughout the summer as they navigated ICE detention, immigration hearings and a journey back to Venezuela. The family reunited in Venezuela earlier this month.
“More and more we’re seeing people decide to self-deport,” said Grainge, who also works as director of advocacy at Jericho Road Community Health Center.
“The detention and the flying around the country, and maybe even the language used, is cruel enough to make people say, ‘Whatever it is I face at home, I would prefer that to this.’ ”
A long journey to the United States
In Venezuela, Contreras-Hernandez’s family owned a small business, according to his mother, and was extorted by a local gang. The gang threatened the family with violence if they didn’t pay a percentage of their revenues, she said. The police, in “cahoots” with the gang, were no use.
Plus, she said, both of her sons suffer from sickle cell disease and needed better medical care.
The family fled to Colombia, where they lived “for many years,” Contreras-Hernandez’s mother told Investigative Post, which agreed not to publish her name due to concerns for her safety.
Colombia, however, “did not offer stability,” she said. She struggled to find medical care for her sons. So the family got in line to enter the United States as asylum seekers.
In October 2023, they left Colombia and began a months-long journey through the Darien Gap to Panama, then to Mexico, camping outside along a railroad at one point. The boys had sickle cell flare-ups in Mexico, their mother said, and were hospitalized. Anderson’s leg, she said, “got swollen and he couldn’t walk.” His younger brother Andres “almost died.”
The boys recovered and by January the family was in Texas. They were permitted to enter on humanitarian grounds and traveled to New York City. The family slept in shelters and hotels for several months before boarding a bus to Buffalo, where another member of the family lived.
Contreras-Hernandez as a teenager.
The family rented a house and found jobs — dad as a painter, handyman and DoorDasher, mom as a hotel housekeeper, Anderson as a delivery driver for WalMart. They had normal, even boring lives, they said. Contreras-Hernandez professed a love for the Fast and Furious films and telenovelas. His mother described him as a homebody.
“He likes studying, he likes working in the house, he likes cooking and cleaning,” she said “He likes tattoos and being on his cell phone. He likes social media.”
When Trump took office in January, the family’s life in the U.S. began to fall apart.
Trump administration unravels plans
In April, Anderson’s father was arrested by immigration agents on his way to work.
“He ended up getting pulled over, not charged with any sort of crime or infraction, but taken into custody,” Grainge said.
Two months later, on June 6, Contreras-Hernandez was taken into custody by immigration authorities. He was accused of shoplifting from the Walden Galleria Mall and held by mall security until Cheektowaga police arrived and carted him to police headquarters.
According to an arrest report, police charged Contreras-Hernandez with a single count of petit larceny after a mall security guard alleged he had stolen $90 worth of Lacoste underwear from Macy’s. Police said Contreras-Hernandez paid for other items from Macy’s but had failed to pay for the undergarments.
Upon arriving at the mall, the report stated police were unsatisfied with Contreras-Hernandez’s identification — his work authorization card — and called U.S. Customs and Border Protection to “confirm” who he was. During that call, Officer John Lockwood wrote, CBP advised the police department that it would send an agent to take custody of Contreras-Hernandez.
In an interview, Contreras-Hernandez refuted the claim he didn’t have adequate identification for the officers.
“I had my drivers license, my work papers. My mom came and brought my immigration papers,” he said. “It didn’t matter. They didn’t accept anything — they still had me arrested anyway.”
Contreras-Hernandez in his room at Oishei Hospital.
CBP agents took Contreras-Hernandez to the border patrol station in the Town of Tonawanda, off Colvin Woods Parkway, where he was held in a makeshift detention facility with other migrants. There, he suffered a flare-up of his sickle cell disease. He was admitted to Oishei Children’s Hospital where he remained, under 24-7 guard, for more than a month. Grainge, his lawyer, later complained in court filing that the guard outside his hospital room prevented her from accessing her client, in violation of the law.
In an interview, Contreras-Hernandez told Investigative Post the guards also tried to prevent him from placing calls to his family. He said they tried to limit him to one call per day.
“Two officers attacked me — one pushed me and the other screamed at me — because I told them I was on the phone, and they said, ‘No you don’t have rights. You’re detained. Your rights are in Venezuela,’” he said.
One officer, he said, “grabbed me … pushed me and hit me against the wall. I told him, ‘You don’t have the right to be hitting me, you’re mistreating me.’ He grabbed me and he was going to pepper-spray me in the eyes.”
Contreras-Hernandez spent the next four months in detention — in the hospital and ICE detention facilities in Batavia and Texas. The Laken Riley Act — the newly-enacted law that mandates migrants accused of shoplifting and other crimes be held in detention — was to cause.
At a July hearing, Contreras-Hernandez pleaded not guilty to his shoplifting charges and Cheektowaga Town Justice David Stevens dismissed the charges on the condition he avoid legal trouble for six months. Any other defendant would have walked out of the wood-paneled courtroom free.
“If they had not passed Laken Riley, he most likely would have been released from Cheektowaga,” Grainge said.
But Contreras-Hernandez had arrived in handcuffs in the back of a Border Patrol vehicle. He left the same way, was escorted by two agents, one in a bulletproof vest and fatigues, the other in plainclothes with a badge around his neck.
By the fall, it was over. The family’s migration to the United States had failed.
America, Contreras-Hernandez said, had better medical treatment, better work opportunities and higher pay. He’s unsure if in Venezuela he’ll have access to the medicine he needs for his sickle cell disease. But, he said, leaving was better than detention.
“I am a bit pensive, I am a little afraid of what’s going to happen,” he said. “There might not be the medications and supplies to keep my medical condition stable.”
Check out our Nov. 5 event on ICE
