Her husband’s application to legalize his immigration status is unfolding against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
ICE detains Alabama father of six and separates family
Antonio is expected to be taken into ICE custody on October 29, leaving behind his wife, Chelsea, and their children, who are American citizens.
america today
One in a series detailing how President Trump’s immigration policies are changing America.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – It was a Sunday like any other for Branty Barojas’ family. Breakfast croissants for 6 kids. Keurig coffee brewed in the kitchen. Video games in the living room. Soccer in the backyard.
But while her children were eating and playing, Chelsea Branty Barojas was frantically piling clothes and belongings to fill a 40-gallon container in her garage, preparing for the possibility that her husband, Antonio Barojas Solano, the family’s sole caregiver, would be detained by ICE and deported to Mexico within days.
She was having a hard time understanding it.
“He doesn’t meet the criteria that people say would warrant deportation in this mass deportation,” she said. “He’s not a criminal.”
But her husband’s application to legalize his immigration status is unfolding against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s sweeping efforts to deport millions of immigrants. And a chance encounter with ICE in August left Barrojas Solano in custody for six weeks, disrupting the legal process and leaving police fearing he might be taken into custody again.
It didn’t seem to matter that he was brought to the United States by his uncle when he was 14, a year older than his eldest son at the time. Or maybe he was left here.
Barojas Solano, now 33, has been working in landscaping and construction ever since. He and Branti Barojas, 37, married in 2022 and have a child, 2-year-old Colette, and have started a blended family. They were in the process of filing a green card application when investigators took him into custody.
An immigration judge released him on $5,000 bail, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appealed the release and ordered him to check in on Oct. 29 in Birmingham, two hours away.
Now, every ordinary day feels like a blessing accompanied by fear.
“We are trying to prepare mentally first and foremost,” he said in Spanish. “I still have hope and faith, but if the worst happens, we have to be strong.”
a chance encounter
On Aug. 6, Barojas Solano and his team left a construction site in Huntsville where they were hanging drywall. He needed to stop by before heading home.
Two cousins died in a tragic car accident overnight and he wanted to express his condolences and reach out to their families.
When he arrived, police were outside the house. He said he thought they were there to investigate the accident. However, ICE agents had come to the same address looking for a man with a criminal history. They arrested the man and began asking all the Hispanic men there for identification, Barrojas Solano said.
He told agents he has an American wife and lawyer and is applying for legal status. A USA TODAY review of court records found he had no previous interaction with law enforcement. They arrested him anyway.
He tried to call his wife before investigators took away his phone.
Branty Barojas saw a missed call. She tried him many times, but he was not accepted. Something is wrong, she thought. She located his phone and drove there.
“The kids got in the car and were like, ‘Where’s daddy? What happened?'” she said, wiping away tears. “I was calling my parents who were out. I was like, ‘They took Antonio. I don’t know where he is.’
A chance encounter with an ICE agent complicated Barojas Solano’s claim for legal status as the husband of an American woman. Branty Barojas said she spent months gathering evidence of the two’s intertwined finances. That they had a child. He was supporting his three boys, a 15-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son.
The couple reportedly met in 2020 after connecting through mutual friends on Facebook. Although we were both single parents at the time, we found that we shared the same family values.
Branty Barojas liked that she could take her children on weekends and pay child support. He had built a career in drywall construction. He didn’t smoke or drink. “Once you have kids, it’s hard to find a good man,” she says. “He was kind and ambitious.”
Barojas Solano believes in destiny and a higher power. “I thank God for putting her in my path,” he said. “In addition to being beautiful, she had a very good heart and emotions and was accepting of my children.”
Packing for the unknown
Branty Barojas packed her bags haphazardly that Sunday morning, expecting the worst. She knew little about Mexico and could not imagine life in the pueblo where her husband was born. So far, she’s collected clothes for her family, a vacuum cleaner, a space heater, a Keurig coffee maker and 80 K-cups in case they don’t sell.
She packed her things as if she really didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t imagine living without him.
I had a doctor’s appointment. Branty Barojas undergoes surgery every three months to remove a colorectal tumor that can turn cancerous if left untreated. Her eldest daughter, 15-year-old Camille, has a brain lesion that causes severe epilepsy and must be seen by a neurologist.
And the language barrier. She speaks Spanish with her husband, and her youngest child, Colette, is learning Spanish. But that’s not the case for Camille and 9-year-old James.
And home. Who would pay the mortgage on a four-bedroom house with a grassy backyard and thin white pillars out front?
Barojas Solano spent years sending money to his parents to build a two-bedroom concrete block house in the mountains of Veracruz on Mexico’s east coast, mostly because he could afford it, not because he dreamed of moving his family to Veracruz.
He hosed down the 40-gallon container and turned it upside down to dry on his front porch. Colette played on the lawn. Branty Barojas stood with one hand on her hip, looking at bags of toys and clothes in her garage.
A proud Southerner, Branty-Barrojas traces her family’s ancestry back to before the American Revolution and to families who fought on both sides of the Civil War.
“A lot of my family were patriots, so I never thought the government could come in here and take my husband away, because he came here when he was 14 years old,” she said. “That’s ridiculous.”
The impact of quiet policy changes
The Trump administration’s mass deportations are unfolding on several fronts, some more public than others.
There have also been high-profile workplace attacks, such as those at a Hyundai plant in Georgia and a legal marijuana farm in California. Videos of street arrests in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York have been published on TikTok, X, Instagram, and Facebook.
But behind the scenes, quiet policy changes are putting new pressure on the country’s already troubled immigration system.
On August 19, an immigration judge ordered Barojas Solano to be released on bond, according to court documents.
When ICE lawyers appealed his bail, one reason was that ICE is challenging the jurisdiction of immigration judges over immigrants who entered the country illegally.
A pivotal legal challenge sets a new precedent. In a case known as the Yajule Hurtado case, the Trump administration argued that immigration judges cannot grant bond to undocumented immigrants who are subject to detainment.
The Board of Immigration Appeals sided with the administration on September 5th.
In Barojas Solano’s case, the judge recommended that ICE use “alternatives to detention,” such as ankle monitors, at the agency’s discretion. But the Trump administration has cut back on lower-cost alternatives to detention, and Barrojas-Solano was released without one.
Branty Barojas’ parents drove more than six hours each way from Huntsville to Natchez, Mississippi, to pick him up at Adams Detention Center, the largest ICE detention center in the country.
He had lost weight and had bronchitis. He had a new blue bracelet on his wrist, a gift from a Nepalese detainee, with the name “Colette” woven into it using thread from a plastic bag from the cafeteria.
“We just want mercy.”
When her husband was taken into custody, Branty Barojas sent a letter to the Huntsville City Council asking for community support. Her elected officials did not respond.
“I heard how people talked about immigration here in the South and thought it would affect my relationship with my husband,” she said.
Colette bounced past with her curls hanging in a ponytail. She showed off her red polish by pointing her toes.
“I painted my nails!” she exclaimed.
“Who painted your nails?” her father asked her.
“Daddy did it!” she said proudly.
“We just want mercy,” Branty Barojas said, sitting next to her husband in the living room. “We just want to be together as a family and hope that he can continue his case in the right way, in a legal way, without him going to jail and being treated like a criminal.”
Barojas Solano intertwined his fingers with hers.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen right now,” he said. “The truth is, we are in their hands. They may give me a chance to stay, but they may not.”
Lauren Villagran covers immigration for USA TODAY. Contact him at lvillagran@usatoday.com.
