If there is one thing that Xavier Vargas wants people to know about his family, it is that they are not criminals and that they were following the rules for seeking asylum from the persecution that they feared in their home country of Venezuela.

“We’re not bad people. We’ve come here fully complying with everything the law requires, but because of the current immigration policies, well, all the doors have been closed to us, and well, we’re kind of tied up,” Vargas said.

He agreed to share his story virtually to raise awareness about the situation they now are facing since his wife was taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents while on her way to her job cleaning houses.

Vargas, his wife Sobeida and daughter Fabiana, now 8 years old and a third-grade student in the East Lycoming School District, began their journey to the United States on July 1, 2024. They traveled by land from Venezuela through Mexico, facing dangers from the drug cartels there in order to arrive at the border.

“We left the country because of the dictatorship that was in place then and still is, the Chavismo regime,” Vargas said.

The Chavista regime, or Chavismo, was established by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and continued by Nicolas Maduro after Chavez’s death in 2013. Vargas’ wife had worked in the office of a mayor who supported opposition to the Chavista regime.

While the family travelled toward the southern border of the U.S., they had applied for a CBP-1 application, from Customs and Border Patrol in order to seek asylum, which was a legal way to enter the country at that point.

“We filled out the form, and we received approval about two weeks after arriving in Mexico. Then we crossed the border and met with customs agents. They had us sign the papers and gave us our cutoff date, which was two years from that moment,” Vargas explained.

“When the customs agent had us sign the papers he said, ‘Welcome to the United States,'” he added.

They were told that the date they were given was good because it would expedite their asylum case. The Vargases then arrived in Pennsylvania. They obtained work permits and Vargas got a job with a meat packing company. He worked there for about nine months and then things changed. The new administration, taking office in January 2025, discontinued the CBP-1 program. Their work permits, at that point, were cancelled.

“That’s when the presidency had changed and things in the immigration world had changed,” said Brooke Walters, who directs the Hispanic Ministries program at the Friends Church in Hughesville and helped translate during the interview.

“At that point both his work permit and his wife’s permit were taken away so they were no longer legally able to work,” she added.

In order to support their family, Vargas started working with online platforms where you can do deliveries, from June to October. His wife began cleaning houses to earn money, along with her sister, who had also come to this country legally.

Then on Oct. 28, his wife was detained by ICE and sent to a prison at Cambria County in the western part of the state.

You may not be able to understand his words, but the emotion behind them is evident when he talks about his wife and the situation in which she has been placed.

“My wife has been detained for almost four months now. It has affected both me and my daughter a lot emotionally…She needs her mother; she needs the things Sobeida does for her. It has also affected me a lot physically, seeing her every day. We’re still waiting to see if she can be released,”

The only time Fabiana has spoken with her mom in that time is through video chats and phone calls.

The people of the church also praised Sobeida.

“She likes to help people…She’s already given to her community. She’s a part of this church before she was detained. She’s helped with VBS and she’s volunteered in the church and works with Feeding Friends, which is one of our food ministries here,” Walter said.

“So her and Xavier and even Fabiana have been really active here and just serving others,” she added.

For now, Vargas has obtained legal representation and has filed a habeas petition through the federal courts asking that Sobeida be released until their asylum case can be heard, Walters said.

“The lawyers have told us that the habeas corpus petition has already been filed, and we’re waiting for the federal judge to give an answer by February 28th,” Vargas said.

“Part of the habeas is that she and her sister are both being held without chance for bond, parole or anything else, in a prison with inmates who are there because they broke the law essentially, subject to all of the same conditions,” said Dan Cale, lead pastor at the Evangelical Friends Church, Hughesville.

“They’ve broken no laws whatsoever and they are not allowing for any bond or any hearing to be released. That’s part of the habeas is that it is an unconstitutional thing to do to someone to hold them without any chance of being released or even heard during that period of time,” he said.

Additionally, their original asylum case was denied by the ICE judge without hearing any of the evidence, Cale said.

“Her lawyer was there with her to present evidence, to present all of the facts on the case and essentially the judge says, we don’t want to hear any of that. We’re just going to deny it and deport her,” Cale said.

Walters noted that Sobeida was told that they weren’t deporting her back to Venezuela but to Ecuador.

“They’re deporting immigrants to countries that are not their countries,” Walters said.

“We are appealing that to a federal court where it actually has to go through a court that they have to actually obey the law on. So it goes to the federal court for the appeal,” Vargas said.

“During the appeal process, which could last six months to two years, we’re hoping that the habeas will get her out of prison to await that appeal,” Cale added.

Vargas said that it isn’t the immigration policies that he disagrees with, it’s the way they’re being enforced.

“He did everything legally…and wants to do everything legally, but they’ve essentially taken everything he did legally and they’ve said he’s done it illegally,” Cale said.

“He wants people to understand that he’s abided by all the laws and everything that he needs to do. He said, it’s unjust, it’s unfair that they’re being treated as such because they have work permits, they have driver’s licenses, they have jobs and they’ve done nothing wrong. They pay taxes. That’s one of the questions we get. Are they just freeloading off the government? No, not in any way, shape or form. They’re providing for their families,” Walters said.

Right now, the primary focus for Vargas is his eight-year-old daughter, Vargas said.

“This is the best place for my daughter. This is the best educational system for my daughter. Like this is the best country for my daughter,” Walters translated for Vargas.

“He said, when I went into the schools, it was wow, because they hadn’t seen anything like a school like they have here in Hughesville,” she said.

When Sobeida and her sister were taken, they had to move out of the place where they lived, selling much of what they owned.

“They were renting an apartment here in the community and they had to let that go,” Cale said.

“All the things that they had accumulated, all of it had to be sold because there’s no place to put it. There’s no place to store it. We don’t know if they’re going to be able to stay or not. So everything that they had accumulated, all the things that they had done to help the economy, we’ve had to essentially get rid of most of it for this. It’s just been an insane idea,” he added.

“One of the things that has frustrated me as a pastor and as a community member is that both of these families that we’re dealing with the most, their two sisters, both of them did everything legally to come here, and were continuing to do everything legally. So they were showing up at every one of their asylum hearings. They were all considered asylum cases, pending, non- detained. That was their status, and that was their status right up until the time that the two were going to work and the ICE decided to pick them up and put them in detention. So now you have two people who were working, paying taxes, and supporting the community. Who now we are paying tens of thousands of dollars to incarcerate who were going to every hearing,” he said.

“They had their address, they had their phone number, they had their location, they had their court appearances, they had everything, and they met every court appearance they were doing, but now we’re paying for four months, tens of thousands of dollars to incarcerate people who, if they had just left them where they were, would have continued to contribute to the community until their asylum case was heard. But instead, they imprisoned them, which is inhumane to me. It makes no sense. I understand people who’ve broken the law, people who are, you know, who are doing illegal things,” he continued.

“It makes absolutely no fiscal sense. It makes no human sense. It makes no compassion sense, and most of the people in this community have no idea it’s going on. It. They just assume that every family like this came here illegally, they jumped the border, they swam the Rio Grande, they did something. And that’s the assumption that people make. And so everybody deserves what they get is what people think. I’ve gone to other churches and sat down with deacons groups, and every one of them says we have no idea this was going on in our community,” Cale said.

As the situation drags on, Vargas admitted that he sometimes loses hope.

“There are times when my faith varies, there are times when I feel like I’m losing hope, there are times when I feel like the struggle is tough, distant, but I always turn to God and tell the Lord that in Him is the ultimate will, that His ways are better than mine, and that I believe that, just as He gave victory to David against Goliath, He can also give it to us, just as He gave it to Israel when they entered the Promised Land, He can also give it to us…trust in God and in those people who offer us their help little by little.,” he said.

For the Friends Church and their pastor, the fight for Sobeida’s and her sister’s release continues.

“You know, as far as I’m concerned, we’ll fight this to the very end. We’ll do the very best we can. And if they get deported, we’ll continue to work with them to get them back here again, legally, right? We’ll work through legal means again. If it takes us three or five years, we’ll do the same. We’ll do it, and we’ll work however long it takes to be able to get them back here,” he said.