JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Carlos Martinez’s nephew, Edson, was getting settled in less than two months after fleeing Mexico City with his younger sister to seek asylum in the U.S. with Martinez and his wife as sponsors.

That was in late January. Then Edson, who is in the country legally under a humanitarian parole program, was detained at a Jan. 28 routine check-in at Knoxville’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office and shipped to a Louisiana detention center. He’s still there three months later, but now slated for deportation, something that could come any day.

The 19-year-old has now spent more time behind bars, hundreds of miles from the Tri-Cities, than he did in his new temporary home. Not charged with a crime and seeming to have followed the “humanitarian parole” rules to a T, Edson now faces an uncertain future.

“It’s sad that he has to go back, but at the same time, you know, he’s 19, he hasn’t committed a crime, he hasn’t done nothing,” Martinez told News Channel 11. “So it’s also hard for him to be there.”

“There” is Richwood Detention Center in Monroe, La. It’s a far cry from the life Edson was beginning after arriving in the Tri-Cities in early December.

“He was just there with love,” Martinez said. “I have two other, smaller children — playing with them, you know, wrestling, things like that.”

The family’s also home to a 15-year-old boy — another relative the Martinez’s have taken under their wing. “They bonded together,” Martinez said. “He became part of the family.”

The good times came to a quick halt the day Edson was taken out the back of the Knoxville center and Martinez made the long drive home without him.

As reported in an earlier News Channel 11 story, the Martinezes soon learned they faced long odds in any effort to get Edson back to the Tri-Cities. President Donald Trump had revoked the humanitarian parole program through which Edson and his sister had entered the U.S. in November.

Despite already being in the country and on track for an asylum hearing, and with no reasons given, Edson left the ICE building that January day not with his uncle, but in ICE custody. After two hours waiting outside, Martinez had asked an ICE agent who walked out about his nephew and been told, “yeah, he’s not coming out.”

Martinez and his wife have learned very little from occasional phone calls with their nephew, who Martinez described as frightened at his new surroundings. Attempts to get information through calls to ICE have yielded nothing.

“The hold can be from anywhere from 30 minutes to two and a half, three hours and, you know, they don’t give you answers,” Martinez said.

McKenna Cox, a local immigration attorney who has worked with the family in the past and on Edson and his sister’s case, said Edson’s experience doesn’t square up with standard due process that’s traditionally been granted to anyone in the U.S., citizen or not.

“It’s been all over the news, but it’s accurate that there is much less due process, if any, being offered to immigrants once they’re picked up by ICE,” Cox said.

Now, after three months of scrambling, the only bright spots for the family are that their 15-year-old niece seems to have a good chance of remaining with the Martinezes — and that Edson is headed to a different, safer part of Mexico than the one he left.

“It’s a little town,” Martinez said of Edson’s destination. “We found some family members up there and we talked to them and they’re willing to take care of him of course. But you know, hopefully the gangs don’t spread to there.”

‘Credible fear’ doesn’t prevent ‘expedited removal’

Edson’s path from a poor, gang-riddled part of Mexico City to the seeming safety of the Tri-Cities, then to a prison and presumably back to Mexico can be traced mostly to executive authority — in this case, that of the U.S. president.

Cox said presidents have broad discretion over immigration programs. President Trump had the right to reverse many immigration policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden, and he has the right to order, or at least authorize, removal of many people who’ve arrived under such programs.

According to Martinez, Edson and his sister were living with their elderly grandmother in a Mexico City barrio when gang members gave the then 18-year-old an ultimatum: work for them selling drugs “or your sister will pay for it.”

Their mother had died years earlier. Their father was out of the picture. After Edson learned the Martinezes would be willing to sponsor them under a Biden-era humanitarian parole program, the siblings trekked to the border. At that point, Cox said, a Department of Homeland Security officer would have conducted what’s known as a “credible fear interview,” asking why the two were there.

“Are they afraid to return home, and if so, determine if in their discretion it is a valid reason, do a background check to make sure the person’s not gang-affiliated, they don’t have a huge criminal record, they’re not a known terrorist, that kind of thing,” Cox said. “If they pass all of that, they are permitted to enter.”

They did, and when Edson arrived, his family, along with Cox, expected one thing.

“He would have retained me or someone to file an asylum application, or you can do it yourself,” she said.

As the family dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s, Edson went to the Jan. 28 appointment and never returned to the Tri-Cities. The best Cox and the family can figure out, he was there for more than two months before having a hearing before a judge, where he was told there was an order for “expedited removal.”

Cox said the status is usually reserved for people who have missed an immigration hearing or committed a crime. Edson fit neither category, but with no lawyer, hundreds of miles away from anyone he knew, he stood alone and learned he had to leave the country.

With no communication from the government, Cox said she’s in the dark.

“I’m not sure how or why there would have been an order for expedited removal for this particular young man since he had never been convicted or even charged with a crime,” Cox said. “He was in the country lawfully under a program, hadn’t missed any appointments, had done everything he was asked to do.”

In the end it was the Martinezes who were asked to do something: deposit enough money for Edson’s plane trip to Mexico.

“It is concerning that we’re talking about expedited removal for individuals who haven’t had their due process yet, who would otherwise be eligible for a due process procedure and presenting a defense,” Cox said.

For his part, Carlos Martinez said the family was eager to do whatever it took to get Edson, who had studied to be a mechanic in high school, out of detention. Edson called in mid-April to say he was approved for return to Mexico.

“He first thought he was going to start all over here,” Martinez said. “That didn’t happen, but it’s okay. I’m convinced that he will make it.”

Family hopeful niece can stay

Edson’s sister has struggled emotionally since his detention, but her prospects for remaining here appear better than his.

As a juvenile, she’s protected by a federal law, not subject to executive orders, if she receives what’s called a “special immigrant juvenile classification.” The family has successfully gotten legal custody at this point — a first step toward the status.

“That enables them to stay here, to go to school, to be able to study and be placed in a safe environment because there’s nowhere for them to go at home,” Cox said of the juvenile status.

Cox said both siblings had a bona fide case of fear and no one to protect them.

“I think this was a bona fide case of a child, and two children, really, who were scared and who had no one who could protect them or care for them at home,” Cox said. “And so they needed to come be with family who could do that for them, and that family just happened to be instead of elsewhere in Mexico, in the United States.”

At least at this point, she thinks the niece has a good chance of staying.

“I certainly hope that for this young person who hasn’t done anything wrong and is here just trying to stay safe and to be with adults who want to take care of her and can take care of her, that she’s able to continue to do so,” Cox said.

Edson’s situation has taken an emotional toll on the entire family. The day he returned without Edson, “everybody was crying at home.”

Meanwhile, Edson continues to wait.

“He’s a kid and it’s hard,” Martinez said. “He’s called us crying. My wife’s usually the one he talks to and she said he’s a lot calmer now that he is getting out, but she said he’s nervous about going back.”

The family has learned that Wednesdays are departure days from Richwood. They didn’t hear from Edson last Wednesday night, April 23, and spent the next five days in limbo thinking he might be headed to yet another home.

Instead, he called his aunt Tuesday and said he’d been so down about not being sent to the airport on April 23 that he hadn’t felt like calling. Martinez said the tight-knit, devout Catholic family is just continuing to pray for the best.

“We were going to church with him, and his sister still goes with us every Sunday. We try to be with God and trust in God.”

Cox said she’s hearing similar stories to the one that has split this family as deportations rise. That leaves her hopeful but not certain about the family’s niece.

“We have reason to believe, based on some communications with ICE, that they are not interested in coming for her at this point in time,” Cox said. However, that’s all subject to change. None of that is binding.

“Right now, even though the priorities for deportation of this current administration do not include people who have immigration applications pending, I personally know and I have spoken with many others who personally know folks who have been picked up who do have applications pending. So it’s not a guarantee.”

Cox has been doing immigration law since 2009 and said the immigration approach of the first 100 days of President Trump’s second administration is different from his first.

“It’s a broad net and we’re going to catch a lot of people in it,” she said. “Often people who don’t need to be deported.”