An 82-year-old Pennsylvania man has been found after his family was led to believe that he had died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Luis Leon was finally located thousands of miles away in Guatemala after he went to a Philadelphia immigration office to replace a lost green card, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and then disappeared, The Morning Call reported. Leon is a Chilean national who claimed political asylum in the United States in 1987 after he was tortured under Augusto Pinochet’s regime.
Leon’s wife, who had attended the appointment with him, said she was also kept in the building for 10 hours before being released to her granddaughter. The couple have four children.
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After almost a month—and repeated calls to immigration authorities, prison facilities, hospitals, and even the morgue—Leon’s family was told Friday that he was in a hospital in Guatemala, where his granddaughter Nataly is headed to be by his side.
“I can see all my family is in pain right now,” she told The Morning Call.
The ordeal was reportedly compounded earlier this month when an unknown caller allegedly contacted Leon’s wife to tell her that he had died in custody.
That same caller allegedly also called Leon’s wife at an earlier date, just days after he was detained, claiming to be an immigration attorney and promising to help get the Pennsylvania resident out on bail but without providing further details.
It is unclear how Leon’s true whereabouts were uncovered by the family, but the incident adds to a growing list of deportations gone awry as the Trump administration pushes forward with its mass deportation plan.
With immigration officials under increasing pressure from the White House to hit a quota of 3,000 deportations a day—a goal set by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller—critics have repeatedly warned that such quotas have resulted in ICE officials detaining immigrants with little or no criminal record.
Leon’s family maintains that he has never received so much as a parking fine in the U.S., with the latest statistics suggesting that as many as 72 percent of people currently in ICE detention centers across the country have no criminal offenses.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
This story has been updated to reflect that Leon was missing for one month.
