A woman fights to bring her husband home from ICE detention

Blanca Ortiz has been experiencing a cycle of grief, anxiety and anger since her husband was detained by federal immigration authorities five months ago.

That anger is always the hardest to shake off, and it took over again this summer after another fruitless meeting with an immigration attorney in Riverside. Otis said he, like nearly a dozen other attorneys, had said there was nothing he could do.

Ortiz, 45, of Adelanto, said her family has been working tirelessly to have her husband, Carlos Ortiz Jara, released from federal custody since he was detained on May 12 at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Pomona, where he had been fingerprinted to apply for a visa.

A surge in arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has overcrowded detention centers across the country, leaving tens of thousands of families facing complicated immigration situations. As of July, more than 65,000 immigrants were detained across the country, According to TRAC, Data collection and research organization.

The Ortiz family did not initially anticipate the trouble Ortiz-Jara would have in obtaining an immigrant visa, the first step toward eventual citizenship. Ortiz Jara, a 49-year-old Mexican citizen, married Blanca Ortiz in 1999. The couple has four U.S.-born children, their eldest son, Carlos Ortiz Jr., a Marine Corps sergeant.

But there are some complications. Ortiz Jara was detained and deported in 1998 when he first tried to cross the U.S. border to escape drug cartel violence, Ortiz said.

Undocumented immigrants who re-enter the United States after being deported typically must stay abroad for ten years before applying for a re-entry permit.

But the couple was determined. Ortiz said she spent about $40,000 of her savings hiring three different attorneys and having more than a dozen legal consultations in recent months. Despite this, her husband remains confined at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. As of July, an average of 1,686 immigrants were being detained at the center every day. According to TRAC.

“I’m not going to sit in the corner and cry for him when I have so much to do,” Ortiz said. “I need to figure out how to pay the mortgage, how to pay the bills, how to keep the store running. There’s so much to do.”

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder and president of the Immigration Defenders Legal Center, a nonprofit deportation defense law firm, said families often struggle to find detained loved ones, obtain qualified representation and figure out how to pay steep legal bills.

“Once someone is detained, there are a lot of ripple effects, and we’re definitely feeling that in Los Angeles,” Tozlowski said.

Life has undergone earth-shaking changes

Life for the Ortiz family has changed dramatically since the head of the family was detained.

After living in Riverside for decades, the family moved to the Mojave Desert town of Adelanto in 2022. Two years later, they became co-owners of Jurupa Valley Auto Body Shop, where Ortiz Jarrah worked for 20 years. She said the couple’s decades of work in the country had finally paid off.

Their eldest son, 26-year-old Ortiz Jr., is nearing the end of his enlistment and plans to start their next chapter by buying a home in Riverside for his wife and two young children. Instead, his young family scrambled to move into Ortiz’s Adelanto home in June to help pay off the mortgage.

“Initially it was to at least stop the bleeding a little bit,” Ortiz Jr. said. “I’m kind of at a standstill now. I can’t take action because if I take the wrong action it could be devastating.”

A day almost like any other

Ortiz Jara’s day in custody began like most others. He prepares the couple’s morning coffee while Otis coaxes him to finish the smoothie she made for him.

But instead of going straight to work, Otis Jarrah made an appointment to be fingerprinted at the Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Pomona to apply for a visa.

“Take a good look, because you won’t see me after this,” Ortiz Jara joked as he stood in the doorway of their Adelanto home.

It turns out this is no joke. When he arrived in Pomona, two ICE agents were waiting for Ortiz Jara in the parking lot. Around 8 a.m. that morning, Ortiz received a call saying her husband was in federal custody.

Immigrant rights advocates say federal authorities are increasingly targeting immigrants when they show up at courthouses, airports and courtrooms. Scheduled appointments Provided by Citizenship and Immigration Services. A representative for the agency declined to comment on the practice.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to The Times that Ortiz Jara was taken into custody on May 12 “during a law enforcement operation.”

“A pending application or work authorization does not confer legal status in the United States,” the spokesperson said.

The second time Otis saw her husband was outside the glass window of the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles. The man looking back at her was no longer the strong, cheerful husband she once knew. Ortiz Jara was devastated and had almost all hope lost, she said.

Her own life also changed.

“Everything suddenly changed,” Ortiz said. “It’s no longer eight to five. We’re trying to scramble to figure out how to get him out… It’s just devastating.”

legal obstacles

Ortiz was brought to the country when he was 9 months old and had no legal status. She met and married Ortiz Jara in 1999. They divorced about a decade later, and Ortiz married a U.S. citizen and obtained legal status.

Around 2014, the two rekindled their old relationship and remarried.

The couple thought Ortiz Jarrah’s path to legal status would be simple, given that he has a U.S. citizen child and wife, but most attorneys they consulted said his deportation years ago created nearly insurmountable obstacles.

Otis said the exception was an attorney at Lisinski Law Firm, who told the couple in September 2025 that Otis Jarrah’s deportation could be expunged from his record if he filed for a visa under the Violence Against Women Act.

The VAWA category provides a legal avenue to obtain an immigrant visa for undocumented immigrants who have been physically or psychologically abused by a citizen spouse, child, or parent. According to Citizenship and Immigration Services, visa applications under VAWA surged 360% from 2020 to 2024, with many of those applications found to be fraudulent.

Ortiz said her husband pursued this avenue, signing a petition a year ago claiming he suffered psychological distress during the couple’s separation. Documents reviewed by The Times show Ortiz Jara paid the law firm $9,000.

The application had been filed and Ortiz Jara was completing a fingerprinting appointment for the application when he was taken into custody in May. Ortiz said she called the Lisinski Law Firm for help navigating the eviction process, but the firm refused. The law firm subsequently terminated the contract in July, according to a document seen by The Times.

A spokesman for Lisinski Law Firm said the firm could not discuss the details of Otis Hara’s case, saying it would violate attorney-client privilege. The spokesman noted that Lisinski’s firm does not typically handle deportation proceedings and instead focuses on visa applications.

The spokesperson said the firm terminates contracts for a variety of reasons, including “changes in client circumstances, breakdowns in communication, client decisions, and/or termination of contractually required legal services,” and that there is “nothing inherently suspicious or wrong” about the termination.

With no one to turn to and Ortiz Jarrah’s first court date approaching quickly, Ortiz hired attorney Kenneth Byrd of the Los Angeles Immigration Assistance Center and said she paid him $5,000. Ortiz said Byrd was late and unprepared for Ortiz-Jara’s June 5 court date, which Byrd disputed.

“We answer calls all day long and usually return customer calls the same day. We always try to return customer calls when we can,” Byrd said.

Ortiz said her husband was denied release during his initial court hearing and given 30 days to appeal.

It followed about a dozen more consultations with attorneys across Southern California before the family hired Los Angeles attorney Andy Miri in mid-June. Miri said he filed a habeas corpus petition, a legal action that challenges the legality of detaining someone, on June 19, but he declined to be interviewed about the case. The petition is still awaiting review.

The attorney shortage, coupled with the complexity of immigration law, also drives up the price of legal representation, said Tozlowski of the Immigration Defenders Legal Center.

“Case moves faster while in custody. It’s hard to contact your client. It’s hard to visit your client,” Tozlowski said. “Part of the design of their facilities is to ensure that people are isolated from their attorneys and … their families.”

As the months have passed since her husband’s arrest, Ortiz has struggled to maintain a sense of normalcy in the family.

Yuridia Ortiz, the youngest child at 10, started the new softball season with her father noticeably absent from the stands. Without Otis Hara at the helm, she said, the body shop has fallen behind. Over the past five months, he’s missed nearly all of his family’s birthday celebrations, including his own.

Carlos Ortiz Jr. has been working as a Marine Corps recruiter in recent months. He spoke with young children from low-income neighborhoods in the Central Valley, some of whom had undocumented parents. He has been trying to play the role since his father’s arrest.

“There’s something ironic about selling a product that you no longer really believe in,” Carlos Ortiz said. “It’s like a feeling of betrayal, you know, what happened to my dad… like what’s the point of all this?”