By Esteban Fernandez
Times West Virginian
FAIRMONT — Alex Penaloza entered his Daniel Aguilar’s life when Aguilar was six years old.
Since then, Penaloza has been a rock for his stepson. The family lives in Martinsburg.
“To him, that’s his dad,” Tammy Velazquez Penaloza, Aguilar’s mother, said. “He literally always tells us, nobody ever shows up to my football, my basketball games, but you and dad always show up. And he’s always the one cheering.”
Recently, Penaloza also bought Aguilar his first car. Aguilar has also joined Penaloza at his business, learning landscaping from his stepfather.
On Aug. 22, 2025, at 6:18 a.m, Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Aguilar’s dad away from him.
“I just pray he can come back home soon,” Aguilar said.
Penaloza is one of the thousands of undocumented immigrants without a criminal record who have been abducted in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration. Barely a week into 2026, ICE has escalated its tactics, creating tension with communities and spreading fear among both documented and undocumented immigrants.
In West Virginia, ICE targeted Mexican restaurants around the state, causing several to close out of fear their employees will be targeted next. In Minneapolis, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Renne Nicole Good in the face. The administration called Good a domestic terrorist despite video footage showing Good’s last word’s to Ross being, “that’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.”
The Department of Homeland Security published recruitment videos using music popularized among neo-Nazi groups for its use of lines frequently attributed to calls for race war.
Penaloza was on his way to work when ICE approached him. He made a habit of stopping at a gas station where he gets his food and drink every morning. Velazquez-Penaloza remembers rushing to the gas station after hearing what had happened. Her husband was apprehended much closer to their home than expected.
“I pulled out of my house, still in my development, cut the turn and they were sitting in my development,” she said. “When my headlights hit them, it was ICE.”
Penaloza sat in his truck with his window cracked open a bit. He held a valid driver’s license, which he handed to agents. Penaloza remembers agents running his ID, and one of the agents speaking to a superior over the radio saying, “he’s got no record.” Not wishing to make a scene, Penaloza turned himself over to ICE. They handcuffed him.
“My wife, she asked the other guy on the other side, like, what’s going on,” he said. “And he was like, ‘we don’t know.’”
ICE transported Penaloza to Moshannon Valley Processing Center, in Pennsylvania. Penaloza asked for his phone call, but was denied. An agent came and told Penaloza to sign some papers. Penaloza refused.
“He told me, ‘I don’t give a [expletive] if you sign there, you’re going back to Mexico,” Penaloza said. “You’re not going to see a judge.”
The agent accused Penaloza of making a second reentry to the country. Under immigration law, a first entry is dealt with as a misdemeanor. However, reentry after deportation a first time is treated as a felony offense. Regardless, Penaloza pointed out the agent was not an immigration judge. Penaloza remembers another employee who was present during his detention.
“He says, ‘man, I hate my job, but I’m just doing it because I need a job,’” Penaloza said. “And he let us make the phone call, but he was watching the door to see if the other guys didn’t come. He was pretty cool. He says, ‘I’m not an ICE agent, I’m a driver.’”
After he was transported to another holding facility, Penaloza remembered seeing up to 100 people in each cell block. Meanwhile, his wife worked on securing a lawyer. She found one, but before the attorney could get Penaloza in front of a judge on Monday morning, ICE deported him. The agency left him on the other side of the border wall, despite initially telling him and other deportees they would be transported to Mexico City on account of danger from the cartels.
“They literally kicked us out,” Penaloza said. “They say the cartels are bad in Mexico, they would have kidnapped us or something. So I feel like they didn’t care.”
Federal judges ruled against ICE in 1,600 cases, ordering the agency to release detainees who were yanked off the street without due process. Federal judges have been growing increasingly exasperated with the agency, which continues to ignore rulings and deport people under the administration’s expanded “mandatory detention” policy, which bypasses immigration courts and speeds deportation.
One judge even called the legal rejections so frequent that it’s like the Trump administration is trying to push a rock up a hill.
Paul Saluja, an immigration lawyer based in Charleston, said people detained by ICE can expect to be interviewed at a local ICE facility, before being transferred to the Moshannon Valley facility. Detainees can ask for a lawyer during the interview. Authorities then establish four elements. The detainee is not a citizen of the U.S., they are citizen of another country, they entered without inspection and entered at an unknown place and time. At that point, they are charged with entering without inspection and are put in removal proceedings.
Saluja said detainees who have been in the U.S. less than two years and 100 miles from the border are subject to expedited removal. The Trump administration has expanded that range to be nationwide. Under expedited removal, detainees do not have to go before a judge. If they have been here for longer than two years, they see a judge. Saluja said it’s up to detainees to prove they’ve been in the country for longer than two years. As far as a detainee who’s been here for more than two years not seeing a judge, he was unsure.
“That’s very unusual,” he said. “There must have been something else.”
Penaloza was able to contact his wife later that evening through FaceTime.
The entire ordeal has left the family shaken. Velazquez-Penaloza said aside from the immigration violation, her husband had done everything the right way. He had a Tax ID, his own business, and had second gainful employment. He paid taxes and had a legitimate driver’s license.
Returning Penaloza to the U.S. depends on the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service. If they grant approval, Penaloza would return to the U.S. If the answer is no, he would have to wait five to 10 years before trying again, she said. If that’s the case, the family would move to Mexico.
Velazaquez-Penaloza is looking to obtain the documents her children need to visit Penaloza during the summer. But she fears for them because of the color of their skin. The children are also traumatized.
“We have an eight year old who is autistic,” she said. “He was seven when this happened. He turned eight in November. He questions everything. He totally changed. He’s a totally different kid. He completely shut down, he used to go to my mom’s every single day and play with my niece. He doesn’t want to do that. He questions about his dad and why they did it. It’s hard.”
She said her husband was also the bread winner of the family. She now faces financial challenges as a result of his removal. Her older children, 16 and 18, are now helping the family make ends meet. Her son, Daniel, had plans to go to college on a football scholarship. He wanted to study immigration law. Now, those plans have been derailed, she said.
“My mental health is literally trashed, if I’m being honest,” Velazquez-Penaloza said. “My kids and him literally keep me going day in, day out. So I am just, I’m at a loss. That was my person, you know, same person that you wake up to every morning. Same person you go to bed with every night. And I am just at a complete loss without him.”
Velazquez-Penaloza said she knows other people who have had their spouses taken. She said those families don’t want to return to the U.S. As the country descends into nativism, she said others have told her there’s nothing for them here anymore.
“And I completely get it,” she said. “This is the country I was born in. I’m scared of my own country. Like, the government is literally running this country into the ground. It’s all about race.”
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