A disabled child’s mom reported him missing. He was in federal custody for 48 days.

This article was published in partnership with The Barbed Wire.

Maria Garcia couldn’t bear to attend the nightly meals near Triangle Lake, where for several weeks, the smell of pinto beans, turkey necks, and other soul food staples filled the air outside a federal children’s detention facility in southeast Houston. 

The Southern home-cooked meals had become a supportive ritual, one that Garcia appreciated but was too difficult for her to take part in. Garcia’s son, who has an intellectual disability, remained locked inside for 48 days. Other mothers of children with neurological and development disorders stepped in. 

“We need to be there every night. Because while the world scrolls and moves on, there’s still a baby waking up in a place that isn’t his home,” Cathi Rae, a member of Autism Moms of Houston, wrote in an October blog post. “A baby who can’t make sense of where his mom went or why she hasn’t come to get him.”

On October 18, Rae started the nightly dinners from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the park bench across the street from the facility. She and other mothers knew that though he couldn’t see them, it was a way to show 15-year-old Emmanuel Alexander Gonzalez Garcia that he was not alone. 

“As a mother of a child with autism, that thought breaks me,” Rae wrote. “My son, Noah, is 8, but developmentally he’s closer to 5. If he were in Emmanuel’s shoes, he would think he did something wrong. He’d believe I sent him away. Every time he called and I didn’t come, he’d lose a little more trust in the world.” 

Some nights she was joined by several other mothers and their children, but as time passed and Emmanuel remained in custody, Rae said she was often alone. In those moments of quiet, she couldn’t help but think of Emmanuel and his mom. 

In early October, Emmanuel walked away from his mom’s fruit stand to find a bathroom. Garcia looked for him all over the city, and after several hours of coming up empty handed, she filed a missing person’s report with the Houston Police Department. 

The boy was found by Houston firefighters nearly 24 hours later. But instead of reuniting him with his mom, the police department turned him over to immigration authorities, and Emmanuel ended up in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where he remained for 48 days, despite his mother’s pleas for him to be released into her care. 

Immigration-related arrests and detentions have surged under the Trump administration, particularly in Texas. According to analysis by the Texas Tribune, daily arrests have risen roughly 30 percentage points in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regions including Houston, and the Harris County Jail leads the country in ICE detainers — requests from immigration agents to hold a person for deportation. The Houston Chronicle found police calls to ICE have surged 1,000 percent. 

The vast majority — more than 70 percent — of those arrested haven’t committed any crime. And, in an increasing number of cases, calls for help to the Houston Police Department have resulted in the caller or a family member winding up in federal detention. In one case, a woman from El Salvador called Houston police to report an abusive ex-husband — instead officers called ICE on her.

Emmanuel’s story enraged many Houston residents as community members grappled with the cruelty of keeping a disabled child locked away from his mother.

In the 48 days since he left her side, Garcia was only allowed to see Emmanuel three times. Once when he needed emergency surgery. The second time was during a scheduled visit facilitated by her legal team and U.S. Rep. Al Green. In that case, Garcia and her son got to hug each other and share a meal. 

“Se querría ir a casa y pregunto si se podía ir conmigo,” Garcia said tearfully during a press conference at Green’s office. “He wanted to go home and asked if he could come with me.”

Garcia said she was able to see her son for a third time last week. 

“Estoy devastada, porque yo sé que esto es alegría para él, le encantan los regalos, y él sabe que estos días pues son son días alegres y incluso yo el lunes pedí un permiso para ver si él podía pasar conmigo el Thanksgiving pero me dijeron que no iba a ser posible,” Garcia told The Barbed Wire during an emotional phone call a week before the holiday. “I’m devastated because I know that this [season] is happiness for him, he loves presents and he knows these days are supposed to be joyful. On Monday I asked for permission to see if he could spend Thanksgiving with me but they told me it wouldn’t be possible.”

Garcia said she asked if she could at least visit Emmanuel on Thanksgiving, which would have marked 54 days in custody. But the answer was the same. 

“Ese día es el cumpleaños de su hermanita y yo quería ver si podía pasar con él aunque sean unas horitas pero no me lo permitieron — no me lo permitieron,” Garcia said. 

“That day is also his little sister’s birthday and I wanted to see if it would be possible to spend even just a few short hours with him, but they didn’t allow me to — they didn’t allow me to.”  

‘Why did they instead decide to call ICE?’

Garcia stood on the corner of Hempstead and Clay Road in northwest Houston on October 4. The sun was high in the sky. Temperatures were in the 80s, mild for Texas, but warm enough to entice people driving by the Spring Branch neighborhood to stop for a refreshing mango cup drizzled with tangy chamoy. 

“Estábamos con mis niños porque yo siempre los camino conmigo, yo no los dejo con nadie pues ellos son mi prioridad,” Garcia told The Barbed Wire in Spanish. “We were with my children because I always have them with me. I never leave them with anyone because they’re my priority.” 

Garcia relies on her fruit sales to feed herself and her two children. In 2021, they came to Texas from Nicaragua in hopes of better opportunities and medical care. Her 13-year-old daughter, Angela, has a condition that is causing her to go blind. Emmanuel has significant learning disabilities, a speech impediment, and is hard of hearing. He is in special education classes at Spring Branch ISD.

Garcia explained that she believes her son is autistic, but he has not received a diagnosis from a doctor because it requires money they do not have. Researchers say it’s also common for an autism diagnosis to get delayed, especially in Hispanic and Latinx families due to limited English proficiency, cultural barriers and low-income status. 

“Cuando él se siente frustrado porque tal vez tiene mucho estrés acumulado o la escuela hay algo que él no entiende, él se me ha hecho popó, se me ha hecho pipí, es algo como de que no no puede contener,” Garcia told The Barbed Wire. “When he feels frustrated because maybe he has accumulated stress or there’s something at school he’s not understanding, he has pooped, he has peed, it’s something that he can’t contain.”

Garcia provided 90 pages of school records that were independently reviewed by The Barbed Wire and detailed the boy’s qualifications for an Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, and show that he received services from a deaf education teacher, an audiologist and a special education teacher. 

Evaluations dating back to 6th grade show the lowest possible scores in English language proficiency for listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Records indicated that he is enrolled in the district’s life skills program, and an evaluation signed by a nine-person committee from last school year shows “he has a limited vocabulary in both languages and experiences difficulty expressing his wants and needs.”

“Mucha gente no lo comprende, no lo entiende, dicen pero si ya está grande cómo le va a pasar eso pero son cosas que por su misma discapacidad es pues él no lo comprende verdad,” Garcia said. “A lot of people don’t comprehend it, they don’t understand, they say, ‘If he’s older, how is that going to happen to him?’ But they’re things that due to his disability he doesn’t understand.” 

Emmanuel’s challenges in language comprehension and vocalizing his needs are why Garcia believes her son walked away from her.

“Él me dijo ‘mami, quiero ir al baño.’ Entonces yo le dije ‘espérame un momento amor, ya te voy a llevar.’ Le dije ¿oíste? Entonces dijo ‘sí,’” Garcia said. “He told me, ‘Mami, I want to go to the bathroom,’ so I told him, ‘Wait one moment, love, I’ll take you.’ I asked him, ‘You hear me?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’” 

As Emmanuel waited for his mom to take him to the bathroom, a customer drove up. They wanted mangos, so Emmanuel had to wait for her to prepare the fruit snack. 

But by the time she turned around to take her son to the bathroom, her daughter told her in Spanish, “Mami, no está el niño.” 

“Mom, the boy isn’t here.” 

Garcia began searching frantically for her son. 

“Empecé yo a buscarlo a buscarlo a buscarlo y a buscarlo. No lo encontré, anduve por todo el área buscándolo gritándole, ‘Emmanuel, Emanuel’ y no lo encontré,” Garcia recalled. “I started to search and search and search and search. I did not find him. I went around the whole area looking for him and screaming, ‘Emmanuel, Emmanuel!’ And I didn’t find him.”

Garcia filed a missing persons report with the Houston Police Department. She got a case number and continued her search while police told her they would do their own. Desperate, she turned to her community. FIEL Houston, an immigration rights group, held a press conference on October 10, six days after Emmanuel went missing, to help get the word out. 

The day of the press conference, Garcia got a call from Houston police. Officers called to let her know they found her son on October 5, the day after she reported him missing. She wanted to know where to pick him up, but police told her she wouldn’t be able to. He was in federal custody with the ORR and considered an “unaccompanied minor.” 

Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz later said at a city council meeting that firefighters found Emmanuel, and afterwards, police officers tried finding his legal guardians. But because Emmanuel told officers his name was “Manuel,” they didn’t connect him to the missing person’s case. The chief said officers then called CPS, which then “referred” Houston police to the ORR.

The ORR is a federal department that was rebuilt under the Biden administration after Donald Trump’s first presidency. Under President Joe Biden, it was set up as a humane way to intake refugees and oversee children who entered the country alone, without proper documentation. Almost immediately after Trump took office, ICE officials were brought in to lead the office. 

“In terms of the ORR process, or the unaccompanied minor process, we have gone through it with other families, but we hadn’t seen a case where a child gets picked up, and instead of being returned to mom, he gets sent to ORR,” Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL Houston, told The Barbed Wire. 

Garcia and her two children lack permanent legal status, which complicated Emmanuel’s case. The family secured two legal teams: one to help reunite Emmanuel with his mother, and another to ensure Garcia gets the proper documentation to stay in Houston. 

Sandra Gomez, the attorney handling Emmanuel’s federal custody case, said the case has been unique because it’s legally clear that Garcia is Emmanuel’s biological mother — and that her son is not an unaccompanied minor. They planned to file a petition to reunite the two, but the government shutdown caused delays. 

While with ORR, Emmanuel developed appendicitis and was rushed to Texas Children’s Hospital for surgery. Garcia was allowed to stay with him during some portions of his recovery, but he was quickly taken back to the ORR facility after his mother left the hospital to speak at a Houston City Council meeting. 

Then, on October 14, Espinosa and Garcia went to the city council meeting to plead for help with Emmanuel’s case, and to better understand how the Houston Police Department was working with ICE.

“Instead of looking for the missing persons report, instead of trying to find his mom, because Emmanuel is not an unaccompanied youth, his mom is right here, your office, your department, your police department, Mayor Whitmire, decided to call ICE instead of just making the call to the missing person’s report,” Espinosa said at the meeting.

The following day, Houston Mayor John Whitmire brought in Diaz, the police chief, to give the department’s side of the story. Diaz made a point that Garcia called police five hours after Emmanuel went missing. “So you can gauge the hours when she decided to call us,” he told council members. 

The chief went on to tell council members that “although the mother stated in this incident that Emmanuel was autistic, detectives reviewed the prior incidents and identified Emmanuel as not being autistic with any medical or cognitive issues.” He went on to say that Emmanuel told officers his name was Manuel, and thus his department did not make the connection that he was the subject of Garcia’s missing persons report.

As the council took a recess to view camera footage Diaz brought for council members, Espinosa interrupted, “Why do you lie? Why do you lie? Chief, we’ve been trying to meet with you, you have yet to be with us. Why do you lie?” 

Officers escorted Espinosa out of the council chambers.   

The Barbed Wire called the Houston Police Department and were told by an employee in the communications department that they weren’t familiar with Emmanuel’s case, then said any public information about it was given by the police chief at the October 15 city council meeting. The Barbed Wire also emailed a list of questions to the department and to the mayor’s office and did not receive a response. 

There’s a reasonable fear that the media attention surrounding Emmanuel’s case could result in ICE detaining his mother, her attorneys have said. 

“We’re in contact with the authorities, and we’re diligently working to ensure that the parent and child are reunited as is proper, and to ensure that no federal authorities take advantage of this situation to turn it into an enforcement action,” Ross Miller, an attorney part of Garcia’s legal team handling the immigration status of the family, said during a press conference at FIEL on October 28. 

Still, questions remained, and community members were outraged that Houston police called federal officers instead of reuniting the teen with his mother.  

Whitmire has equivocated on the city’s cooperation with ICE, initially rebuffing allegations that the police department called immigration services, only to reverse course at an event earlier in November, saying, “I’m not going to say that we’re not cooperating with ICE, because that’s frankly not true.” 

A few days later, at another city council meeting, Whitmire again defended the Houston Police Department, claiming they only call the agency when they have a warrant for an arrest. 

“Don’t politicize this,” Whitmire said. “We enforce state and city laws, not immigration, not ICE.” 

The responses did little to settle community uproar, particularly over Emmanuel’s case.  

“Instead of doing their due diligence and connecting the dots that this was the missing kid that we were looking for, why did they instead decide to call ICE?” Espinosa asked in a call with The Barbed Wire. 

‘He doesn’t understand; he’s a kid’

“Our main concern is this poor autistic boy, this poor baby who has the mental capacity of a four year old, being held,” Cathi Rae, the member of Autism Moms of Houston, told The Barbed Wire earlier this month. “As far as immigration and what her legal status is, or any of those things, that is not our main concern.”

Rae heard about Emmanuel’s case through a family member who was at a Houston City Council meeting for a separate issue on October 14 and 15, the same hearing where Diaz was accused of lying to the public about Emmanuel’s intellectual abilities. 

“He doesn’t understand; he’s a kid,” Rae continued. “I don’t care how old, how many years it says that he is, he is essentially just barely above a toddler.”

During the city council meeting, Diaz questioned whether Emmanuel was autistic or not. But school records indicate there’s no question the young teen shows signs of a disability. That’s why Rae and the other mothers in Autism Moms of Houston began holding nightly dinners with Emmanuel at the park bench across the street. 

“The city could have a little bit of compassion and move him into a facility that is going to take care of him properly so the mother and the son can, at the very least, be together while they sort out whatever is going,” Rae added, noting that it was clear the Garcia family had been caught in the crossfire of escalating tensions “on a political scale that has nothing to do with either one of these two individuals.” 

Despite all of this, Garcia refused to give up.

“Me siento triste, porque ya es un mes que no tengo a mi niño conmigo… tengo fe de que mi niño va a regresar pronto…. Este mes ha sido durísimo para mi, pero sigo en espera….,” Garcia said in an Instagram video posted to FIEL’s account. “I feel sad because it’s been a month that I don’t have my boy with me … I have faith that my boy will return to me quickly … this month has been incredibly hard, but I’m holding onto hope.” 

During the visit organized by Rep. Green, Emmanuel requested flautas filled with beef and a donut, so his mom obliged. She brought him the home-cooked meal that she was allowed by government officials at ORR. She said during an October 29 press conference at Green’s office that her son was biting his nails and fingers, a sign she recognized to mean that he was desperate and overwhelmed. 

Garcia’s legal team told The Barbed Wire that ORR had begun protocols to release the boy back to his mother in October, meaning federal authorities had to make sure Garcia was able to take care of her son, including a background check, a physical and mental health check, updated vaccines, and verifying that he has a home and school to return to. 

Still, attorneys said they had no answers for the 48-day-long delay. 

“Asi como me paso a mi, le puede pasar a muchas madres, a muchas personas, a muchos ciudadanos, no nos quedemos callados, protejámonos unos a otros,” Garcia said, fighting back tears during the same press conference. “Just like it’s happened to me, it can happen to many mothers, many people, many citizens, we can’t stay quiet, we must protect each other.” 

As Garcia’s visit in early November came to a close, she said Emmanuel had another request: to bring him gallo pinto  — a traditional Nicaraguan rice and bean dish — with chopped green plantains and fried cheese.

And he asked her if she would come back soon. 

Not knowing for sure, she said she told him, “Creo qu si.” “I think so, yes.” 

‘They failed my son’

After 48 days, three in-depth pieces from the editorial board of The Houston Chronicle, repeated requests for comment from other outlets — including The Barbed Wire — grueling legal work by multiple attorneys and the advocacy organization FIEL, contentious city council meetings, tearful press conferences and intercessions from politicians like Rep. Green, Garcia’s son was finally released.

Mother and son were reunited around 7:30 p.m. on Friday.

“Emmanuel should have never been detained, but now that he is we are elated that he shall be returned to his biological mother, where he belongs,” said Espinosa, FIEL’s executive director, in a statement. “We thank all the people who have shown an outpour of support, and we continue to support this family in navigating our very complex immigration system.”

Maria walked out of the holding facility with her young son, hands interlocked tightly. A slew of TV news cameras captured the moment. He wore a navy blue polo shirt and a bright red rosary around his neck. 

“Aqui les presento a Emmanuel Gonzalez,” Garcia said proudly, tears in her eyes. “Here I present to you Emmanuel Gonzalez.” 

Reporters asked the teen several questions, but he mostly shook his head yes or no. He was quiet except to say in Spanish that he was ready to go home and rest — and that this reunification was unexpected. Reports from the nonprofit National Center for Youth Law released in September indicate that each additional day in ORR custody “compounds the risk of psychological harm” for all minors. 

To other moms, Garcia said: “No tengamos miedo, hablemos, luchemos por nuestros hijos, no nos quedemos callados en ninguna situación que sea, busquemos ayuda.” 

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. 

“We need to fight for our children,” she continued. “Don’t stay quiet no matter what the situation. Ask for help.” 

And before the cameras turned off, Garcia had a message for Houston’s city leaders. 

“Delante de todo el mundo, quisieron hacer creer que yo era una mala madre. Me fallaron a mi familia, me fallaron a mi hijo, me fallaron a mí, nos están fallando a todos,” Garcia said. 

“In front of the entire world, they tried to make others believe I was a bad mother,” she said. “They failed my family, they failed my son, they failed me, and they’re failing all of us.”