Blanca Ortiz has cycled through bouts of sadness, anxiety and anger ever since her husband was detained by federal immigration agents five months ago.
The anger was always the hardest to shake, and it took hold again after yet another fruitless meeting with an immigration lawyer in Riverside this summer. Like nearly a dozen other attorneys, Ortiz said, he had said there was nothing he could do for her.
The Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Ortiz, 45, of Adelanto, said her family has worked relentlessly to release her husband, Carlos Ortiz Jara, from federal detention since he was taken into custody May 12 at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Pomona, where he had gone to be fingerprinted for his visa application.
The explosion of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has crowded detention centers nationwide, leaving tens of thousands of families to navigate a complex immigration landscape. More than 65,000 immigrants were detained nationwide as of July, according to TRAC, a data gathering and research organization.
The Ortiz family didn’t initially anticipate trouble in getting an immigrant visa for Ortiz Jara, a first step toward eventual citizenship. Ortiz Jara, a 49-year-old Mexican national, married Blanca Ortiz in 1999. The couple have four U.S.-born children together, and their eldest son, Carlos Ortiz Jr., is a sergeant in the Marine Corps.
But there were complications. Ortiz Jara had been detained and deported when he first tried to cross the U.S. border in 1998 in an effort to escape drug cartel violence, Ortiz said.
Undocumented immigrants who reenter the U.S. after being deported must typically spend a decade outside the country before they can apply for permission to reenter.
But the couple was determined. Ortiz said she has spent roughly $40,000 of her savings in recent months hiring three different lawyers and on a dozen legal consultations. Despite that, her husband remains confined at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. An average of 1,686 immigrants were detained at the center daily as of July, according to TRAC.
Alondra Ortiz, 20, left, and Yuridia Ortiz, 10. Their father, the family’s breadwinner, has been in federal custody since May.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“I’m not gonna sit in a 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 shop running. There’s too much going on.”
Families often struggle to find their detained loved one, secure qualified representation and figure out how to pay the hefty legal fees, said Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder and president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a nonprofit deportation defense law firm.
“There are so many ripple effects once somebody is detained, and we’re really feeling it in L.A.,” Toczylowski said.
Lives turned upside down
The Ortiz family’s life has been flipped upside down since the head of the household was detained.
After living in Riverside for decades, the family moved to the Mojave Desert town of Adelanto in 2022. Two years later, they assumed co-ownership of the auto mechanic shop in Jurupa Valley that Ortiz Jara had worked at for 20 years. The couple’s decades of work in the country was finally paying off, she said.
From left: Daughter-in-law Alanah Ortiz, grandson Carlos Ortiz, 1, daughter Alondra Ortiz, 20, granddaughter Viviana Ortiz, 4, daughter Yuridia Ortiz, 10, and Blanca Ortiz at home in Adelanto.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Their eldest son, 26-year-old Ortiz Jr., is near the end of his enlistment and was planning to buy a house in Riverside for his wife and two young children to start their next chapter. Instead, his young family scrambled to move into Ortiz’s Adelanto home in June, to help with the mortgage.
“It was, initially, to stop the bleeding at least a little bit,” Ortiz Jr. said. “I’m kind of stopped right now. I can’t make a move because if I make the wrong move, that could be devastating.”
A day almost like any other
The day Ortiz Jara was detained began like most others. He prepared the couple’s morning coffee while Ortiz coaxed him into finishing a smoothie she’d made for him.
But instead of going right to work, Ortiz Jara had an appointment to be finger-printed at the Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Pomona for his visa application.
“Take a good look, because you’re not going to see me after this,” Ortiz Jara said in jest as he stood in the doorway of their Adelanto home.
It turned out to be no joke. As he arrived in Pomona, two ICE agents were waiting for Ortiz Jara in the parking lot. About 8 a.m. that morning, Ortiz got the call that her husband was in federal custody.
Immigration rights advocates say federal authorities are increasingly targeting immigrants when they show up at courthouses, at airports and for appointments scheduled by Citizenship and Immigration Services. A representative for the agency declined to comment on the practice.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to The Times that Ortiz Jara was detained “during an enforcement operation” on May 12.
“A pending application or work authorization does NOT confer legal status in the United States,” the spokesperson said.
The next time Ortiz saw her husband was through a glass pane at a federal holding center in downtown Los Angeles. The man who stared back at her wasn’t the strong and jovial husband she once knew. Ortiz Jara was beaten down, nearly all hope lost, she said.
Her own life took a turn as well.
“Everything all of a sudden just changed,” Ortiz said. “It was no more eight to five. We were trying to rush and find ways to get him out. … It’s been devastating.”
Legal hurdles
Ortiz was brought to the country at 9 months old without legal status. She met and married Ortiz Jara in 1999. They divorced about a decade later, and Ortiz married a U.S. citizen and gained legal status.
The couple rekindled around 2014, and remarried.
The couple assumed Ortiz Jara’s path to legal status would be simple, given his U.S. citizen children and wife, but most lawyers they consulted said his deportation years ago created a nearly insurmountable hurdle.
Attorneys with the Lisinski Law Firm were an exception, Ortiz said, telling the couple in September 2025 that Ortiz Jara’s deportation could be wiped from his record if he applied for a visa petition through the Violence Against Women Act.
The VAWA category offers a legal pathway for undocumented immigrants who have been abused physically or psychologically by a citizen spouse, child or parent to obtain an immigrant visa. Applications for visas under VAWA soared by 360% from 2020 to 2024, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services, which has said many of these applications were found to be fraudulent.
Ortiz said her husband pursued that avenue, signing an application a year ago that claimed he suffered psychologically during the couple’s split. Documents reviewed by The Times show Ortiz Jara paid the law firm $9,000.
The application was submitted, and Ortiz Jara was completing a fingerprinting appointment for the application when he was detained in May. Ortiz said she phoned Lisinski Law for help to fight the removal proceedings, which the firm declined. The law firm then terminated the contract in July, according to a document viewed by The Times.
A Lisinski Law spokesperson said the firm couldn’t discuss the details of the Ortiz Jara case, saying it would be a breach of attorney-client privilege. The Lisinski firm typically doesn’t handle removal proceedings, the spokesperson noted, focusing instead on visa petitions.
The spokesperson said that the firm terminates contracts for a variety of reasons, including “a change in the client’s circumstances, a breakdown in communication, by decision of the client, and/or conclusion of the legal services contracted to be provided” and that there is “nothing inherently suspect or wrong” in a termination.
With no one to turn to and Ortiz Jara’s first court date quickly approaching, Ortiz hired attorney Kenneth Byrd of the Center for Immigrant Assistance in Los Angeles, and said she paid him $5,000. Ortiz said Byrd showed up late and unprepared for Ortiz Jara’s June 5 court date, which Byrd disputed.
“We answer our phones all day long and return client calls usually the same day. We are always calling our clients back as much as possible,” Byrd said.
Her husband was denied release at the initial court date and given 30 days to appeal, Ortiz said.
It would take about a dozen more consultations with attorneys across Southern California before the family retained Andy Miri, an L.A.-based lawyer, in mid-June. Miri said he filed a habeas corpus petition on June 19, a legal action that challenges the lawfulness of a person’s detention, but declined to be interviewed on the case. The petition is still pending review.
A shortage of lawyers, coupled with the complexity in immigration law, has also driven up the price for legal representation, said Toczylowski of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
“In detention, cases move much faster. It’s hard to contact your client. It’s hard to visit your client,” Toczylowski said. “Part of the design of their facilities is to make sure that people are isolated from lawyers and … their families.”
As the months drag on since her husband’s arrest, Ortiz has scrambled to maintain a sense of normalcy in her family.
Yuridia Ortiz, the youngest at age 10, started a new softball season, with her dad noticeably missing from the stands. The auto mechanic shop has fallen behind on jobs without Ortiz Jara at the helm, she said. He’s missed out on birthday celebrations for nearly all the family in the last five months, including his own.
Carlos Ortiz Jr. has worked as a recruiter for the Marines in recent months. He speaks to young kids from low-income neighborhoods across the Central Valley, some of whom have undocumented parents. He’s struggled with the role since his dad’s arrest.
“It’s kind of ironic to sell a product that you don’t really believe in anymore,” Carlos Ortiz said. “It’s like a sense of betrayal, you know, that happening to my dad … like what was the point in all this?”
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