Beyond the Headlines podcast: Isabela’s attempted ICE deportation

On this episode of “Beyond the Headlines,” reporter José Ignacio Castañeda Perez talks about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s recent arrest and detention of a Delaware victim of domestic violence, despite her living with temporary protected legal status. 

If ICE had deported her back to her native country, her abuser would have been waiting. 

José Ignacio wrote about these events in his Oct. 13 article ‘Bring her back’: Delaware abuse victim rescued from ICE deportation. In the podcast, he offers details about the process to gain permission to tell the victim’s story, how newsrooms deal with requests for anonymity and gives more insight into some of the key figures in the article.

The podcast was hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

This is an incredibly complex and sensitive story. For a listener who hasn’t read the article we’re going to talk about, can you just give them a brief overview of the events?

In March, this woman, who we’re calling Isabela in the story, was arrested and detained by ICE in her home in Sussex County.

Then she was subsequently put on a plane to Louisiana, where she stayed at a detention center. And in total she was in ICE detention for about a month. But previously, back in 2019, she was a victim of domestic violence due to her ex-husband. She filed a police report which eventually led to his prosecution and deportation back to their Central American country in 2024, December of last year.

So she was essentially on her way back to her abuser who was waiting for her in their native country. While she was in detention, the [Delaware] Attorney General’s office and Community Legal Aid Society Incorporated (CLASI) worked together to get her out of detention and bring her back to Delaware, given that she was technically not susceptible to deportation, given her status.

She was waiting for a U visa, which is a class of visa that is granted to victims of violent crime who help law enforcement find criminals and help them in the case. She was waiting for that because that visa process takes conservatively multiple years, sometimes decades, to be able to receive this visa. There’s only 10,000 handed out each year. So the backlog for this is extremely high. 

So she was waiting for that. While waiting, she was granted something called deferred action. So that means that they can’t be deported in the eyes of the government. So she had temporary protected legal status and while that happened, she was detained as a collateral arrest.

That’s what kicked off this whole situation. The Attorney General and CLASI stepped in and they were able to negotiate her release and bring her back to Delaware.

How did you even become aware of Isabela’s story?

We saw an op-ed that the Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings had penned in The News Journal earlier this year and we thought that it might be worth it to do a story fleshing out what happened, talking to the person, if it was even possible, to get a better understanding of the firsthand account of what happened. 

Who did you have to get the okay from to do this story? What was your process of getting all the parties lined up to say, “Yes, write this article, tell this story”?

Probably a couple months on the front end, work just trying to get folks to agree to even be part of this story and to convince folks about why this was something that we wanted to work on and to show people in our reporting.

So with CLASI, it took a couple months to coordinate everything and explain what we were thinking about – doing a profile story on this woman. And then coordinating anonymity and all those different terms before we were even able to get together and talk with this woman and meet her, with CLASI there too, to get that firsthand account. 

So it took a little bit, and the same thing with the AG’s office. It took some time to let them know what we were working on and why we wanted to talk to them about their efforts. Obviously the entire case is very delicate and very difficult for folks to talk about because it is something that was sensitive. Obviously I think the priority for everybody was just to not bring more harm on Isabela after everything that she had experienced. So it definitely took a lot of maneuvering. 

You were able to spend some time with Isabela in person. Just on a human level, how is she doing after having gone through this situation?

It’s definitely a tough situation that she’s still living in. She’s back with her family, but I think it’s still remnants of that traumatic event – ICE agents broke into her home in the middle of the night.It’s still lingering with her and her family. So they’re still dealing with that and everything that happened to her. She’s working and keeping on, but it’s still very tough for them.

Given the sensitive nature of these series of events that you were trying to report on, was your reporting process any different than what you normally engage in? 

Not really. It was a lot of the same stuff that we do with every story. For this, it was just making sure that we were being careful and we had everybody on the same page in terms of anonymity. So that’s conversations between CLASI and us, and me and Jake, the editor in chief, making sure that we weren’t putting Isabela in any harm, especially with her identity.

That was one of the requirements before we even embarked on the story, to be able to talk to Isabella, deciding on a pseudonym and doing that in terms of the story and also just to protect her. So I think everything that went into it, the front end, was pretty much the same amount of scrutiny that we give everything else for other stories.

You had one or two interviews with her? And were they solo or with other people present? 

The first one we did was with a representative from CLASIthere at their offices. And we talked for probably close to a couple hours. And then I had a separate interview with her over the phone where we just kind of clarified some stuff and I touched on some stuff that I forgot to ask her in the first one.

And we just kind of chatted a little bit more about the process and going forward, what would it look like.

That first interview you had was your first time meeting her in person. Did you have to do anything to earn her trust or did you feel she was wanting to talk about this?

Obviously as with anybody who has gone through a traumatic experience, you just need to kind of be there and kind of be more of a listener than you are really a reporter or asking questions.

I think it was mostly just her kind of telling me what happened, but initially it’s just going through in very minute detail of what my job is, who I am, what we’ve done previously, what Spotlight Delaware is, where the story was going to appear, if it was going to appear on any partner newsrooms, the consequences of using your name, explaining why we thought it was important to share her story. And she was comfortable with that, and answering any questions that she had before we even started actually doing the interview. 

When you got through with it, did you get any sense that she was glad that this was going to be getting out and she had a chance to put this together?

The sense that I got, I’m not sure if this is what she felt, but the sense that I got was just a little bit of a relief to be able to just sit down with somebody for a couple hours and then just kind of talk through everything that had happened with her, and her experience with it.

I think it was just a little bit just – to fully get everything off her chest, and then talk to us a little bit about it.

As you’ve already mentioned, Isabela is a pseudonym. In the article you write that Spotlight Delaware decided to use a fictional name in order to protect her identity and in response to her fears of persecution and retaliation. Can you just share a little bit more about what the process was behind this decision?

Like I mentioned before, for everybody including us, their first priority is to minimize harm for our sources and make sure they’re protected to not cause any more harm than what was already caused to her.

So, to begin with CLASI, in order for us to even be able to meet her and do this story it was discussed that we not use her name at all. That’s obviously something that we had to have a conversation with Jake about, everything that goes into that and our weighing of that in terms of the story. 

And then deciding on a pseudonym in order to make it a little bit readable and saying a different name that’s not her name. And then being able to address her in the story in a way that’s not just “her” or “she” or “that woman” – to be able to give her a different name while still protecting her identity.

And all that goes into the editorial process, which is just that she’s a real person and her actual name is just with me and Jake, which is how it works in every other newsroom. And keeping that, keeping our promise to keep her anonymous and protect her identity no matter what.

And in that conversation between you and Jake, how do you end up deciding is it worth it to grant anonymity?

I think, those conversations in newsrooms everywhere, it’s the same thing. Can we get this information in any other way or be able to tell this story in any other way? If there’s any other avenue that we could tell this story without using anonymity is one thing. Another thing is what’s the fear and what’s the consequence of her using her name? And the value of the story being out there. So I think knowing that it was a very real consequence, very real fears, you’re able to justify.

I think it was a pretty easy decision to decide to grant anonymity and get to work on the story.

Linked to that: Photography is always very important in news reporting, as it literally gives the reader a sense of who this is behind this issue and helps those readers to connect.

Obviously, a portrait of Isabela’s face was not a possibility for this article. So what were the considerations that went into getting the lead photo for this?

It’s just trying to one, provide something visually appealing in the article. Another thing was to show that this woman was a real woman.

I know a lot of times folks, if they see an anonymous source, they assume that it might not be a real person that we’re talking to. So just to show that this was a real person. Also, considerations obviously were concealing her identity. A lot of thought went into it.

I think having a photo of her hands was a way to kind of show a little bit of her character and who she is while not revealing anything about her identity.

The Community Legal Aid Society, or CLASI, as you’ve already mentioned, played a huge role in securing Isabela’s return to Delaware. They were not an organization that I was familiar with until I read your article last year about CLASI’s efforts to ensure that polling places are accessible to Delawareans living with disabilities. 

Can you just tell listeners who may not be familiar with CLASI a little bit more about who they are and what they do?

They are an organization that provides free legal aid to vulnerable Delawareans statewide. I believe they have offices in Kent County, New Castle and Sussex County. And they help really with anything that might require legal assistance. Folks living with disabilities, voting rights, obviously immigration. Victims of crime are another big focus for them.

CLASI is always there to help.

Another major party in this article was Delaware’s Office of the Attorney General and specifically this woman Maria Macias Tatnall, who is the director of Outreach Services for Immigration Assistance.

She really jumped out to me as a  figure in this story. She dropped everything to go and get Isabela from Louisiana when that release was arranged. And you share this really striking detail in the story that she even took Isabela clothes shopping, before she could come back. So she was not in the pajamas that she was wearing.

Is there anything else you could share with us about Maria and maybe what your sense was of what these interactions with Isabela meant to her?

I can’t really speak for Maria, what it really meant to her. But, I could tell that it was a somewhat personal experience maybe for Maria and the way that she interacted with Isabela.

Obviously it was just two people that had to kind of come back and Maria was very involved in Isabela’s case. And as I noted in the story, she kind of dropped everything once it was known that Isabela was going to be released and then she kind of went above and beyond to bring her back here to Delaware.

So yeah, I think the overall consensus in the AG’s office was that Maria was very instrumental, kind of like a little bit of an unsung hero, in this entire process of bringing her back. 

Isabella is currently back in Delaware, which is great and just as based on your reporting, this is what the law requires.

Given that Isabella’s immediate safety is secured, what larger issue do you think this article gets at?

The argument that the Attorney General’s office was making was that this case could set a dangerous precedent for other victims of crime who may then be too scared to come forward and report other crimes that are happening to them or to others. Because they’re worried about their status or they’re worried about being arrested or targeted after they do so. So I think that was one of the biggest considerations. 

Obviously we know there’s other cases like this out there. I think that was something that the AG’s office really harped on was that this could set a dangerous precedent for other victims of crime.

Thank you for your reporting and thank you for coming on today to let us know a little bit more about Isabela, our neighbor here in Delaware. 

Thanks, David.