Angel & Ximena

 

 

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR>

+ Nineteen-year-old Ximena Arias-Cristobal, who has lived in Dalton, Georgia, since she was four, was pulled over for making a turn without signaling. This would normally result in a ticket. But Ximena, who is a graduate of the local high school, where she ran cross-country, and is now a student at Dalton State College, was handcuffed, taken to the county jail, and turned over to ICE, even though she had no criminal record. ICE put the diminutive young woman in shackles; they took her to an ICE detention facility three hours away. Ximena’s father had been arrested two weeks earlier for speeding. He, too, was turned over to ICE  by Georgia police and is detained in the same ICE jail. Her attorney said her mother will likely also soon be detained for deportation. The Arias-Cristobal family has run a construction company in Georgia for more than a decade. All of them were living productive lives and paying taxes. None of them has a criminal record. 

+ Ángel Blanco Marin, a 22-year-old musician from Venezuela, was nabbed by ICE in the Bronx and slated for deportation. When his father learned Ángel would be deported, he said he was so glad he was coming that: “I painted his room. I fixed it up for when he arrives. I bought him balloons.” Then he discovered that Ángel had been sent without a trial to the CECOT prison in El Salvador instead. There’s no evidence Ángel had even the faintest association with the Tren de Aragua gang.