Two local fathers among latest ICE targets
ICE continues to have a presence in the city of Washington.
It’s difficult to know the scope of U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement operations in and around Washington – ICE isn’t required to notify police departments before it conducts operations and makes arrests, leaving its activities largely unknown unless they’re witnessed – but arrests of undocumented immigrants have been picking up since October, including the Feb. 4 detainment of a Guatemalan father of three at his home.
Another man, Anibal “Andy” Sandoval Lopez, 43, longtime owner of Lopez Construction, was detained by ICE agents on Jan. 24 while on his way to a construction job and remains in Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a for-profit ICE detention center in Clearfield County. He is awaiting an asylum hearing on Feb. 19.
Neither man has a criminal record, and both were pursuing asylum claims.
“He’s just trying to stay positive right now,” said Lopez’s daughter, Briana Miller of Washington. “He’s just a very hard-working man, and he’s really anxious in there because he hasn’t taken a day off in like 12 years. He’s been offering to help out around there. He just wants to work because he’s so bored and isn’t used to not working.”
According to national data, immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in U.S. immigration detention centers.
TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse), a nonpartisan research center at Syracuse University, reports that as recently as Jan. 25, 74.2% detainees being held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction, and many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, such as traffic violations.
“We’re seeing more and more people with no criminal history being arrested,” said Linda Hamilton, an immigration attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. “We’re talking about the mass detention of people with no criminal histories. These are people who have deep roots in the country and in their communities – business owners, parents, and longtime residents who pose no safety risk.”
Hamilton said the current data undermines the Trump administration’s claim that its crackdown on immigration primarily targets dangerous and violent criminals living in the U.S illegally, who the administration has called “the worst of the worst.”
“Under this administration, everybody’s an ‘enforcement priority.’ They’re bunching everybody together, those with no criminal records and those who have committed minor infractions. I don’t want to bunch together a murderer and a person who is driving without a driver’s license,” said Hamilton, who believes current immigration policies have eroded human rights and ignored due process for immigrants.
John Hopper, a friend of Lopez and a member of Immaculate Conception Church and the Washington Rotary Club, has launched a petition for Lopez’s release.
“He is an upstanding local contractor, a good man who has followed all the rules of INS and has gone to hearings and check-ins for a decade,” said Hopper, who often met Lopez for morning coffee and conversation at Krency’s Ice Cream on East Maiden Street.
Lopez, a native of Guatemala, left for Mexico when he was 13 to work as a dishwasher and sent money back to his family. At age 17, he was brought to Oregon as a dishwasher, where he planned to earn more money to help his family, but the person who organized the move took his money and left Lopez to fend for himself. He wound up in Washington, where he began working in construction.
Miller and her sister, Gabriela Lopez, visited their father at Moshannon last week.
They met Lopez – dressed in a color-coded blue uniform that low-risk detainees wear – in a visiting room, separated by plexiglass panels and netting.
“It’s really hard to hear in there because there are no holes to speak through, so people are talking loudly and yelling at their family members, and you’re in a room with a bunch of other people crying and upset about what their family members are going through. There were about 10 other people visiting while we were talking to our dad,” said Miller. “It is like a prison; that’s what it is.”
He sleeps in a room with more than 50 men, and pays for phone calls, commissary items, and other expenses.
In January, ICE held 70,766 people in detention, according to TRAC – a record high – and Moshannon’s average daily population as of Jan. 22 was 1,727 detainees.
Data from late 2025 indicates that a majority of detainees at Moshannon – like Lopez – have either no criminal convictions or no record of serious crime.
Hamilton said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has shifted its goalposts, and is detaining as many people as possible and making it as difficult as possible to be released, knowing that if they can keep people detained, many will give up fighting their cases and elect to self-deport.
That’s what the Guatemalan dad who was arrested at his Washington home chose to do. A resident of Washington for 20 years, the man signed self-deportation papers while at Northern Regional Jail in Moundsville, W.Va., and will be transported to Moshannon and then deported to Guatemala.
His wife, also from Guatemala, has decided to remain in Washington County so their son, who was accepted into Washington & Jefferson College for the fall semester, can attend school. The couple’s other son – who had planned to join the U.S. military – will stay with her, while the pair’s 8-year-old daughter will return to Guatemala and live with her grandmother. All three children were born in Washington. The family requested anonymity out of fear of retribution.
“They’re not just taking criminals – they’re people who are just trying to live their lives and take care of their families. And they’re taking people with little kids and ripping apart families, and it’s not right what’s going on,” said Hopper. “It’s just a brutal policy.”
The ICE detentions in the Washington area haven’t attracted attention like arrests in big cities like Minneapolis – most of the arrests have occurred under the radar – but they are happening.
Hamilton said immigrants face a complex immigration system that offers limited legal pathways, severe backlogs – those from Mexico seeking green cards are waiting as long as 25 years for visas to become available – and increased detentions.
“Most of these people are caught in a confusing and cumbersome asylum process and are attempting to obtain citizenship,” said Hamilton. “But they are being picked up and deported without due process nonetheless.”
Hopper said Lopez has spent years and thousands of dollars obtaining citizenship under constantly changing rules.
At Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church in Meadow Lands, where at least 10 Latino parishioners have been detained or deported in recent months, a group has sprung up to care for the families of immigrants who have been arrested or sent back to their home countries. They are donating food and hygiene products, helping to deliver resources, giving rides and services, and writing letters to politicians advocating for immigration reform.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment on Lopez’s arrest, and it didn’t provide information about whether enforcement is continuing in the area. Washington Police Department and Washington County Sheriff’s Office also did not respond.
JoJo Burgess, mayor of Washington, acknowledged the ongoing ICE operations.
“We haven’t had serious incidents like you hear about in major cities,” said Burgess. “There have been no complaints to our police department or to me. Nobody’s reached out, and ICE doesn’t have to notify us if they’re doing anything. I’ve seen social media posts that ICE has been here, but that’s all. With the national stories going on, there’s more awareness to it.”
Meanwhile, Miller and Lopez await a decision on their father’s status.
“He’s a great father. He’s here for everything,” said Gabriela Lopez. “He’s supported us emotionally and financially, always doing anything he can for us. And he likes to support others as well. He likes to offer free help, and he wants to help people get back on their feet, people in need.”
She said among her father’s biggest concerns after his arrest was making sure that a friend’s dog – which Lopez had offered to care for – had been fed and had fresh water.
Said Hamilton, “I want to note that all these people who are just thrown into detention, they’re for-profit detention centers and the government is fighting tooth and nail to keep these immigrants in detention because they benefit financially. I saw the purchase of the building in Berks County that will just add more detention centers. This is wasting money and resources that could be spent bettering our communities.”
On a trip to visit Miller and Lopez, Hopper was accompanied by Erenia Karamcheti, a social worker for Miraculous Medal Church, and the 8-year-old daughter of the Guatemalan man who had decided to self deport after living for decades in the U.S. Karamcheti was caring for the girl while her mother was at work.
The girl looked at Hopper and asked, “Can you help get my father back?”
Said Hopper, “I’ll try. I’ll do whatever I can.”