Reunited: Local father back with family after months in ICE detention facility
A member of St. Oscar Romero Parish in Washington County who was held at an ICE detention facility for nearly three months has been reunited with his family.
Jesus Teran, 35, a father of two, was apprehended on July 8 while reporting to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Pittsburgh for a scheduled check-in.
He was sent briefly to Northern Regional Jail in Moundsville, W.Va., before he was moved to Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Clearfield County.
On Monday afternoon, Teran was released from ICE custody.
“I only wanted to be with my family. I wanted to see my wife and my son and my daughter,” said Teran, who feared he might not see them again. “Every day, that is what I thought about.”
Teran’s wife, Liseth Carvajal, along with their 14-year-old daughter, Camila, and Erenia Karamcheti, a social worker at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church in Meadow Lands and family friend, made the three-hour drive to Moshannon to pick up Teran.
At about 8 p.m. on Monday night, they arrived at St. Oscar Romer Parish’s St. Patrick Church in Canonsburg, where Teran was greeted by his 5-year-old son, Lucas, his parents and younger brother, and close friends.
After a tearful and joyful reunion, the group headed inside a chapel and prayed.
“It was a team effort of perseverance,” said Karamcheti, who, along with Teran’s attorney, Samantha Tangurgo, and the Rev. Jay Donahue, senior parochial vicar at St. Oscar Romero Parish, fought for Teran’s release. “We never gave up, and we never lost faith.”
Teran’s detainment came amid an immigration crackdown by President Donald Trump, who has pledged to remove millions of immigrants without legal status as part of a hard-line mass deportation policy.
Trump said his immigration agenda aims to root out and expel dangerous criminals, “the worst of the worst.” But undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, including Teran, have been caught up in those removal efforts.
According to recent federal data, more than 70% of detainees who were being held by ICE as of Thursday had no criminal convictions.
Teran arrived in the U.S. without legal status in 2021 to escape Venezuela’s brutal dictatorship and economic collapse, and has been in the country under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Karamcheti said. A civil engineer in Venezuela, he was working as a carpenter apprentice and was checking in regularly with ICE before he was detained.
Teran and his family attend Mass regularly at Miraculous Medal, where they are involved in church activities, and Teran “is always ready to help anybody,” Karamcheti said.
Moshannon, a private, for-profit facility, is the largest immigration detention center in the Northeast. It has come under fire for alleged inhumane conditions, inadequate medical care, and civil rights violations.
Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and later brought back to the United States and faces new deportation efforts, was transferred to Moshannon on Friday.
“It is not good, the conditions are not good,” said Teran.
Teran’s daughter, Camila – who was able to make the drive to Moshannon because she had the day off of school – said she was heartened to see several protesters carrying signs near the entrance to the detention center.
“I hadn’t seen that kind of support before, and it was heartwarming, like wow, people care, and it was pretty nice seeing them,” said Camila. “At first, my father didn’t want me to see him there, but I wanted to see him. It was kind of hard seeing him walk out the door of that place. It’s a prison, and I associate that with crime or bad people, and my dad is not that, and many other people inside are not that. Seeing that was kind of dehumanizing.”
Karamcheti said she encouraged Teran to enjoy his time with his family, and not to worry about what the next steps are.
“He’s not out of the woods,” said Karamcheti, noting Teran has a check-in with ICE later this week, as he awaits his day in court. “We’re still processing everything, and I don’t know if Jesus can believe this is real yet. We will keep on praying and will continue to fight, and we pray that everything works out for him.”