This is the second part of a two-part series on family separation in the Twin Cities. You can read the first part “Minneapolis family shares story of ‘violent’ ICE detainment and 10 months of Separation” here.

Luis Caiza is in limbo. He hasn’t been deported. He hasn’t been released from detainment. He’s still in ICE custody, nearly ten months after his arrest.

His loved ones are more than a thousand miles away in Minnesota.

Caiza lives in a cell at Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico. He’s been there since February 2. MPR News interviewed him in Spanish from the detainment center.

It’s a day-to-day struggle in detainment, Caiza said, mostly because of his separation from his family. He said while he’s locked up, he thinks of Minnesota and memories of his three children and wife, Marjorie Flores.

“The time I spent with my children and my family, with my wife, that is what I carry with me and for that I want to return to Minnesota,” he said.

Caiza said when he was living in Minneapolis with Flores and his kids, he’d spend his free time with them. Now, he only gets to hear their voices through the phone.

“I’ve always been focused on them, and that’s the pain I carry whenever I speak to my children. I can’t make video calls to them. I can’t, because they start crying and get upset, and it affects me the same way,” Caiza said.

These days, he said, “I just talk to them on the phone.”

Along with thousands of other immigrants and U.S. citizens in Minnesota, Caiza was arrested by federal agents earlier this year during what the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement called Operation Metro Surge.

Before he was held in detention at the Torrance County facility in Estancia, New Mexico, he had brief stays at the Whipple Federal Building and in Texas.

Caiza and his family left Ecuador and came to the U.S. seeking asylum. They don’t have criminal records. A judge said he was a flight risk — but his attorney says that’s not true. Caiza said he wants to stay with his family.

A judge also said Caiza had prior DWIs that contributed to the denial of his asylum claim. His attorney said that is also not true, and an MPR News analysis of court records did not find criminal records for Caiza.

During Caiza’s time in detainment, he has advocated for himself and his fellow detainees against what he calls inhumane conditions.

He said detainees at the facility have difficulty in getting basic necessities. Caiza has composed two separate letters in Spanish, detailing violent altercations and poor conditions inside the Torrance County center. The letters, translated into English, were provided by his lawyer Danielle Molliver.

In one letter, he wrote, “We are living with certain inhumane hardships that prevent us from accessing the basic necessities required by any human being or person in custody.”

He said he has endured tooth infections, bad food and a lack of fresh clothes.

“Our right to due process is being violated, leading to our rapid expulsion from the country,” Caiza wrote.

He also said that Torrance only staffs the facility with a mail clerk three days a week. That means legal documents needed to support their immigration cases “is extremely slow.” Caiza also pointed out that government-imposed court deadlines are 15 to 20 days.

That is “a time frame that is difficult to meet without legal representation.”

He said detainees can’t ask for new clothes and they are not given any new ones.

“We just have what we were given: two t-shirts, two pairs of underwear, two pairs of sock,” he said.

CoreCivic, which runs the facility, said in a statement to MPR News that the health and well-being of individuals in their care is their top priority. They say detainees have access to healthcare services, and that they provide three nutritious meals a day. They said there are ways for detainees like Caiza to raise concerns.

Caiza said he’ll keep fighting for asylum and for his release. His family keeps him going.

“They give me the strength to keep fighting here until God — until God decides the day and hour have come,” he said. “But what I long for most is to be with them in Minnesota.”

Molliver said he was ordered removed from the country by a judge. She said the Board of Immigrant Appeals returned the decision and ordered an immigration court to make appropriate findings of fact and conclusion of laws.

Caiza is also waiting on an asylum appeal to be filed this month.

Molliver filed a second petition this week challenging Caiza’s detainment based on his prolonged ICE detention and procedural errors.

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.