EXCLUSIVE: 'Something Was Different' - An Immigrant's Worst Fears Realized
Mirna Benitez feared the worst when she was summoned to an off-hours appointment with ICE. Her fears paled to the reality of the treatment she experienced.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
In the days leading up to her December 7 appointment at a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement Office in North Chesterfield, Mirna Benitez knew something was different.
For almost 13 years, she’d attended all her scheduled check-ins with ICE—at first every six months, then annually, then every two years, and since January of 2025, monthly—but this time, Benitez said, “it didn’t feel the same.”
Maybe things felt different because she didn’t know about the appointment until she checked her phone on December 4 to see a text message informing her of it. She thought her next check-in was not until February 11, the date that had been scheduled at her previous appointment in November.
Maybe things felt different because she realized that December 7 was a Sunday.
“On Sundays, aren’t you closed?” she asked an agent who answered the phone number provided in the text message.
“No,” the woman told her. “Our offices here are open 24/7.”
Maybe things felt different because the woman told her specifically that she should come to the appointment, but that “she shouldn’t be worried,” Benitez recalled.
But she was worried.
“I thought I had been open and direct with the process [of applying for legal residency],” she said. “I was submitting all my documents. I was doing everything with the best intentions and to have the possibility of this negative result was just too nerve-wracking. I was very, very scared.”
Benitez called her lawyer and asked him if he would join her on December 7, but “he told me he was not able to.” So she went to the appointment accompanied by her daughter, Laura, a U.S. citizen who accompanied her mother to all her immigration appointments.
And when they arrived, Benitez knew her fears were justified.
“After going [to immigration check-ins] for almost 13 years, today felt different and it was different,” she said. “I always brought my daughter with me and always before they allowed her to come through, but this time, she was not able to come inside.”
A Dysfunctional Immigration System
Benitez spoke to the Advance and members of Virginia Organizing on January 7 by phone from El Salvador, where she arrived before Christmas after spending 10 days in detainment in the U.S., being shuffled from Riverside Regional Jail in Richmond to an ICE facility in Texas and then another in Louisiana.
She chose to be deported to El Salvador—the country she left in 2012 due to political violence and to seek better educational opportunities for her daughter—rather than remain in detention in the U.S.
“[Those 10 days were] worse than anything else I have experienced,” and worse than anything she imagined happening to her, Benitez said.
She was detained when she first arrived in the U.S. more than a decade ago, then released and given periodic appointments to attend. She got a lawyer and worked to apply for asylum.
“I always followed through with all the instructions. Everything I was told to do, I made sure I did,” Benitez said. “I provided evidence of everything they asked of me.”
But the process was prolonged and the trial dates kept changing, she said. When she finally had her date in court, the judge told her that her case was “shocking” but that too much time had passed and that he was forced to deny the case, she said.
Her lawyer filed an appeal, but she said she found out later that he filed the appeal without her supporting documents. She was informed via a document from the judge that her case was closed and she needed to seek other ways to stay in the country.
In the meantime, Benitez had obtained a temporary work permit that allowed her to get a job as a contracted custodian at a Fredericksburg area public school—a job she has held for 10 years. She is a beloved member of the school community, according to colleagues.
During the phone call, she cried as she described how much her school family—the students, the teachers, her coworkers, and the administration—means to her.
She owns a home and cars, pays taxes, and, according to an online search of local court records, has no criminal record save for a 2016 charge for failing to obey a highway sign, for which she paid a $30 fine.
Benitez kept attending regular check-ins with ICE, informing them of any updates to her life and status. In 2025, she said, the tenor of these appointments changed.
“They were very aggressive,” she said. “When I went for my [first meeting of 2025], I wasn’t given an appointment for the next year. What I was given was an appointment with Intensive Supervision Appearance Program [ISAP], an organization that contracts with ICE to do more extensive and thorough checkups. It seemed like they wanted to meet with me weekly.”
Benitez said she brought an I-130 petition—the first step for immigrants who want to apply for a Green Card through a qualifying family member who is a U.S. citizen—to her first appointment in 2025.
“They told me that while the petition was being processed, I will have to continue to follow-up with them,” she said.
On June 7, Benitez said, she filed a petition for a stay of deportation for one year “so then I could take that time to renew my work permit and focus on those things.”
“I was told I would receive a response in 30 days,” she said. “A month passed and I had not received a response.” At one point, she did receive a phone call directing her to an appointment with ICE in Richmond, but when she arrived, the office was shuttered.
“That’s when I reached out again to ask what was going on,” Benitez said. “They told me that, ‘We will be the ones that reach out to you.’”
Worse Than Her Worst Fear
In North Chesterfield on December 7, Benitez knew that something was going to happen—but what did happen was worse than her worst fear.
“The worst thing that I thought could happen is that I would be asked to buy a ticket to go [back to El Salvador],” she said. “That’s what I thought would happen. Never did I think what was going to happen to me would happen.”
Inside the office, the officer received all the paperwork she had brought with her. Then he asked if she had any health concerns. She told them that she had just had a mammogram that required a follow-up appointment. Then she saw the officer putting on rubber gloves, “as if about to commence touching me.”
“I asked what was going on, and he said they were going to take me back to review my case for two hours,” Benitez recalled. “That’s when I told them not to lie to me. I told them about my daughter going to school here, who depends solely on me. I told them I always do the right thing, and if I was going to be deported right then and there, could I please do it on my own terms?”
“The officer just laughed and put me in handcuffs.”
They laughed at her again when she was in a holding cell and they were taking her fingerprints. It had snowed that morning, and “we were having a lot of issues getting my prints because of the residue from the salt and snow on my hands,” Benitez recalled. “One of my fingers was red and it hurt because of how many times they tried to get the print. I told the officers it was hurting me. They both just laughed.”
She said she asked for water and was told, “There is the toilet and there is the sink, and that I can drink from the sink.”
Throughout that day, Bentiez said, “more and more” people were being detained at the North Chesterfield office. At the end of the day, the women were separated and taken to Riverside Regional Jail.
There, Benitez said, “they searched us to see if we had hidden weapons in our intimate parts.”
From the jail, Benitez and others were moved by cargo plane to Texas.
“I remember there was an argument between the ICE officers and the pilot,” she said. “They were screaming at each other, something about the pilot not wanting to take off because of technical problems. How it ended was the pilot took his things and ran out of there. And we were stuck handcuffed and hot on the plane for five hours or so.”
After Texas, they were moved again to Louisiana. That’s where Benitez, who said she came down with a staph infection at one of the facilities, was finally able to see a nurse for treatment and was able to shower.
“I got a cup from the nurse and I got water out of the toilet and used that to shower and wash my undergarments,” she said. “There was no way of drying them, so I had to wash them and put them back on wet.”
At one point during transfer by bus from one place to another, Benitez said her personal belongings—her jacket and purse containing all her documents—were “soiled and destroyed” by dirty water leaking onto them from the toilet above.
Benitez said she kept asking every official she encountered, “When can I talk to a lawyer? When am I going to speak to someone?”
She never received an answer, and she never encountered a single officer or agent who treated her with kindness and respect, she said.
After Benitez finished telling her story, she paused, then apologized.
“I’m sorry that I had to say this,” she said. “I just want this suffering to stop. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else, for anybody else to suffer the way I suffered.”
“Just Don’t Go”
Benitez and her daughter are now working with a new lawyer who is helping them with the process of filing the I-130. It could cost them as much as $13,000 and take as many as four years for her to return to her life in the U.S., according to a Go Fund Me set up by local friends to help.
Asked if she has advice for others with the same immigration status, she said, “The first thing I would recommend is get the right people on board with them—a good lawyer that does the work that he says he’s going to do in a timely manner.”
The second piece of advice? If someone gets a text message about a previously unscheduled appointment with ICE or ISAP at an off-hours time, “just don’t go,” Benitez said.
“Because they trapped me. I was entrapped,” she said.
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