In a brief text message just after noon on Wednesday, Dolores Bustamante wrote the words supporters had feared: "ya me encarraron.”
“I’m locked up,” her advocate Carly Fox translated for the more than two dozen people waiting for word outside the glass-walled building in downtown Buffalo that houses the local office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The 54-year-old undocumented apple farmworker and labor rights advocate had come from her home in Wayne County to her check-in with ICE knowing detention was likely.
“I can’t call,” Fox said, continuing to translate the text message. “I’m locked up. They have me locked up here.”
Bustamonte has lived in the United State for more than 20 years but spent much of that time fighting a removal order that could send her back to Mexico. Her case was not a priority under the Biden administration. That changed once President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Given a few more months, she had argued, she would have a path to legal residency, as her youngest daughter could apply for citizenship come August. Her attorney advised her to skip the check-in, and buy time. But Bustamante said she didn’t want to live in fear, telling her lawyer she was “not going to be a fugitive.”
Now her fate rests in a last-ditch legal motion filed immediately after her text, arguing her detention is unjust. And in the hope that lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, whose staff is working on her case, can intervene.
ICE did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
“My grandma has been through a long process ... trying to stay here,” said Axmir Sanchez, 17, who was among those waiting for word on the street corner outside the building.
“Everyone really knows her as happy, caring, giving, loving,” he said. “She always has a smile on her face, no matter what. Anything you need from her, she'll help you with.”
Bustamante arrived for the appointment smiling, having spent the ride to Buffalo telling Fox about her church choir. She had gone to practice the night before.
“I forgot where I was going,” she said in Spanish.
She exchanged hugs with supporters before heading inside with her youngest daughter.
“I don’t feel alone,” Bustamante said, “no matter what happens.”
Sanchez and his 16-year-old sister Ariana waited four hours with supporters until the text arrived. They held handmade signs. Written on his: “My family matter, too!” While hers read, “Mi abuela no es criminal,” and was decorated with butterflies.
“It’s sad,” Sanchez said. “Stressful ... because, like, separating family is not easy.”
