On His Way to Buy Diapers, ICE Made a Father Disappear

On the night of February 1 of this year, Martin Soto left his home in Kearny, New Jersey, to buy diapers for his eleven-month-old son. He never came back. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, arrested him, and ever since then, as his wife Gabriela Soto describes it, an entire family has been fighting for the return of a father who never harmed anyone.

Martin Soto is a devoted father, a husband, a son, a member of his community, and a hardworking neighbor in the town where his family lives. He is married to Gabriela, a United States citizen, and his asylum hearing is scheduled for 2028. Both of their children are American citizens. Under the law, ICE could release him at any time through an exercise of prosecutorial discretion, allowing him to pursue his asylum case while caring for his family. It refuses to do so.

For four months, Martin was held at Delaney Hall, the ICE detention facility in Newark operated by the private prison company GEO Group, a corporation that profits from incarceration. The facility has quickly become notorious for medical neglect, spoiled food, and abusive treatment by staff. When Martin arrived there in February, he weighed 167 pounds. Today he weighs 117. During nearly five months in detention, he has missed his daughter's fourth birthday, his son's first birthday, his wedding anniversary, his own thirtieth birthday, his wife's birthday, Mother's Day, and Father's Day. Gabriela, now expecting their third child, has been left alone to care for their two young children.

Martin came to the United States in January 2024 to build a life with Gabriela and raise their children. The two met in Peru, their shared homeland, when Gabriela was nineteen and visiting relatives there. As an American citizen, she could not simply abandon her life in the United States, so they maintained a long-distance relationship, seeing each other whenever possible. After returning home from Peru, Gabriela discovered she was pregnant. Wanting to spare Martin from giving up his dreams, she kept the pregnancy to herself and carried the child alone. Their daughter is now four years old. Martin eventually learned the truth and hoped to attend her first birthday, but he was unable to do so. He missed her first birthday, her first steps, her first words, and her first day of daycare. Moving to Peru was no longer an option because the country had become too dangerous.

Martin then made the hardest decision of his life. He left behind his family and everything familiar, crossed hours of desert on foot, and after entering the United States surrendered himself to immigration authorities. He spent four months in detention and was transferred through seven different detention facilities, each seemingly worse than the last. He was eventually released and allowed to pursue his asylum case while living with his family. One month later, the couple married. Soon afterward they were expecting their son. They attended church in Newark, both found work, and began building a life together. Then, one night, everything changed.

When Gabriela answered a phone call from a number identified as a jail, a correctional officer first assured her that her husband was in good hands. What she learned over the following weeks made that assurance impossible to believe. In May, Martin told her that detainees in his housing unit had twice been served meals containing worms. When they refused to eat the food, guards allegedly told them they could either eat it or go hungry until the next day. There was no privacy inside the housing units, he said. The men were forced to bathe in an open area in full view of everyone else. Whenever Martin became ill, he waited three or four weeks before anyone even looked at him, let alone provided treatment.

On May 22, Gabriela organized a demonstration outside Delaney Hall demanding freedom for everyone being held there. Two hours after the protest ended, Martin later told her, GEO Group employees and ICE officers summoned him to the administration office. The first question they asked was whether, if released immediately, he could persuade his wife to end the protest outside. Then they asked whether he had known about the protest. Finally they asked whether he had been the one who started the hunger strike inside the facility. Martin answered only that he had nothing to say and requested to return to his cell. Instead, he was locked there for hours.

The following day, when Gabriela arrived during visiting hours, staff blocked her path. Every other detainee with visitors had already been brought downstairs except for her husband. Before allowing the visit, a guard insisted on speaking with her. He accused her of spreading lies about GEO Group because she had told reporters about the worms in the food. In other words, because she had exercised her constitutionally protected right to free speech, the retaliation fell upon her husband.

On the third day, at approximately 3:30 in the afternoon, Martin called her. In the middle of the conversation, on a recorded phone line, a correctional officer announced that Martin Soto was being released. Gabriela immediately became suspicious. She asked people waiting outside to watch for transport vehicles while she entered the building with a volunteer. From the staircase leading to the visitation chapel, she watched with her own eyes as two GEO Group employees handcuffed her husband. They led him down the ramp, exchanged glances, grabbed him by his wrists and ankles, and threw him into a vehicle. Simone Weil described violence as the force that turns a human being into an object. That is exactly what happened on that ramp, before the eyes of a pregnant woman forced to watch her husband reduced to a thing.

When Gabriela attempted to leave the building, staff prevented her from doing so. They kept the revolving door locked for more than twenty minutes. Pregnant and in tears, she ran toward the entrance crying and screaming while several employees who witnessed it laughed at her. Standing beside the vehicle, she pleaded for help. Around her, people called members of Congress, United States senators, the mayor of Newark, anyone they could reach, demanding that Martin be released as the officer had promised on the recorded phone line. When Congressman Rob Menendez arrived and remained outside for more than eighteen hours attempting to see Martin, both ICE and GEO Group denied him access. While he waited, the agency quietly removed Martin from the facility. At two o'clock in the morning, after distracting everyone with three vehicles that were deliberately stopped and searched, the final vehicle slipped through while demonstrators focused on the others. Martin was inside.

The vehicle that carried him away at two o'clock that morning appeared to be the personal vehicle of an ICE officer. Martin later said that he noticed a child's car seat in the back.

Since May 25, Martin has been held at the Elizabeth Detention Center. His transfer appears to have been retaliation for participating in the hunger strike, for demanding the release of everyone being detained, and for being married to a woman who chose to speak publicly. According to the couple, the arrest itself resulted from a language barrier. The officer who encountered Martin allegedly lost patience even though Martin slowly explained in English that his asylum hearing had already been scheduled for 2028. Before his arrest, Martin lived with his family. He worked in construction, landscaping, and restaurant kitchens. He attended church, cared for his children, and helped his neighbors whenever he could. Nothing about that life justified destroying it.

The government could release him today without an ankle monitor, without bail, and without imposing any conditions whatsoever. It does not have to keep him in detention. It does so because it can. A nation that claims to be safe for a father buying diapers in the middle of the night threw that father into a vehicle where another person's child had left a car seat behind. Between that car seat and the two children waiting for their father at home lies the entire distance between what this country promises and what it actually does.

To be continued .....