Los Angeles father returns to family after six months in ICE detention

UCR researchers detail mental-health toll on children of detained parents

Ramirez and Padilla have been together since 2014 and form a mixed-status family. Ramirez jokingly calls her partner her mari-novio, a word combining husband and boyfriend. She met Padilla when he was a single father of two working at her father’s car washing business. Their shared goal, like that of any parents, has been to give their children a good, stable life.

The day of the arrest began like any other, Ramirez said. She and Padilla helped the children get ready for school that morning; one bathed and dressed them while the other made breakfast. Ramirez took her son and nephew to school while Padilla stayed home with their youngest before leaving for work. The only difference was the time he left. Padilla typically left the house by 9 a.m., but that day he left early to pump gas, something he had forgotten to do the day before.

“He was rushing out the door when I told him, ‘No, you have to eat,’” Ramirez recalled, “and I gave him two burritos and a coffee, and he took off.” She got the call while standing in her mother’s kitchen. “The guy on the other end asked me if I knew Morro, which is José’s nickname, and when I said yes, he said, ‘ICE just detained him.’” “I broke down; we were all devastated. We couldn’t believe it,” she said, remembering how she had to hand the phone to her mother and sister because she could not contain her tears.

Padilla was detained on January 27, 2026, while working as a car washer in Los Angeles. He had been living in the United States for more than 20 years and was one of more than 1,400 people detained in the LA area that January, according to the Deportation Data Project. He was one of at least 373 car wash workers detained in southern California from June 2025 through January 2026, according to data compiled by the Clean Carwash Worker Center, a labor advocacy non-profit.

As a family, they had observed the ongoing ICE raids in their neighborhoods and had only discussed safety measures like sharing each other’s locations, Ramirez said, but they had never discussed what they would do if Padilla was actually detained. “We just felt like, you know, it won’t happen to us if we’re careful. Until it did,” she said.

Padilla was transferred from downtown Los Angeles to the Adelanto detention facility, then to the California City detention facility in Kern County. The drive from the family’s home in Watts to the detention center is roughly three hours, Ramirez said. With a busy schedule and an unreliable car, the family mostly communicated through video calls every other night.

The separation took a documented toll on the children. For seven-year-old José Jr., his two-year-old brother Joaquin, and 17-year-old stepbrother Alex, their father had been a constant figure of safety and stability. They played together every evening after finishing their homework; he would read to them and, along with Ramirez, often go on family outings. At night, part of the children’s routine included cuddling between their father’s arms as he soothed the little ones to sleep.

“We had our routines, each morning and evening, and all that went away,” Ramirez said. According to Ramirez, the family unit deteriorated the moment Padilla was detained. “From one day to the next, everything was on me,” she said, bouncing her two-year-old son in her arms. “And I don’t mind stepping in, but you have to understand, we were such a great team; we really helped each other. When I suffered postpartum depression, he was patient; he took care of everything, and he helped me get back to myself.”

“Now that he’s not here, we really feel his absence and how much he helped us — not only with the bills, but also just by being there for the kids, for me, and for my parents,” Ramirez said. “It’s been hard for us to be without him. He was our person. Honestly, he was everyone’s person.”

Padilla’s seven-year-old son, who shares his father’s name, began asking every night at bedtime, “Why did they take my dad away?” Ramirez said. Her 17-year-old stepson, Alex, who has autism and depended on Padilla for help with bathing, schoolwork, and school meetings, disengaged at school.

“The reason José decided to work a carwash job was for the kids, especially Alex, because he requires extra care,” Ramirez said as she waited for Alex to be dropped off by the school bus. “He wanted to make sure he could be available for all of them at any given moment.”

By June, Alex and his brothers had been away from their father for five months, and during that time both of the eldest children began therapy. “They are learning different ways they can manage those big feelings,” Ramirez said. “My seven-year-old tries to be a tough little kid, but I can tell he misses his dad.”

In a letter to the immigration judge supporting his father, Alex wrote about how much he missed him and how badly he wanted to see his dad “in real life,” not through a phone or tablet. The youngest child, two-year-old Joaquin, took the separation hardest. “He’s still little, so it’s hard for him to understand why he can’t see his father,” Ramirez said. “He was the one who was used to sleeping in his dad’s arms, so every night he turns to see the empty space next to me, and he says ‘Me hace falta mi papa,’ ‘I need my dad.’”

Dr. Lisa Fortuna, professor and chair of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California, Riverside’s school of medicine, led a report describing worksite raids and arrests during federal immigration enforcement operations as creating a “public health emergency” for millions of kids like José and his brothers. Detention and separation from a caregiver “fundamentally reshape a child’s development and mental health,” Fortuna said in the report.

The Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University found that detention and separation of children and parents, even for short periods, can trigger toxic stress. “Psychological science is clear: detention, deportation, family separation, and the constant threat of such actions create chronic stress that increases anxiety, depression, trauma-related symptoms, and long-term health risks,” American Psychological Association Chief Executive Officer Dr. Arthur Evans Jr. said in a report by the organization. “These harms are especially severe for children, whose emotional development depends on stable and secure caregiving relationships.”

“It impacted the kids more because they had their dad every day. Even if he came home tired from working in the hot sun, he would come and play with them,” said Ramirez, the 31-year-old mother of three. “And he took care of us. He would pay our bills, help me around the house doing chores, and bathe [the kids.] He was a real present dad. That’s what I love about him.”

The financial strain of an immigration arrest has been documented elsewhere. A 2020 study in Pima County, Arizona, found that an immigration arrest costs households an average of more than $24,000, including lost income, out-of-pocket legal fees, the value of belongings seized during arrest and not recovered, and other expenses related to navigating the immigration court system.

Ramirez took on the family’s bills after Padilla’s detention. She had been a stay-at-home parent studying for a test to become a certified phlebotomist, but had to retake the test several times because she had little time to study without her partner’s support. “It’s been very hard. I just find myself crying all the time, some days are harder than others,” she said. She and her children moved in with her parents and pay rent to them.

“It’s been a struggle managing time and finding a new flow,” Ramirez said. “I have to study either really late at night or really early in the morning because it has to be when the kids are asleep, so I hardly get rest.” She wakes before 5 a.m. most days to give her mother a ride to work, then finds an hour to study before the children wake. Ramirez has not been able to pass her test but hopes to retake it soon, once she can adjust to her new routine.

On a Friday afternoon in June, Ramirez laid out family photos on her couch. In her hands was a Valentine’s Day gift she had made for Padilla before he was detained. “We didn’t get to celebrate Valentine’s Day how we wanted, but it’s ok, this is waiting for him when he gets out,” she said, feeling optimistic about his return. “Look, that’s him!” she added, pointing to a photograph in which Padilla was being embraced by his seven-year-old, both sporting huge smiles on their faces.

Padilla took a job in the detention center kitchen, Ramirez said. “He said he didn’t want to drown in depression. He wants to make the time pass by, and he says any money he makes he can use to buy himself soups and snacks because he didn’t want me to worry about putting money in his account,” she said.

On August 4, six months after his arrest, Padilla was released from immigration detention. According to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which helped the family with his case, his children welcomed him at Union Station in Los Angeles, as captured in the organization’s account of the reunion. “Who’s that papa?” Ramirez told her seven-year-old as they turned the corner; no words came out, just smiles and tears of joy and relief.

Padilla’s immigration case remains pending, and the family has kept his GoFundMe open to help with attorney fees. “I do have a lot of faith and hope that he will be freed,” Ramirez said in June, before his release. “I can’t wait for the day my kids have their father back.”

A version of this story was originally published in La Opinión. The reporting was produced in collaboration with the Ethnic Media Health Reporting “Healing California” initiative at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and the California Local News Fellowship program at the University of California, Berkeley.