ICE agents arrest undocumented Honduran man in federal building even as wife, lawyer watch

The couple's marriage petition had been approved by an immigration official.

Felix Yulian "Julian" Motino, a Honduran national who'd entered the country illegally in 2005, wanted to begin the process of gaining legal status. It was a longshot, but he'd built a life here and wanted to try to come out of the shadows. He worked as a house painter and paid taxes and had two U.S.-born children, ages 9 and 6, and a U.S.-born wife of two years.

Motino, 31, sat with his wife, East Price Hill native Alexis Motino, 26, and their lawyer, Matthew Benson, in a small office on the fourth floor of the federal building on Main Street, Downtown. They'd gone voluntarily, having requested the appointment six weeks earlier, to meet with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

For 45 minutes, the couple provided documents that included their marriage certificate from May 15, 2015, utility bills bearing both of their names, her U.S. birth certificate and his Honduran passport. They thumbed through their wedding album and showed the agent photographs of themselves from the early years of their relationship.

The USCIS agent, named Carlos, said toward the end of the meeting that he had to make copies of their ID cards. The agent came back to his office and asked the couple to have a seat in the lobby, where his supervisor, Julie, would speak to them.

"Julie said, 'Felix, we need you to come outside into the hallway,' " Alexis Motino said.

There, two officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement met him and said, "We need you to come with us."

Benson objected. His client had been here 12 years. He had no criminal record. He had a U.S. citizen wife and two citizen children. He paid child support to the children's mother. Their marriage petition had just been approved minutes earlier.

Alexis Motino burst into tears.

"Our worst nightmare came true," she said this weekend from the couple's living room, decorated with photos of the couple and family portraits. "After the interview went so well, we were elated. Then we got crushed."

Benson asked the agents to give husband and wife a few minutes alone. They agreed and said Julian Motino could keep his phone. The couple and their attorney made sure they had updated phone numbers. Agents did not handcuff Motino but said his wife could not ride down the elevator with him.

ICE agents drove Motino to the Butler County Jail in Hamilton, a federal immigration detention center. At 4 a.m. Friday, jailers transferred Motino to the Morrow County Jail, north of Columbus. He was another step closer to deportation.

As a noncriminal who's only offense was living illegally in the country, Motino's arrest is in line with policy established by the administration of President Donald Trump since he took office in January.

• From Jan. 20 through the end of April, 10,800 noncriminal unauthorized immigrants were arrested, compared with 4,200 in the same period of 2016 under President Barack Obama, according to ICE data.

• Overall ICE arrests under Trump were 41,300 through April, compared with 30,000 in 2016.

• Yet the number of deportations under Trump through April 24, 54,564, was down from a year earlier under Obama, when 62,062 people were removed. ICE officials said the reason is that more arrests are taking place in the interior of the country, not at the U.S.-Mexico border, which requires more time to move their way through a clogged immigration court system. Those federal courts have a backlog of 530,000 cases.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly signed a memorandum Feb. 20 that implemented Trump's Jan. 25 executive order, "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States."

"As Secretary Kelly has stated, ICE will no longer exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. All of those in violation of immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention, and if found removable by final order, removal from the United States," said Khaalid Walls, a Detroit-based spokesman for ICE, in a statement to The Enquirer in April.

Earlier in April, a Fairfield woman, Maribel Trujillo-Diaz, had been arrested and deported to her native Mexico.

More:Deported Fairfield mom fears for her safety, report states

Not a deportation priority under Obama

Undocumented immigrants the likes of Trujillo-Diaz and Motino — who'd arrived before 2014 and had no criminal records — were not a deportation priority under the Obama administration. 

It focused on removing violent criminals and people who were a threat to national security.

Yet anyone with a final deportation order is a deportation priority under Trump.

Motino had received his order in absentia from an immigration judge in Philadelphia in 2009. Motino had moved but not filed required change-of-address forms with the court, Benson said. Motino was detained at the U.S. border with Mexico upon entry in 2005, processed and allowed to continue to his U.S. destination, Cincinnati — where a family member lived — on his own recognizance.

Benson filed a motion Friday with the immigration court in Philadelphia to reopen Motino's case. Benson said the court received the motion Saturday and that it should serve as a temporary stay of deportation.

Benson said the court should not have waited four years before scheduling a hearing. He also said he did not understand why the case was not handled in Cincinnati, which had an immigration court at the time at the J.W. Peck Federal Building. That court closed in 2009.

Children visit their father in immigration detention

Alexis Motino and a friend took Julian Motino's two children on the three-hour drive to Morrow County for a visit Saturday afternoon. It's 152 miles each way to Mt. Gilead, Ohio.

Bryan Motino is 9 and Sonia Motino 6. They live with their mother in Clermont County.

Julian Motino had gone to the domestic relations court there to set up formal visitation and child support arrangements. He pays $457.11 a month in support, his wife said.

Motino also paid $1,400 in income taxes in 2016, his wife said, and religiously has kept his court-ordered visitation of every other weekend and two weeks during the summer.

"I miss him already," Bryan said Saturday morning, before the drive to Morrow County. "I miss playing soccer with him and just being with him. He can kick the ball from one goal to the other."

Morrow County's detention center is the second stop in the deportation process for undocumented immigrants arrested in southwestern Ohio. From Morrow County, immigrants are processed through a federal facility in Louisiana.

"There were a lot of tears," Alexis Motino said of the Saturday visit. "It hit the kids what was going on when they saw him in jail."

Visitors speak to inmates on a telephone line and view them through hard plastic windows.

Couple tried 'to make make things right'

Cincinnati lawyer Benson, like immigration reform advocates nationwide, is angry with the policy change under Trump.

"This is a very troubling case and illustrates how, despite Trump’s promise to target the bad ones and criminals first, virtually everyone here without status is now a target for ICE," Benson said. "ICE clearly should have much more important priorities than this man."

The couple had just celebrated their second anniversary and Alexis' birthday the weekend before his arrest. They'd gone on a long weekend trip to Columbus Commons and The Wilds in Cumberland, Ohio, and returned the Sunday before her husband's arrest.

"We thought this was the beginning of something better for us," said Alexis Motino, who attended Holy Family Catholic School in East Price Hill before her graduation from Walnut Hills High School. She works in a veterinarian hospital on the West Side and said he co-workers are supportive of her and her husband.

They started the legal process under the Obama administration. Benson cautioned them that policy had changed under Trump and that they ran some risk.

"Other people, family and friends, warned us that it could end badly," Alexis Motino said. "But we thought it was better just to do it. Nobody wants to live this way. No one wants to keep looking over their shoulder or worried about the next knock on the door.

"No one wants to be a fugitive, and that's what they called him."

For now, Julian Motino sits in the Morrow County Jail. He is trying to make sure he has enough minutes on his cellphone for the 15-minute call he's allowed to his wife. Benson said if the Philadelphia immigration court agrees to reopen the case that he will seek bond. He said Motino would wear an ankle monitor and agree to regular check-ins with immigration officials. Approval of the couple's marriage petition should help the case moving forward, Benson said.

Back in her East Price Hill living room, sitting on the edge of an oversized couch during a two-hour interview, punctuated by tears, Alexis Motino said she is grieving and in shock.

Still, she has no regrets of trying "to make things right. ... It was the best thing to do, even if it meant this."