Community members are advocating for the release of a San Antonio father in ICE custody after San Marcos Police conducted a stop that led to an arrest.
SMPD performed a traffic stop on March 14, responding to a report about a missing 15-year-old girl seen with an older man in a pickup truck. The vehicle description matched the truck Gerardo Reyes and his 17-year-old son Esteban Reyes were in, leading to both getting arrested and charged with interfering with an officer’s duty after refusing to exit the vehicle twice.
Esteban Reyes was released on bond shortly after the arrest, while Gerardo Reyes, who is undocumented, was transferred from SMPD to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, according to Gerardo Reyes’ daughter, Guadalupe “Lupe” Sarinana.
Mano Amiga, a local advocacy group that supports immigrants and marginalized families in Hays and Caldwell Counties, organized a press conference on April 2 in front of City Hall, demanding SMPD drop all charges and Gerardo be released from ICE custody.
Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra sent a letter to ICE asking that they let Gerardo Reyes return home to his family, and met with Sarinana on April 2 for a press conference before Mano Amiga’s.
“We are living in a moment where fear is starting to creep into our communities, and now it appears that fear may also be coming from our very own local law enforcement agencies,” Becerra said.
According to Sarinana, Esteban Reyes was driving when SMPD pulled them over without letting them know the reason for the stop, citing “per case law” while attempting to get him out of the vehicle.
“Literally not even ten seconds later, they yanked him out, and my dad was like, ‘Why are you treating him like that? He’s a minor and a U.S. citizen. What’s going on?’ and my brother was asking why he was getting arrested,” Sarinana said. “At a certain point, if you know a cop stops you, they should let the person know why they’re being pulled over.”
After arresting Gerardo Reyes and his son, officers later confirmed the missing girl was still at home, and no crime had occurred, according to KXAN.
Before Becerra’s press conference started, he and Sarinana were able to video call Gerardo Reyes to check on him and discuss the support behind his case.
“He’s just really overwhelmed, knowing that he doesn’t want to make the wrong move with anything, and then on top of that, he does live in a cell with four other inmates, they don’t even have their own space, and they only eat once a day,” Sarinana said.
Sarinana said the detention center always makes Gerardo Reyes sign a handful of documents or else they threaten to take away his visitation hours
Gerardo Reyes’ wife, Sanjuana Escalante, said she was emotionally and physically dependent on her husband because she is permanently disabled and can’t work.
“I live every day with worry, fear and heartbreak. I don’t know when I will be able to see him again,” Escalante said. “I don’t know when he will be able to come home, and that uncertainty is something that no family should have to carry.”
Escalante said she is close to losing the house without her husband’s help.
“This is about a system that punishes immigrant families first and asks questions later, and we have to name the bigger picture, because this did not happen in a vacuum,” Nataly Avendano, immigration equity director for Mano Amiga, said. “Texas Laws like Senate Bill 4 have created a culture of fear and overreach.”
SB 4, which passed in 2017, forces local enforcement to collaborate with federal immigration authorities, and it encourages officers to act as extensions of ICE, Avendano said.
“These policies do not make our community safer. They make them more vulnerable,” Avendano said. “They create a deportation pipeline, where a traffic stop, a false report or a simple interaction with police can escalate into detention [and] deportation in permanent family separation, and that is exactly what we are seeing here.”
Avendano said programs like 287(g), which allows local law enforcement to act like ICE agents, open the door for residents to be interrogated and funneled into the deportation system.
“[Mano Amiga] has definitely seen different [immigration] cases throughout the county,” Avendano said. “We’ve had a family from Kyle who also had a husband that was detained and eventually deported, also we cannot forget the ICE raid that happened in Dripping Springs.”
Avendano said the raid in Dripping Springs led to 49 individuals being arrested at a kid’s birthday party. According to her, more than a year later, there has still been no evidence presented showing gang affiliation, despite law enforcement claiming that it was the reason for the raid.
Sarinana said her father is currently held at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center, in Taylor, Texas. The family is raising money to afford an immigration lawyer.
Editor’s Note: The original version of this article incorrectly reported that Avendano was speaking about Senate Bill 4 that passed in 2023. This has since been corrected to show that Avendano was speaking about the 2017 Senate Bill 4.
