By Luisa Loi
La Conner Community News
In 2001, Juan Martinez’s brother petitioned for him to pursue a green card and chase the American Dream. Today, the man known as Conway’s “unofficial mayor” earns 35 cents an hour washing dishes and cleaning at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, where he has been detained for over a month.
“This is not America, I don’t want to think this is America,” Martinez told La Conner Community News last week in a monitored phone call from the facility, his voice sounding almost clear in a rare moment of improved audio quality. “This is not the American dream I know.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Martinez on July 30 outside of Super Duper Foods, the gas station, taqueria and ice cream parlor in Conway where he worked for the last two years, according to Manager Hanna Youssef. After 25 years of waiting to qualify to apply for a green card, Martinez had only 16 more days to go when he was taken, said friend and regular customer Lindsey Brooks.
Martinez, who is originally from Mexico and has an American Social Security number, did not foresee ICE coming after him. Neither did the friends and employers who spoke on the record, all of whom described him as a hard-working and exceptionally caring individual.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said.
Old law may offer Martinez a path to legal status
According to attorney Lisa Seifert, Martinez’s case is “unusual.” While she believes that most of the 12 million undocumented people in the country may not be able to get legal status under the current immigration system, he would qualify under a law that was first enacted in 1994.
Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows certain undocumented immigrants to apply for a green card from inside the United States and to remain in the country, even if they overstayed their visa or came without one. That is, as long as they meet certain requirements, paid a $1,000 penalty fee and filed by the deadline.
The law is still in effect today, but only applies to people whose petitions were filed on or before April 30, 2001.
“That is Juan’s case,” Seifert said. “If he had started this now, in 2026, or if he even started this in 2002, the door would be closed.”
After meeting a series of requirements, a judge should make a decision on his green card application at a hearing on Oct. 8.
According to Newsweek, Martinez was sentenced to jail in 2016 and 2020 for driving with a suspended or revoked license. In 2020, he was also charged with supplying or permitting minors to consume liquor. Seifert said these charges don’t prevent someone from getting a green card, as opposed to a violent or drug-related charge.
As of Sept. 15, the GoFundMe page set up by Tim Ferrell to help cover Martinez’s legal costs and government fees had raised $10,353. Ferrell, who’s hired Martinez to help maintain his property before, has been directly contributing to other expenses, though he anticipates not being able to afford doing that for much longer. Brooks, whose family became good friends with Martinez, has been making T-shirts with catchy slogans to sell and raise funds.
A long wait
The case drew coverage from KING 5 and other news organizations as a possible case of mistaken identity, after Martinez said ICE agents appeared to be targeting the person from whom he had recently bought a car.
“In the immigration world, if an ICE officer encounters you and you are undocumented, that’s all they need to detain you and try to deport you,” said Seifert, who has 36 years of experience in immigration law.
Additionally, she said, a valid Social Security number does not necessarily mean a person has residency.
“It just means the government gave him that number so he could be claimed on somebody’s taxes or could file his own taxes,” she said.
When asked to comment on the 25-year wait period, Seifert said it is normal and depends on the relationship between the person filing the petition and the person they are petitioning for, and on how high demand for U.S. green cards is in the country of origin.
“A brother or sister of a U.S. citizen is like the lowest of the family priorities,” she said. “It can take 20 years or more.”
‘We are like cows here’
LCCN got in touch with Martinez through Ferrell, who passed along a reporter’s phone number and a request to call from detention. Detainees cannot receive calls, but can receive urgent messages, according to ICE.
Calls from the detention center were frequently disconnected or difficult to hear, problems Ferrell and Brooks said they have also encountered in their daily conversations with Martinez.
“They should be able to have a Zoom call with their family members and have the freedom of communicating just like everybody else that has a civil penalty,” Brooks said.
At the detention center, everything costs money, including making phone calls. Martinez recalled a man’s desperate and unsuccessful plea for funds to call his mother, who was dying of cancer in Kabul.
According to NPR, detention can cost $125 or more per detainee per day. In Martinez’s eyes, taxpayer money is being spent on “devastating lives,” he said.
Similarly to what inspections, immigration advocates and former detainees have reported, Martinez lamented medical neglect, unsanitary conditions and poor food quality.
Martinez described acts of desperation as part of daily life in the detention facility: one man covering himself in feces; another smashing their head repeatedly against the table; a suicidal mother who hadn’t seen her three children in months; and a man with leukemia, begging to be sent back to his home country to die.
While Ferrell’s weekly $200 deposits help Martinez supplement the detention center’s meals with drinks, chips and canned tuna, the food is expensive. A 4.5 ounce chicken breast alone runs $6, Martinez said. As a result, many, including himself, have lost weight during their time in detention.
“We are like cows here,” Martinez said. “Like beef.”
‘The laws need to be changed’
As of last week, Martinez was sharing a cell with a man from Pakistan. Whenever the center receives an influx of new detainees — which come and go as ICE arrests and flight transfers surge in Washington — he has to make room and sleep on the floor, he said.
Despite feeling optimistic about the outcome of his case, Martinez’s usual cheerfulness has been dampened by his predicament. Under Seifert’s encouragement, he has been making an effort to keep his mind busy and positive by reading and attending church services. He also talks with other detainees from all over the world, each with their own back story.
Seifert and Brooks — who takes care of business operations at immigration law firms and talks with immigrant families daily — explained that being in the United States without papers is not a crime, but a civil violation. It’s like a speeding or a parking ticket, they said, except immigrants don’t get to just pay a fine and move on with their lives. Instead, they are subjected to a punishment that is disproportionate to their offense and are not entitled to government-appointed legal counsel.
“I think nobody wants to see the cruelty that we’ve been seeing,” Seifert said. “Everybody wants the law to be followed, but do they really realize that you can be here and do every single thing that is possible to do and still not be able to become fully legal?… The reason we have so many undocumented people is because the laws need to be changed.”
Luisa Loi is a general assignment reporter at La Conner Community News.
