Trump banished her husband to El Salvador. Work and worry are all she has left.
After her husband was taken into custody, she began making queso llanero, a Venezuelan cheese, and offering manicures to neighbors, bringing in a little money to feed their five kids.
Trevor Hughes- Jefferson Laya Freites, a Venezuelan immigrant with work permission and a pending asylum claim, was sent to El Salvador.
- Laya Freites' wife is struggling to support their five children without his income and fears for his safety in the Salvadoran prison.
- The expulsion is part of Trump's increased immigration enforcement, which has raised tensions in Denver.
AURORA, Colo. ‒ Her phone rang as she sat on the worn black couch: Her 14-year-old daughter had skipped class again and a school administrator called to make sure everything was OK.
She burst into tears.
Two months ago, federal immigration agents had detained the woman's husband,Venezuelan immigrant Jefferson Jose Laya Freites, in suburban Denver.
Then, despite having work permission and a pending asylum claim, he and his cousin were transferred to a Texas holding site before being flown to a notorious prison in El Salvador under President Donald Trump’s tough new border controls.
Their families haven’t heard from them since.
A father with five kids, Laya Freites, 33, has no criminal record in the United States, and his wife says he’s never been part of the Tren de Aragua gang, as Trump claimed.
“I get out of bed and think about him and how he’s doing,” Laya Freites’ wife said. “They treat them like animals but he’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve that.”
Now, without Laya Freites’ salary from the stone countertop company where he worked, his wife is struggling to pay their mounting bills, including the rent for their one-bedroom apartment.
The dishes are piling up in the kitchen sink.
And their five children just won’t listen to her.
“I have to keep going for my kids,” she said, tears rolling down her face.
Trying to do 'things right'
Federal immigration officials detained Laya Freites and cousin Robert Elista Jimenez on Jan. 28 near a transit station and took the men to a privately run U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility five miles from where Laya Freites and his family lived.
After being held there for a month, the two men were transferred to Laredo, Texas, and told their wives they expected to be deported to Venezuela. Instead, they were flown to El Salvador on March 15.
Their families only found out where they were after seeing social media video of chained detainees being hauled into the prison.
The Trump administration declined to answer specific questions about detention of the men.
Trump’s publicly stated goals of significantly higher detentions and deportations across the country reflect his campaign promises to toughen border controls and kick out people he deems unwanted.
The president has also invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to further speed deportations by claiming the United States has been invaded by Venezuelan gangs.
Left behind by the president’s muscular new approach are thousands of women and children – some of them American citizens – who now face the loss of family and faith in the promise of a better life in the United States.
"You leave your country because of so many things happening with the government, with criminals," Elista Jimenez’s wife said. "You're worse off here … I used to say, 'the United States, the best country in the world, the laws are followed there.'"
Both women asked not to be named, worried that speaking out might make them targets for immigration officials.
After the murder of a relative, the two families fled Venezuela worried about violence, oppression and the economy, and hoping to find somewhere they could give their children a better future. They felt the dangerous trek north to the United States through jungles and deserts would be worth it.
Laya Freites started working at a stone countertop company, and Elista Jimenez worked at a remodeling company, their wives said, proudly showing photos and videos of them in the workplace.
"We were doing things right," Laya Freites' wife said.
An empty courtroom, a high bar for asylum
The immigration judge looked over the crowded courtroom and called his next case: "Jefferson José? Jefferson José?"
No one answered.
Judge Joseph Imburgia again scanned the courtroom buried deep within a sprawling U.S. ICE detention facility in Aurora, looking over the rows of men in orange or red detainee clothing.
He'd been ticking through appearances for the men, advising them of their rights, checking to see whether they were eligible for asylum claims or had previously signed deportation orders.
But the next case was different: Records showed Laya Freites was in custody for a pending asylum-and-detention hearing. And he wasn't there.
Stepping forward, an attorney with an immigrant rights group told Imburgia that Laya Freites' wife believed he'd been shipped to El Salvador’s CECOT Salvadoran prison. Trump officials recently signed a $6 million detention deal with El Salvador to hold U.S. detainees.
"She saw her husband on video at the Salvadoran prison," attorney Monique Sherman told Imburgia.
The judge turned to federal prosecutor Tanga Bernal for clarification. She said Laya Freites was released to "local authorities." When Imburgia pressed for more details, Bernal said she needed to get permission from her superiors.
"I don't know where he is and he's on the docket today," Imburgia said. "The government needs to show me something about where this individual is."
Imburgia scheduled a follow-up hearing for March 26 hearing, but because Bernal was not present, he rescheduled it again.
On March 26, Imburgia held a short hearing for a Somali man who agreed to be returned to his homeland after being detained by federal immigration agents. The man said he worried about the violence he'd face upon his return, but said he didn't want to remain in federal custody, either.
"I cannot continue because I am tired of life here," the Somali man said via a Swahili interpreter.
Imburgia wished him well and said he'd be deported in "days, weeks. I don't control that."
Imburgia then held a hearing for a Guatemalan man who crossed the border in 2019 as a 17-year-old, got detained by immigration agents for living illegally in the United States and then skipped his next court hearing. The man, now 23, said in Spanish that he fled home because his stepfather hit him, crossing the U.S. border illegally to live with his father, who then abandoned him.
"I want to stay in this country because I feel I'm better here," the man said via a court interpreter.
A former Air Force colonel and military judge, Imburgia carefully explained to the man that because he'd crossed the border as a minor, he might be entitled to special treatment. But Imburgia also cautioned him that claiming asylum was not something to be done lightly ‒ federal officials would quickly reject any asylum claim deemed frivolous.
While routine, the cases observed by USA TODAY offer a rare glimpse into the normal proceedings of deportation courts, and highlight just how differently Laya Freites and his cousin, Elista Jimenez, have been treated.
"I understand you want to stay here," Imburgia told the Guatemalan man. "In order to qualify for asylum, you need to essentially convince the court you have a … fear of persecution. Not just harm, but harm that rises to the level of persecution … What you've told me so far does not qualify."
The man said he would consider his options, and Imburgia scheduled him for a new hearing in late April. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Imburgia denied about 80% of the asylum claims he heard in 2023, the last year for which complete data was available.
According to court records, Laya Freites is still scheduled to appear before Imburgia on April 23. His wife hasn’t heard from him since early March.
Different views on immigrants, enforcement
If the struggles of Laya Freites’ wife and kids represent one facet of Trump-era immigration reform, DEA agents searching an Aurora apartment reflect another.
In a daylong March 20 operation targeting three Denver-area locations, DEA agents detained six Venezuelans suspected of living illegally in the United States, one of them described as a "confirmed" Tren de Aragua, or TdA member. DEA officials declined to discuss specific details of the operation with USA TODAY, but provided some details to a local FOX TV affiliate.
Wearing facemasks and hoods, the plainclothes agents took control of an Aurora apartment where they said they found evidence of drug use, and detained the alleged TdA member. They found a five-year-old boy had been left in the apartment with the gang member.
Agents said they detained the child's drug-using mother elsewhere that morning. In a photo distributed by the DEA, an agent in a ballistic vest, a gun on his hip, plays video games to occupy the child while waiting for someone to take custody of him.
"Here in the state of Colorado, we have had a number of infant deaths and kid deaths due to fentanyl and drug overdoses," Assistant Special Agent in Charge David Olesky told FOX21. "These are the type of folks that are reckless in their conduct, and if you think that that TdA member cares for you as a Coloradan, or as an American, or as his neighbors in the community ‒ look at how he was caring for this five-year-old kid."
The Denver area has about 40,000 Venezuelan immigrants in large part because Texas' Operation Lone Star bused them up from the Mexican border after they crossed several years ago under a Biden-era asylum policy.
Donald Trump, during the presidential campaign, repeatedly singled out Denver and Aurora for having large numbers of TdA members, an assertion repeatedly rejected by the Republican mayor and local police.
Upon taking office, Trump ordered increased DEA and ICE enforcement in the Denver area, and the agencies have highlighted their work on social media. But they have also repeatedly refused to provide many specifics, instead highlighting a handful of cases.
Complicating public oversight: In some cases, the DEA is no longer seeking criminal drug charges against immigrants, but is instead turning suspects over to ICE for immediate deportation proceedings.
Federal agents have also angered many community members and elected officials with high-profile targeted enforcement operations, including the mid-March detention of longtime immigrant-rights activist and Denver-area resident Jeanette Vizguerra, whose attorneys admit is living without permission in the United States.
Vizguerra rose to prominence during the first Trump administration for taking sanctuary in churches for three years until immigration agents assured her she was not a deportation target. Biden-era officials continued that policy, but ICE agents detained Vizguerra in March outside the Denver-area Target store where she worked, sparking protests.
In the Denver area, hostility toward federal agents has been rising for months, and a group of activists inspired in part by Vizguerra have been swarming the area whenever someone reports the presence of ICE or DEA agents. The community activists hand out posters explaining Constitutional rights, including hiring an attorney or not having to open the door without a warrant signed by a judge.
On March 20, those tensions surfaced when a small group of community observers began arriving at the apartment complex to monitor the DEA agents. The volunteers, including several retirees, said the federal agents refused to explain what they were doing.
Among the immigrant community, fears have been running high about police impersonators ‒ several people nationally have been prosecuted for pretending to be ICE agents. And many of the immigrants who sought asylum in the United States did so because their home governments are corrupt and law enforcement officials frequently mistreat suspects or try to extort them.
In a sign of how tense relation have become between local residents and federal agents, the apartment building manager called Aurora police because she was frustrated that the DEA agents refused to identify themselves or explain their presence at her complex.
Four uniformed Aurora police officers quickly arrived, spoke with the federal agents, and then reassured the manager and the community members that the federal agents were lawfully present.
DEA agents saw the interaction differently.
"Meanwhile, our agents were outside getting harassed by agitators and protestors who had shown up in Aurora basically fighting for us to release this known TdA member," Olesky told FOX21. "They have no idea what’s going on inside this apartment complex."
'I have to keep going for my kids'
Many of the Venezuelan men sent to El Salvador had tattoos. Even though Laya Freites didn't have any, his wife has seven – all with personal meaning and none connected to a gang, she said.
Still, out of fear, she makes sure to cover them up every time she leaves the house now, she said.
“Even if it’s hot, I’ll wear this,” she said, showing a green puffy jacket and ankle-length black pants.
Without her husband’s salary and work permit, Laya Freites’ wife doesn’t have much money coming in. Although she also requested asylum and work permission, her case is still pending.
After her husband was taken into custody, she began making queso llanero, a Venezuelan cheese, and offering manicures to neighbors, bringing in a little money to feed the kids and send her husband commissary funds so he could buy instant noodles in the ICE detention center.
Since his detention, she's struggled to find good work. A recent apartment-cleaning gig paid only $120 for two days. It almost wasn't worth the effort, but she needed the money, she said.
“Every day I see what I can do to get money because I have to pay for my children's things,” she said. “I do everything because I have to keep going for my kids.”
While she’s trying to make ends meet, she wonders how her husband is being treated in prison.
Before he was deported, he’d been promoted at work and given new uniform shirts. He never got the chance to wear them. They sit folded, tags still on them, inside the bedroom the family shares.
To prove Laya Freites is innocent, his wife is tracking down criminal records from Venezuela to show U.S. officials, hoping that someone will resolve what she sees as a terrible mistake.
Taking a sip of her Nescafé instant coffee and tearing up, she said, “I don't see how what's happening is fair."
The last time they talked, from the Texas detention center, Laya Freites apologized to his wife for not being able to achieve what they wanted in the United States.
Ignacio Calderon contributed to this report.