photo credit: Erin Hooley AP 

ICE arrests across Northern California have more than tripled this year, recent data shows. Those arrests affect not only the individuals detained but also the families left behind.

As part of an ongoing series, KRCB’s Shandra Back spoke with one Sonoma County woman whose husband was arrested by ICE earlier this year.

“Yaira,” who asked that her real name not be used, is a mother of three living in Rohnert Park. She fled Ecuador with her family three years ago, saying gangs were targeting her husband and two children. She has three children now. The family was granted humanitarian parole, which allows them to live and work in the United States while their asylum case is pending.

In an interview at her home, she described what happened in October, when her husband missed a routine online ICE check‑in and was told to report to San Francisco. She says she was nervous and wanted to go with him, but he told her, “Just go on with your normal day.”

“It was one of the bitterest days of my life,” she says.

Before leaving, he handed her all the credit cards and passwords — already acting, she says, as if he might not return.

Yaira spent the morning checking her phone for updates. He checked in once, telling her they were going to attend to him soon. Then the messages stopped.

Their lawyer eventually called: “They detained him.”

“I started crying. I didn’t know what to do,” she says. She focused on retrieving the family car he had left in the parking lot.

When she arrived in San Francisco, she wanted to enter the building because her husband was just steps away. But her lawyer told her not to get close, not to go inside, and to keep a low profile. She drove back to Sonoma County in tears. Before her children came home from school, she wiped her face, took a breath and continued on with her “normal day.”

But she says nothing felt normal after that.

“That’s when my torment, my nightmare, began,” she says. “When you’re in that situation, the days don’t pass quickly. One day feels like an eternity.”

Yaira works at a thrift store, but her income alone isn’t enough to support the family. Her husband had handled the morning routine — bathing and dressing the children — while she cooked breakfast. Now she was doing both.

At first, she told the children their father was away on a work trip. But she couldn’t hide her sadness. Her younger son, who was especially close to his father, told her, “I feel like my world is blank.” He used to draw her flowers; now he drew them withered.

Yaira says her attorney couldn’t offer much clarity because they didn’t know what charges ICE was pursuing. She was told only to wait and be patient.

Since her husband had limited communication from detention, Yaira relayed updates to him. Just keep waiting, she told him.

But he couldn’t.

“He told me, ‘You know what? I’m going to go back,’” she says. Self‑deportation felt like the only thing he could control. At first she protested, but soon they were discussing logistics, including selling the family car.

Then one day, he didn’t call.

She contacted a friend whose husband is in the same detention facility, who told her she had heard he might have been moved.

“What do I do now?” she remembers thinking.

At work later that day, her phone finally rang. It was him. But before she could get answers, the call dropped.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of an ongoing series on the local impacts of federal immigration policy. Previous stories can be found under the Immigration News tab.