Couple Detained While Visiting Relative at Army Base Is Released on Bond

The couple that was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after trying to visit their son-in-law, an Army sergeant, at Fort Drum in upstate New York on the Fourth of July has been released on bond.

Concepción Barrios and Margarito Silva, unauthorized immigrants who have lived in New York for more than 20 years, presented their New York City-issued ID cards at the entrance of the base, but they were told they needed another form of identification. Soon after, Border Patrol agents arrested them and sent them to Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York. They had been detained for 19 days before their release Monday.

The Silva family paid a $20,000 bond to secure the couple’s release.

“We just came out and we are on our way home, anxious to see my family, my grandchildren, and my children,” Barrios said in a video posted by Make the Road New York, an immigrant rights group that is working with the family.

Barrios and Silva were released on bond the same week that a judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan ordered the release of Pablo Villavicencio Calderon, an undocumented pizza delivery man who was detained and turned over to ICE when he tried to deliver food to an Army base in Brooklyn. The judge granted Villavicencio a stay of deportation while he waits to hear back on his petition for a green card.

Barrios and Silva hugged their son for a few long moments Monday after ICE released them. The couple is still at risk of deportation; their next immigration hearing is in August.

In her video, Barrios said of her detention, “Those days were very sad days, especially because I did not have my family.”