The brothers were headed back to college after visiting their parents when they were stopped in a small city in central Alabama.
Luis and Carlos Orta-Santoro, 19-year-olds born in Venezuela and living in the U.S. for four years, are soccer players at Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, Alabama. They would have been preparing for a soccer championship game for Wallace State in a few days.
Relatives say they have pending asylum applications, valid work permits, and no criminal records. Both are now in an immigration detention facility. The twins' parents say that the brothers are expected to be transferred from the Pickens County jail to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana.
“Our family is devastated,” said their aunt, Carolina Orta.
DHS said that while they had entered the country legally, they had “overstayed in defiance of our laws,” and their case would be heard by an immigration judge. It said pending asylum applications do not confer legal status in the U.S.
The school said in a statement, “Both young men are valued members of the Wallace State community, and our thoughts are with them during this difficult time. We sincerely hope for a positive resolution to their situation.”
In the wake of midterm elections, President Donald Trump said his immigration crackdown may have been “too tough” and suggested it was time to sit down with the Democrats. Despite those misgivings, immigration arrests have continued unabated. In Los Angeles, a line of immigration officers in masks and body armor blocked the entrance to a hospital emergency room in a heavily Latino neighborhood early Saturday. In the hills of central Alabama, twin 19-year-old brothers from Venezuela were arrested at a traffic stop heading back to college the day after elections.
Trump has named Stephen Miller, the architect of his hardline immigration agenda, as his new chief of staff. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, meanwhile, said his orders had not changed.
“Deportations will continue,” Mullin wrote in an online post the day after the election, warning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes no days off and that “this includes on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Election Day.”
María Bilbao, a campaign coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee in Miami, said she has received at least one call a day from someone detained in South Florida since the election.
“Everything remains exactly the same. The arrests have not ceased at all,” Bilbao said.
