At the Otay Mesa Detention Center now for nearly two months after federal agents arrested him outside his Barrio Logan home, a man seeking asylum from Venezuela said his separation from his wife and three young children has been the worst experience of his life. Andrew Zambrano’s wife said they came to the U.S. in 2023 and he made an appointment to seek asylum through the CBP One app, which was dismantled within hours after President Donald Trump took office. She said he was granted work authorization as he waited for his case to make its way through the system, and got a job at the airport. He had just returned home from work on Nov. 7, his wife said, and stepped outside to get their dog when federal agents detained him. A neighbor captured his arrest on video, showing the agents picking him up and physically placing him into their vehicle as he screams for his wife. “We applied for asylum here to have protection,” she said in Spanish, “everything legally.” ICE did not respond to questions about Zambrano’s case. A search of San Diego County court records did not show any criminal charges in his name. “I’m not used to being separated from my children and they aren’t used to being separated from me either,” Zambrano said in Spanish, via video call from the detention center. He and his wife said they haven’t told their children – ages 5, 3 and 11 months – exactly where he is. The couple has told them he’s at work, and because he works at the airport, they sometimes think he’s on a plane. “What hurts the most is when they tell me, ‘Dad, you forgot me,’” Zambrano said in Spanish. “They don’t know the truth but I could never forget my family.” Zambrano said he will not sign paperwork for his own deportation and will stay in detention as long as it takes to be reunited with his family. His wife is now caring for the children alone and doesn’t have a job. They said he was the breadwinner. “What worries me is that they’ll be left without rent,” Zambrano said in Spanish. “I worry that they’ll be left on the street without a home, without a father.” “How do I help my family?” he asked, through tears. “How do I help my family, if they have me in jail?” Zambrano’s youngest child, a daughter, was born in the U.S. after they arrived to seek asylum, making her an American citizen. The next hearing in his immigration case is scheduled for Jan. 6, which is also his wife’s birthday. A few days later, their daughter will turn one.   “We only came here to work and give our children a better future,” Zambrano said in Spanish. “My daughter is American and now she’s going to turn one year old without her dad,” he continued. “She’s about to take her first steps and I’m not there. She’s going to start talking soon and I’m not seeing it, and it hurts me every day. An American girl has the right to be with her father and they took that right away.” Just through October of this year, ICE arrested 2,992 people in San Diego without a criminal history or pending charges, according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project via Freedom of Information Act request, and analyzed by NBC 7 Investigates. That number is up nearly tenfold over the 305 arrests made in all of 2024. “The administration continues to use the same rhetoric of how they’re going after the most dangerous people and the worst of the worst. But what we really see is them going after people with no criminal history,” said immigration attorney Andrew Nietor, “contrary to the rhetoric and really contrary to the norms that we’ve traditionally had of really focusing on, you know, who might be a danger to the community.” “What we’re really seeing is them going after perhaps, for lack of a better term, the low-hanging fruit and just trying to focus on pure numbers and quotas,” Nietor continued. “The rules have changed and we’re not being told what the rules are,” he added. Though he’s separated from his family, Zambrano is far from alone. He brought a friend to the video call, a man from Colombia who said he had been detained for four months. “I’m here paying for something I didn’t do,” he said in Spanish. “Fighting every day.” “We’re not here because we’re criminals,” Zambrano said in Spanish. He said sometimes he dreams that he’s with his children but when he wakes up, all he sees are the same walls. “Everything is a lie.” For now, to survive, his family relies on support from aid organizations and community members like their neighbor Vanesa Ribas. “These are wonderful children and they’re very much loved and they’re very loving and very affectionate and sweet and funny,” Ribas said. “But I know that they miss their father.” “We’re all just people, ordinary people. We have families. We have jobs. We have dreams. We have hopes for our kids,” she continued. “Folks going through this terror, they’re not different. We’re all just people.” Nietor said he’s found solace in seeing the community response to stepped-up enforcement, and seeing people volunteer their time to bear witness to arrests made at immigration court. “I’m hopeful that in 2026, more just regular people will see what’s happening and realize that not only is there something that they can do, but there’s something that they should do,” Nietor said. ...read more read less