Shortly after 9 p.m. on Feb. 12, Geordan Sanchez Rodriguez and Mayeley Ruiz Torres walked into the West Onondaga offices of lawyer Jose Perez. She wore a soft cream sweater and a delicate necklace. Under grey sweatpants, he wore an ankle monitor.  The couple were exhausted but relieved.  Sa nchez Rodriguez had been released hours before, after a month and six days in a federal immigration detention facility in Batavia. As Ruiz Torres described how her husband shared one toilet with about 50 people during his first 10 days in detention, Perez swept in to see them. “Libertad!” he bellowed, and then returned to the work that has absorbed more and more of his life over the past year.  Perez has been a decorated lawyer in Syracuse for nearly two decades, handling workers’ compensation and immigration cases. But since President Donald J. Trump began cracking down on immigration, fighting a more brazen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has consumed Perez’s life.  The lawyer’s clients have been picked up at regularly scheduled ICE appointments, detained with their infant children, disappeared from the ICE locator, and been denied access to Perez, their lawyer. One client asked for Perez twenty-five times, he said. The man was deported without ever talking to Perez. Another, a U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico, was detained for three days, unable to convince ICE of his citizenship.  Perez has had to match ICE’s vigor. His 20-hour days begin at 7 a.m. and end at 3 a.m. He flies from Syracuse to Texas, California, Arizona, Louisiana and Colorado — all places where his clients have been transferred after their detentions. The past year has probably taken ten off his lifespan, he joked.  “Humanity and legality are gone from ICE,” he told Central Current. Since ICE has cracked down in Central New York, Perez has had about 150 clients detained, he said. Twenty to 30 have been deported and another 70 to 80 have voluntarily agreed to be deported, he said. About 15 to 20 of his clients were being held by ICE in Batavia, he said. Another 40 or 50 of his clients are in detention, spread across multiple states. Many have been moved from detention facility to detention facility.  Even as he guides his own family through the country’s immigration system, Perez manages a full caseload. He’s had to navigate what he calls “traps” from the federal government.  He wakes up around 7 a.m. to eat breakfast before his daughter goes to school. He attends hearings virtually and in-person, beginning at about 8 a.m. Court runs through 4 p.m. Once the hearings end, he works at his office until 9 p.m., eating dinner at 9:30 and answering messages from clients and others through midnight or 1 a.m. Emails follow, until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Those long days are full, and they require him to be relentless.  Jose Perez greets Geordan Sanchez Rodriguez and his wife, Mayeley Ruiz Torres. Rodriguez was released on bond a few hours earlier. The couple met in Cuba. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current American by chance Chance has left Perez navigating the immigration system for his family.  He was born in Ithaca, when his father was a graduate student at Cornell. Even though he spent his entire childhood and much of his early adulthood in Venezuela, he has always had birthright citizenship. His sister, Jennifer Perez, who was born in Venezuela, does not. In 2002, Perez returned to Ithaca for what he thought would be a short-term stay. He wanted his son, Jose, to be born in the same place he was. He only planned to stay a few months — he was already a successful lawyer in Venezuela.  But while he was in Ithaca, a coup d’etat saw President Hugo Chavez temporarily ousted from power. Perez decided it was too dangerous to return to Venezuela. As a citizen, he was able to remain in the United States. He worked as a delivery driver while he learned English and eventually attended law school at Syracuse University. Today, dozens of legal awards hang on two walls of his office. Meanwhile, his sister is going through the asylum process.  With former president Nicolás Maduro gone from Venezuela, it has become harder to argue cases for people from the country. One judge told Perez in early February that everything is fine now in Venezuela, Perez said.  Perez disagrees strongly.  “The worst of the revolution, of the dictatorship, is still in power,” he said.  His niece is ten years into her own application.  In mid-February, his niece was notified that her asylum hearing would be in early March, giving her just three weeks to prepare the case.  Perez said it’s very difficult for families, employers and others to get information from the federal government about people who have been detained by ICE. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current “Who can prepare a case in three weeks? It’s impossible,” said Perez. “They are doing all these traps so that people are not able to get relief.” She called Perez, crying. In Houston, where she lives, people have been taken straight from asylum interviews to detention, Perez said. She wondered whether she should go to the interview. If she didn’t go, her asylum case – ten years in the making – would be denied. If she did go, she could be taken and threatened with deportation.  Perez told her to go. He would fly to Texas to be there with her.  Results from the interview are still pending, as there is a nationwide asylum pause and Venezuela is on the list of no decisions.  “We don’t have human rights” Perez’s clients in Syracuse have the same fears as his niece in Texas.  When clients ask if they should go to their biometrics appointments or ICE check-ins, Perez doesn’t know what to tell them, he said.  “In eighteen years of practice, I have never had to tell a client don’t go to an appointment,” said Perez. “But how can I tell a client, ‘Go to this appointment where you’re going to go and you’re going to get arrested and probably deported after 48 hours?’”  Not appearing at an appointment can also lead to an arrest and deportation.  Sanchez Rodriguez is one of the clients who was taken directly from a regularly scheduled ICE appointment. He and his wife, Ruiz Torres, are Cuban immigrants. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 2019, and met Sanchez Rodriguez on a trip to Cuba to visit her mother that year. They got engaged at the end of 2021, and married shortly after.  On one of her trips to visit him in Cuba, they noticed they were being followed. They believed it was because of political persecution and decided he should come to the U.S.  They pursued multiple immigration paths, including the green card and asylum routes. Perez represented Sanchez Rodriguez throughout the years-long immigration process. But the process became more complicated over time, as paths to citizenship for Cubans were closed. In 2025, Trump ended the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans Parole Program.  Ruiz Torres was a teacher in Cuba and Mexico before coming to the United States.  “I made my American dream here,” she said. “This is not the America that I dreamed to live [in],” she said a few minutes later.  ICE often requires asylum seekers to attend regular check ins at ICE offices while awaiting the government’s decision on their asylum application.  When Sanchez Rodriguez went to his Jan. 6 appointment, they told him Ruiz Torres couldn’t come in with him. In the past, she had always been allowed to. She sat in the car and waited, increasingly anxious. More than thirty minutes ticked away. She went inside and found the custodian and asked if he knew anything. He didn’t.  Geordan Sanchez Rodriguez, right, was released on bond from ICE detention in Batavia on the condition that he wear an ankle monitor. He is pictured here with Mayeley Ruiz Torres, his wife. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current Ten minutes later, she got a call from Sanchez Rodriguez. He was being detained. Sanchez Rodriguez didn’t know where they were taking him — just that it was two hours away — but he told Ruiz Torres to go to Perez’s office. Perez was in court but he texted her back immediately. He connected her to Matthew Borowski, an immigration lawyer in Buffalo, and told her they needed to file a habeas corpus petition.  Ruiz Torres was sobbing. She hadn’t thought this was possible — she was a naturalized citizen, and she and Sanchez Rodriguez are married. He has no criminal record and she believes he has a solid case for asylum.  They filed the habeas petition shortly after Sanchez Rodriguez was detained, but it took more than a month before he was released. Perez represented Sanchez Rodriguez twice on Feb. 10, once for his asylum case and once for a bond hearing.  For the first ten days in Batavia, he was not allowed to call Ruiz Torres.  During visits, Ruiz Torres talked to Sanchez Rodriguez over a phone through a glass window.  “It’s like a movie,” said Ruiz Torres.  Late last year, a Bureau of Immigration Appeals ruling made it much harder to get people out of detention, ruling an immigration judge could not consider a bond request made by a noncitizen who entered the country without inspection. In the last months of 2025, Perez was only able to get two people out of detention, he said.  Immigration lawyers have recently found detainees a path out of detention through habeas corpus petitions. Federal judges are allowed to review whether someone’s detention is legal and justified. Habeas corpus filings have hit historic highs in 2026, according to reporting by ProPublica.  There was a snag for Perez, however: He can’t argue habeas corpus petitions because he is not admitted to practice federal law. But he can argue his client’s bond cases. The bonds have ranged from just ankle monitoring and no cost to $10,000.  Since January, Perez has helped at least 20 clients return home.  Between hiring an extra lawyer and paying bond, the process is expensive. Many families can’t afford it. Every morning while Sanchez Rodriguez was detained, someone came around with a paper the detainees could sign to volunteer to self-deport, Sanchez Rodriguez said.  When people can’t afford the legal costs to get out of detention, they end up “just signing, signing, signing,” said Perez.  On Feb. 12, Sanchez Rodriguez was released. Ruiz Torres drove to Batavia and hugged her husband. She later brought him to Perez’s office.  Sitting in Perez’s office, the couple said they still don’t feel safe. “It’s a lot of fear that we feel in the community, in the country even,” she said. “Everywhere.” Perez echoed that fear. Citizens and green card holders have called him to ask if they may lose their status.  Ruiz Torres works in the Syracuse School District. Last year, she had students who had recently arrived from Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia and Venezuela, she said. Now, most of those families are gone.  Last year, a student’s mother was detained, leaving her second grade daughter alone in Syracuse. Ruiz Torres went with the young girl to the Ecuadorian Embassy, she said. “What is the human right?” Ruiz Torres asked. “We don’t have human rights.” More work to do Perez still has clients detained all over the country.  One of Perez’s clients was driving with her roughly twenty-day old child when she was stopped and picked up by ICE. First, they took her and her infant to Niagara County jail. But that facility couldn’t hold children. They sent her to Louisiana and eventually to Texas. As of Feb. 12, the two were still detained. Her child was about two months old. Perez wasn’t sure where she was until she called him ten days after she had been detained.  Many of Perez’s clients are people he first represented in worker’s compensation cases.  After law school, he worked for an insurance defense firm. He hated working for the employers. “I was more of the little guy attorney in Venezuela, and I wanted to be the same thing here,” Perez said.  He argued many pro bono immigration cases while working at the insurance defense firm. Immigration clients started calling him because of injuries at work. He had to tell them he couldn’t represent them because he already represented their employers.  Mayeley Ruiz Torres, right, talks to her husband Geordan Sanchez Rodriguez, left, after he was held in ICE detention for more than one month. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current That pushed Perez to open his own firm in 2012. Over a decade later, he now often sees the opposite: worker’s compensation clients turning into immigration clients.  At the end of the night on Feb. 12, Ruiz Torres and Sanchez sat opposite Perez in two large chairs facing his desk. They were surrounded by stacks of papers spread on every surface and nearly life-size statues of Lady Justice and Archangel Michael. Thirty-seven evil eye amulets stared at them from a wall.   Perez told them what to expect next. The couple filmed a short video for Perez’s Facebook page. They left at about 10:30 p.m.  Perez turned to speak with his legal assistant. 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