Just hours into her otherwise-ordinary shift at her Southington diner, Jalinne Iriarte received a call that caused her heart to sink.

“My sister called me at work and told me to come home,” Jalinne, a junior at Central Connecticut, said. “She told me my dad had been taken into custody. It was so surreal because I didn’t think that could happen.”

Jalinne has not seen her father for over a month since he was taken into custody and deported back to his native country, Mexico, by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Jalinne, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, cannot even legally visit him over the border.

After living in America for nearly two decades, Isaias Iriarte was detained by ICE on Dec. 7 of last year. Before being deported back to Mexico, Iriarte was forced to endure four detention centers—three in New England and one in Louisianna. According to Jalinne, he was never able to see his family at any of them due to visiting restrictions.

Jalinne said her father was taken into custody while he was out running errands before heading into his family-owned restaurant, “El Paso,” in Plainville.

“He was taking a back road and that’s when two ICE patrol cars stopped him,” Jalinne said. “They told him he had a deportation order and told him to get out of the car.”

From there, Iriarte was taken into custody.

“[My mom] picked up my sister and told her what happened and that’s when I found out,” Jalinne said. “I went to [my family’s] restaurant where my mom, my sister and my uncle were and we were all just crying.”

Iriarte, Jalinne said, was immediately brought to the Hartford ICE Detention center and, days later, was later transferred to one in Massachusettes and then New Hampshire.

However, it wasn’t until the day after Christmas that the family would come face-to-face with their biggest fear.

“The day after Christmas, my dad didn’t call. We started to worry because he never misses a call,” Jalinne said. “My sister called the detention center in New Hampshire and that’s when they told us he was being sent back to Mexico. For a whole day, we didn’t know where my dad was because he wasn’t in the system.”

Since that day, Jalinne, her younger sister Bitzania and their mother have only been able to communicate with Iriarte via phone call and Facetime.

Faced with a 20-year “punishment,” Iriarte’s only port of entry back into the U.S. is closed.  According to Jalinne, her father would have to have two natural-born U.S. citizens, both a parent and a child, to legally re-enter the U.S.

“He hasn’t gotten into trouble, he has no criminal record, he didn’t do anything bad, he was just trying to provide for his family,” Jalinne said.

Despite the support the Iriarte family has received from hosting a peaceful protest last Christmas, Jalinne said some of the social media comments, like ones on Facebook that she has seen, are too much.

“Because this story isn’t personal to some people, I think it’s easy for them to say, ‘Why didn’t they just do it the right way?’ And in a small town in Mexico where people don’t have a lot of resources or money or education to know about the process of applying to come in with a visa,” Jalinne said. “Sometimes, they just have to do it because they need to for the safety of their children. Because they want a better life for their children. That’s what happened to my parents.”

With her father now back in Mexico, Jalinne, who graduates CCSU in 2020, said her mother has begun to talk about selling their family-owned restaurant to move down with him.

“I don’t know where I’ll be in five years or where my sister will be in five years, so it’s very scary to think about,” she said.  It’s all up in the air right now.”

Anyone looking to locate family or friends who have been detained by ICE can visit https://www.ice.gov/detention-facilities for more information.