A family is struggling to get a husband and father back after ICE agents detained him in Westchester County while he was leaving for work.
Tears ran down Rosa Zhagui’s face as she remembered the moment. She and her husband have been inseparable since she was 15 years old in Ecuador. Last week, ICE agents arrested him as he left their Port Chester home.
With his hands cuffed behind his back, 43-year-old Milton Guamarriga could be seen calling out his wife’s name. Rosa didn’t hear him and didn’t know what was happening at the time.
Guamarriga works as a marble stone installer and volunteers as a firefighter in Port Chester. He doesn’t get paid for his volunteer work because he is undocumented, but his family says he helps the community because he wants to make a difference.
He was also trying to go back to college to earn a degree in IT.
“My younger sister, who’s eight, asks for my dad every night. We had to tell her he was on vacation or a work trip,” said Guamarriga’s daughter, Joselyn.
Joselyn says her father crossed the border illegally when he was 15, but in the nearly 30 years since, he has never caused trouble. She insists he is not violent.
The family says Milton is being held at Calhoun County Correctional Center in Michigan. He was applying for citizenship, and they hope he will be allowed to finish the process and be released.
“Honestly, it’s hard not to break down because my mom is struggling a lot. She has my two younger siblings who are still in school, and we’re just trying to figure out how to make everything work until my dad comes home,” Joselyn said.
