ICE split her family apart

No one seemed to know where he was. 

Elizabeth tried again to see if an update had been posted on the ICE app; his name still did not appear in the system. 

Her worry grew. 

Her sister decided to call his cell phone, something they had tried before without luck, hoping for an answer. To their surprise, Elizabeth’s husband, Hediberto ‘Eddie’ Ramirez, answered the phone call with heartbreaking news: He was in Guatemala, already deported.  

Tears streaked down Elizabeth’s face. She peppered Eddie with questions. He had no answers.  

“I lost it,” she said. “I just need my husband back.”

The last time Elizabeth saw her husband was on Sept. 4, a Thursday, at the Nutrition Bar Confectioners factory in Cato, about a 30 minute drive northwest of Syracuse. Eddie was in the process of being detained by ICE; Elizabeth was having a panic attack watching from as close as they would let her. 

Eddie caught her eye and gave her a re-assuring look. He was confident he would return, he later told Lives in the Balance.

Eddie said he tried to show ICE agents his work permit, but the agents told him they don’t need to look at it and took him into custody anyway. Eddie then asked to call his lawyer, but ICE denied his request. He spent Thursday and Friday nights in a small cell at an ICE facility near Buffalo. 

On Saturday morning, Eddie and his co-workers were transferred to Texas. They had still not been given a chance to talk with their families or lawyers. Once in Texas, Eddie again asked an ICE agent if he could speak with his lawyer. Eddie said the agent told him he would be able to on Monday, saying lawyers don’t work on weekends. 

But ICE never let him make the call. They woke him at 5 a.m. on Sunday, telling him he was being sent to Guatemala.

“A lot of men say they never cry,” Eddie told us on a call from Guatemala, where he remains. “But I did.” 

He flew back to Guatemala and took a bus to his mom’s house, where he had his first meal since being arrested. His mom was happy to see him, thinking he was there for vacation. Later, she realized he had been deported. 

Since Eddie’s deportation, Elizabeth has been trying to hold her family together, caring for her 13 and 14-year-old sons, while working 12 hours a day to pay bills, send money to her husband and cover legal fees. 

“My head is just wandering in so many different directions; it’s really bad right now. I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown,” she said. “I can’t hold it anymore and it’s just all overwhelming for me.”

The boys feel the same way. “My kids are not the same; they want their dad,” Elizabeth said. 

Deportations from New York rose by more than 150% from 2023 to 2025, according to a Lives in the Balance analysis of ICE data obtained through FOIA and processed by the Deportation Data Project.

Now, Elizabeth continues fighting to reunite her family and bring her husband home. She and Eddie’s lawyer, José Perez, are working to push forward an appeal and a spousal petition that seeks to bring him back because his family is here and he has an American wife. 

“A lot of men say they never cry. But I did.”

– Hediberto ‘Eddie’ Ramirez, Elizabeth's husband

Perez explained that Eddie had the right to work and remain in the United States while his legal status was being resolved, as he had an appeal before the Board of Immigration Appeals. While awaiting a decision, Eddie should have been legally allowed to stay and work, Perez said. 

“They simply didn’t want him to talk to his lawyer because they didn’t want the lawyer to find out where he was, so we couldn’t take any action,” he added. “And that’s exactly what they did: violated his rights and deported him without him ever having spoken to his lawyer.”

Perez said what Eddie went through was a clear violation of his rights.

“They didn’t allow him to prove, through any legal process, that he was indeed eligible to work, and they denied him the right to speak with his lawyer not once, not twice, not three times, but on 10 or more occasions,” Perez said. 

Elizabeth hasn’t lost hope of seeing her husband again, but Eddie worries for his wife. She often works overtime, struggles to sleep and has lost her appetite, he told us. Elizabeth said she has lost over 20 pounds since the Cato raid and her husband being taken by Ice. 

But she keeps going for her children, and for the hope of having her family together again. 

“Things just seem like it’s getting heavier and heavier on me,” she said. “We really need him. I can’t do this without him. I can’t live without my husband.”

Nick King contributed to the data work in this report