When Ignacio Carrizalez arrived in the United States from Mexico 22 years ago, he came with nothing and he knew no one.

Ignacio fought a lengthy, expensive and oftentimes frustrating battle to call Butler, and the United States, his permanent home. This included background checks, fingerprints, a biometrics scan and numerous forms. He learned English after living with his boss for several years here and he paid taxes. The finish line was in sight, only for Ignacio to be detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

When he first arrived, it would have taken about three to four years to become a permanent resident and cost tens of thousands of dollars in fees, according to Samantha Tamburro, an attorney and adjunct professor of immigration law at Duquesne University.

Now, after the COVID-19 pandemic, that time sits at about 10 years — depending on the immigrant — highlighting the obstacles immigrants looking for a better and safer life, like Ignacio, find themselves in, Tamburro said.

He had a permanent residency hearing scheduled for June 1. His ICE detainment kept him from it.

“He’s just trying to stay strong. He’s so confused,” his wife, Amanda Smail-Carrizalez said of Ignacio. “He doesn’t understand what’s happening. He feels like he’s being punished. But he’s a good guy. He doesn’t get it either.”

Currently held at Moshannon Valley Processing Center, Ignacio’s time and money spent working toward a permanent residency hearing seems wasted. It appears he will likely be sent back to Mexico.

At 3 a.m. Sunday, June 28, Ignacio called Amanda. He said guards gave him a bag to pack his belongings. He was told he was being transferred to Louisiana. He didn’t know what would happen next.

Ignacio was put into a van, he told Amanda the next day, and driven to an airport. He watched the other detainees, one by one, loaded onto the plane. He was the only one left in the van.

Guards then told him he was going back to Moshannon. No explanation was given for the incident.

ICE did not respond to the Butler Eagle when asked if it moves detainees between facilities before deporting them.

“They just took him for a ride to watch everybody get on the plane in the morning,” Amanda said. “What is that? How does that even happen?”

Carrizalez spent the first seven years of his time in America undocumented. He’s had federal documentation acknowledging his presence in the United States since 2011, when he married U.S. citizen Amanda Smail.

At first, Amanda and Ignacio tried working through Ignacio’s documentation online; but the complexities of the immigration process are almost impossible to understand without a lawyer, Amanda said. In roughly 2016, the family hired a law firm.

“(This law firm) was the first one that took our case on down in Pittsburgh and fully sat down and filled out paperwork with us,” Amanda said. “(Before that), we were downloading and filling out and paying for (documents) online.

“We had a lawyer step in, because things started getting very complicated and very confusing to me,” she said.

The process was a long and expensive one. The family worked with four lawyers before Ignacio was detained.

Amanda and Ignacio submitted the first major step to legal immigration, the I-130 Form, or the Petition for Alien Relative, between 2017 and 2018.

With this milestone completed, the couple continued to follow legal advice and make solid progress toward a green card, or official documentation of legal permanent residency, for Ignacio. Amanda even recalls going to the Philadelphia Consulate Center while pregnant in 2018 to complete Ignacio’s biometrics scan.

Meanwhile, the family continued to build its life here in Butler. They bought a house in 2015 and renovated it. Ignacio made money by building houses and other buildings to support his family. Amanda has a notarized copy of their marriage certificate from the Allegheny County Courthouse.

And in 2019, Amanda gave birth to their daughter, Dani.

Waiting on communication, updated information and filings from an attorney that never seemed to materialize despite Amanda and Ignacio paying for the firm’s services, they decided to find new representation.

But as the family has navigated the legal immigration process, it has become clear a challenge is trying to avoid bad actors attempting to exploit vulnerable individuals and families.

When petitioning for a green card, an immigrant who entered the country unlawfully needs to leave the United States and apply for the documentation from their home country’s consulate, according to business immigration attorney Ellen Freeman. Yet, only one consulate post per country can issue immigrant visas.

In Mexico, it is “Ciucad Juarez,” Freeman said, “It’s one of the most dangerous places in Mexico. If you don’t live there, you don’t want to really travel there.”

Amanda said the family’s lawyers were unclear on the potential need for Ignacio to leave the country to petition for his green card, yet emphasized other fees and documents in the process instead.

“Apparently, we have paid (National Visa Center) fees and things we shouldn’t have even gotten to yet,” Amanda said. “We’re paying (National Visa Center) fees where we’re not even in the (National Visa Center) part of it yet.”

The last immigration attorney Ignacio had before he was detained, Alexandra Lozano, is no longer allowed to practice law as of May 26, after being sued by nine former clients for “illusory, negligent and even fraudulent” services, according to the Seattle Times.

It was reported 54,000 pending immigration applications had been signed by Lozano’s law firm. Meanwhile, she was accused of submitting applications with exaggerated or false information without having clients review them.

Freeman said, while a majority of immigration lawyers work hard to meet the needs of their clients, “the problem is the legal system is overwhelmed.”

The Pittsburgh area is underserved, she said, as there is no Pittsburgh immigration court. Instead, immigration court typically happens in Philadelphia.

“I am assuming that there is absolutely not enough lawyers to serve these kind of cases, people who don’t have money who are very price conscious that make their decisions based on pricing and not reputation,” Freeman said.

Matt Jordan, a lead community organizer at Latino support group Casa San Jose, said his organization has found “the system is set up for people to fail.” Between the governmental fees and complexities and the legal fees, “it’s too expensive,” Jordan said.

“The average immigration process, people just can’t pay for it,” he said.

Tamburro estimated the typical immigration process can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 for a green card, depending on the case.

Because immigration law is so complicated and because it is constantly changing based on the outcomes of cases, “it is extremely difficult for anyone to practice immigration law without being saturated in immigration law at every moment,” Jordan said of the lack of pro bono attorneys.

Amanda estimated the family has spent between $35,000 to $50,000 on lawyers during the 10-year process.

After years of gaining documentation, the steady progress the Carrizalez family made came to a halt when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down consulates and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, canceling Ignacio’s scheduled permanent residency hearing.

“When everything shut down, there was a huge backflow of people,” Amanda said. “From the time of COVID-19, that permanent residency hearing was what we were waiting for.”

The pandemic strained an already buckling system — understaffed consulates and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service are even worse for wear after the global disease shuttered doors.

Prepandemic, an immigrant like Ignacio would have needed to fill out the I-130 petition, which would take one year to process and complete a waiver step to forgive illegal entry to the country, which would take about eight months to process. Now, the waiver takes an additional five to six years to complete, estimates Tamburro.

Since the pandemic, nationally, there is a backlog of more than 11 million cases reported in quarter four of 2025, up from 3.5 million in the first fiscal quarter of 2016, according to the American Immigration Council.

It took six years of persistent phone calls with lawyers and United States Citizenship and Immigration Service for Amanda and Ignacio to reschedule the hearing amid the backlog of cases the pandemic created, Amanda said.

Ignacio’s permanent residency hearing, scheduled for June 1, would have brought him within grasp of being a United States citizen.

He was not allowed to attend.

The journey to citizenship was flipped upside down on April 28 when Ignacio was pulled over for a routine traffic stop by an Evans City police officer. Moments later, ICE agents who happened to be in the area approached the vehicle as the police officer was pulling away. The police chief, Joe McCombs, later said ICE agents told the police officer Ignacio was an “illegal alien.”

Amanda wouldn’t hear from her husband again until 2 a.m. the next day, when Ignacio said he was taken to Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a detention facility that has frequently been in the news due to recent deaths and alleged poor conditions and treatment of detainees.

The family was about 85% of the way to a green card before Ignacio’s detainment, according to Amanda.

They were missing one document “that was waiting to be approved,” Amanda said.

Ignacio had a series of four master hearings — court appearances that are part of removal proceedings — to determine his future in the United States.

With Ignacio in ICE detention, the family’s future is uncertain. In the short term, it’s unlikely to continue in Butler. At his June 18 hearing, an immigration judge told Ignacio’s lawyers they had not submitted enough evidence in his defense.

Typically, immigration treats voluntary departure almost like a deportation, Tamburro said, where immigrants board an ICE-chartered flight, paid for by American tax dollars, and they leave the country.

Ignacio has until July 20 to self-deport or be deported, although how that will work is uncertain. The Carrizalezes were told by the judge that releasing Ignacio to his family was no longer an option. Amanda said she believed he would be transferred out of Moshannon — likely to Mexico via Louisiana.

Until then, Ignacio still buys coloring books at the commissary to color flowers for the couple’s 6-year-old daughter, Dani, since he is unable to pick them for her.

“I can’t pick flowers and give them to you, so I’m coloring this picture and pretending I’m giving them to you,” Amanda said of her husband’s intent.

Tamburro said while there are many ways to fight for lawful permanent residency while in ICE detention, “sometimes people sit in there for a year or two years,” time that can erode the mental health of detainees.

Ahead of his final hearing, Amanda attended the Butler County board of commissioners meeting June 17 to plead for help. At that point, Amanda and Ignacio had been separated for 51 days.

During his final June 18 hearing, Ignacio’s fifth attorney, paid for by a family friend, was not present when he agreed to voluntarily self-deport. His attorney was having difficulty joining the virtual conference call.

“When I asked the judge for a continuance to get better representation, I was told your lawyer wasted enough of this court’s time,” Amanda recounted.

A lack of legal representation in detention court cases is not uncommon.

This year, as of May, fewer than a third of immigrants — including unaccompanied children — had an attorney to assist them in immigration court when a removal order was issued, according to a TRAC immigration report.

At Moshannon, Ignacio has not fallen victim to the cruel treatment that has been previously reported on, Amanda said. Though there have been weird incidents, such as forcing Ignacio to translate for other detainees.

But the incident with Ignacio being taken to the airport, led to believe he was being moved further away from his family, particularly shook Amanda. She told the Eagle that a common pattern seen from handling of other detainees, such as shutting off his commissary, led Ignacio to believe he was being transferred to another detention facility.

It’s uncertain what will happen with Ignacio once he has to self-deport. Nobody has explicitly told him when or where he will be removed from Moshannon.

ICE did not respond to the Eagle when asked about Ignacio’s location and about detaining documented residents. Meanwhile, Ignacio’s name does not appear in ICE’s database.

But for now, Amanda and Dani prepare to self-deport with Ignacio, leaving the life that they had built in Butler County to join his family in Tamaulipas, Mexico.