Belgica Castillo, a mother of three, didn’t think much of it when her partner, Jose Manuel De Paz Cruz, said he was taking a detour after work to pick up some aguas frescas. She was busy preparing for her 7-year-old autistic son’s birthday party, and Cruz had called her to let her know he was returning early to celebrate.
But as Cruz walked to his home in Sunset Park at around 2:00pm on Jan. 10, he never made it to the party– or to his partner, his 14-month old son and two step-children. Instead, Cruz, who has no criminal record, was stopped and arrested by federal immigration officials.
Now, as almost two weeks have gone by, Castillo and the Cruz family are consumed by worry and anxiety as they wait for the phone to ring, wondering where he will turn up next. After being taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Brooklyn, Cruz has been in Manhattan, New Jersey, Arizona and now California.
“The whole family is devastated,” said Madelyn De Paz Cruz, Jose’s sister. “Our whole world is just upside down.”
Cruz is just one of the thousands of people who have been detained by federal immigration officials since President Donald Trump started his second term last January. There were roughly 40,000 people being held in immigration detention last year. But by the start of December, nearly 66,000 people were held in immigration detention across the United States, according to the American Immigration Council.
While national attention has focused on arrests at immigration court and large-scale ICE raids, dozens of smaller street-level arrests have been occurring across New York City, including in Brooklyn.
Over 5,000 people have been apprehended around the New York City area between January and October 2025, according to data available from the Deportation Data Project. Cruz is also part of another grim statistic: A third of all ICE arrests have had no criminal records, according to a New York Times analysis of the data.
A Boy Grows Up In Brooklyn
Jose Manuel De Paz Cruz came to the U.S. in 2000 when he was 6-years-old. His family moved around Brooklyn before eventually settling in Sunset Park. Cruz attended P.S. 131 and P.S. 217 for elementary school, JHS 259 William McKinley for middle school, and El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice for high school.
Described as “lovely and loud” by his family members, Cruz, 31, focused on work– building and fixing homes– for many years, but especially so after his baby son arrived just over a year ago.
“He is a very happy father, very loving,” said Castillo, who spoke in Spanish as Jose’s sister translated. “He was working more and more since we had a baby. He wanted to give us a stable life, to make sure that his baby, his family, is okay. And just to provide happiness.”
Castillo and the Cruz family said they had to piece together when and how Cruz was arrested by speaking to neighbors and witnesses who saw what happened that Saturday afternoon.
According to witnesses, Cruz was walking up 44th Street alongside Sunset Park, known for its breathtaking views, including the Statue of Liberty. Cruz later told family members he got off the train earlier than usual because the subway wasn’t running smoothly. He said he planned to buy drinks for the birthday party and head straight home.
Witnesses said they saw four ICE agents stopping people in the area while holding up a photo, asking passersby if they knew the person pictured.
Cruz told family members that he saw a masked man near a parked truck on 44th Street. Once he entered the park, he felt several men rush behind him. ICE officers showed a photo to Cruz, but when he didn’t reply, the officers got angry, searched his pockets for his wallet and looked for identification. When they couldn’t find a U.S. ID, Cruz said, they threw his belongings in the trash and arrested him.
Witnesses later told the family they saw Cruz escorted out of the park at the 44th Street and 6th Avenue exit with another man.
“He was doing good, he was working the whole week. He was working and coming home to his family, spending time with us,” before this happened, Castillo said.
After a few hours, Castillo began to worry. Despite multiple tries, Cruz’s phone went dead. Fearing the worst, she called Cruz’s sister and cousin to tell them he was missing. Family members looked for him in the last known location, but never found him.
Then, at around 5:00pm, Cruz finally called. He told Castillo he was at 26 Federal Plaza, the federal immigration court in Manhattan. He said ICE had taken him in the park, and at 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn he was handcuffed. Cruz told his partner to remain calm and to not open the door of their home to anyone.
“I felt like I had a lump on my head,” Castillo said. “I didn't know how to react. I started to cry. I started to tell him that it wasn't possible, that this couldn't be happening.”
Castillo said she immediately packed up and went to Cruz’s sister’s house to take refuge. In the days since, the Cruz family, many of whom are U.S. citizens that include a school teacher, started to mobilize. They called Congressman Dan Goldman and City Council Member Alexa Avilés to inform them what was happening in their district. Another call went out to Brooklyn Defender Services to find legal counsel and the family started a fundraiser on GoFundMe.
Little Defense
Avilés said ICE has set up a warehouse to conduct their operations on 1st Avenue in Sunset Park.
“Tragically, ICE has been violently detaining New Yorkers every day. It is completely heartbreaking and destabilizing for our whole city,” she said in a statement. “It completely disregards due process.”
She noted how immigrant legal service providers across the city have struggled to keep up with demand.
“These detentions are against the very nature of New York City as an immigrant city and completely sickening,” she said.
Advocates have been calling on Albany lawmakers to add at least $175 million in the next budget to pay for immigration legal services.
“Immigrant New Yorkers are under attack, and silence or half-measures from the state are not an option,” Murad Awawdeh, president and chief executive officer of the New York Immigration Coalition said in a statement.
Brooklyn Defenders said they could not comment on whether the organization represents or has been asked to represent an individual.
Racial Profiling
For now, all Castillo and the Cruz family have are the infrequent and short phone calls they get from him from locations across the country. After immigration court, Cruz said he was taken to Delaney Hall, a federal detention facility in Newark, N.J. Then a call came from Arizona on Jan. 17, where he begged his family to get him an immigration lawyer.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn’s immigrant communities remain on the edge.
Most people in the area are so fearful, said Castillo, they only leave home for work and groceries. A Brooklyn deacon was recently detained in front of his Bensonhurst home, prompting church leaders and elected officials to denounce Trump’s deportation program.
Karina Xelo, Cruz’s cousin, believes immigration agents are racially profiling people to fill a quota.
“He was coming home from work wearing his construction gear,” Xelo said. “He's just, you know, a hardworking man… But he was basically profiled in the stop because he just didn't see them.”
New Yorkers should not be forced to live in fear of being snatched off the streets by masked agents or being detained at legally-mandated immigration hearings, Goldman said.
“My office is actively working to assist unlawfully detained individuals, including Jose Manuel De Paz Cruz, and get them the legal assistance they need and I continue to fight in Washington to rein in ICE and hold agents accountable for their unconstitutional and violent conduct," he said in a statement.
In the meantime, all the family can do is wait for the next phone call.
Jose Manuel De Paz Cruz’s last known location was California City, California. But that was days ago. No one knows exactly where Cruz is now.
*Editor’s Note: BK Reader decided to withhold Cruz’s nationality after the family was advised that such disclosure would impact his future legal proceedings.
