This story is the third and final part of a three-part series detailing how U.S. immigration enforcement policies affect the people caught up in the process
After being arrested and detained last August for immigration violations and enduring expensive and time-consuming litigation, a Tulsa couple lost their entire livelihood.
Over the course of their detention — four months for Ramirez and eight for Vasquez — the couple lost their jobs and the physical ability to pay their bills, so they fell behind on rent and utilities for their home in Broken Arrow.
They lost the house.
Their detention also led them into about $12,000 in legal debt. That's in part because they hired representation early on, a rare and expensive commodity that can come with mixed results.
KOSU is only using their surnames because they fear retaliation from federal immigration officials during their pending visa case. This is the final part in a three-part series about their experience.
If not for an unlikely source of representation in immigration court, and a little bit of luck with judicial timing, Vasquez's deportation would have been all but guaranteed. He decided to call upon friends, who would offer him hope and buy him time until a surprising turn of events led to his release.
But by the time they were both free, they'd have nothing to return to. Meanwhile, federal authorities gained nothing from the couple's arrest.
Vasquez and Ramirez are still both waiting for their U visa hearings, a special status reserved for victims of violent crimes who assist law enforcement in investigations and prosecutions. And while their detention cases and removal proceedings have been terminated, their immigration statuses haven't changed.
Friends, hope and judicial discretion
As lawyers with Rivas shifted their focus to a big-picture legal battle in federal court, Vasquez still needed legal defense on the immigration docket. During the initial days in detention, Vasquez and Ramirez got in touch with a client-turned-friend from Stillwater, Jose Sanchez.
"His brother called me, and then he called me," Sanchez said of Vasquez. "He was already at the detention center…you know, they had already picked him up. And his wife was in, I want to say, Texas. They separated them."
Sanchez started sifting through federal immigration statutes and recent court decisions for some idea of how to help.
"And I thought, well, you know, this is a learning curve that I don't think I've got time to do," he said. "So I made a couple of calls to, well, one to Rachel and a couple other friends of mine."
Rachel Evenson, a tax attorney living in Stillwater with experience in immigration court in Minnesota, answered Sanchez.
"He was asking if I could take a look at the documents that he was able to get because the family, they had worked with Rivas law firm," she said. "But the family was getting to the point where they didn't have any more resources to continue paying Rivas."
By the time Evenson committed to helping in January, Ramirez had been released and was back in Tulsa living with her adult son. Vasquez was still detained, waiting in Cushing for updates to his immigration case.
"He didn't really understand what was happening with his case anymore," Evenson said.
Evenson, in a last-ditch effort to get Vasquez released, tried to file a redetermination of bond but was denied due to administrative confusion. She expected bond hearings to be held in person, at the ICE field office in Dallas, but that wasn't the case.
"I went to Dallas to appear on his behalf for what I thought was a bond hearing," she said. "The Dallas immigration court didn't know the judge's name."
She learned from officials in Dallas that the hearings are being held on WebEx, an online meeting software, sometimes 20 at a time in quick succession.
"I spent three hours in the WebEx courtroom listening to the master calendar hearing," she said.
She also learned that she was playing catch-up because Vasquez was waiting for a final determination on whether he would be removed, not a bond hearing. So, she filed a motion to terminate his immigration case on the grounds that he was wrongfully detained because of his pending visa status.
But when Evenson appeared in WebEx court in late February to represent Vasquez and argue for his release, the federal prosecutor was unprepared and requested an extension to review the filings.
KOSU met with Evenson and Sanchez, who sometimes helped with translations, that day to witness the proceedings firsthand.
"I see there is a motion to terminate the file," the judge said, addressing the ICE prosecutor. "I had a chance to quickly take a look at that, but… are you ready to address this now? Would you like some more time to respond to this in writing?"
"I would like to have some more time here," the federal attorney said.
The judge scheduled another hearing for March 9, during which the prosecutor invoked a precedent from the 2026 immigration court case Ibarra Vega v. U.S. Department of Justice to defend Vasquez's detention. The judge pushed the case back another month to early April to give himself time to review each side's arguments.
Vasquez, meanwhile, was staying distracted with work and exercise.
"I worked in janitorial to keep busy," Vasquez said. "And well, you know, the little bit of money I earned for commissary."
Vasquez's records show he earned $12 to $14 a day cleaning shower pods and bathrooms, which he said others avoided, even though the job was among the highest-paid.
The longer he waited, though, the faster his patience waned, and he began to consider the voluntary removal option.
Sanchez and Evenson, also feeling out of options, recruited a local Stillwater church and assembled some luggage and about $1,700 in cash for Vasquez to use at the commissary and for basic resources when he arrived in Mexico. Ramirez, his wife, was contemplating her next move if Vasquez ended up in Mexico.
"God gave me the chance to be free again," Ramirez said in a late March Interview, about two weeks before Vasquez would be released. "It has to be for a reason, maybe to pay bills…but we're all in shock. He's going to have to get comfortable before I decide, because he hasn't been to Mexico in 24 years."
But at his April 9 hearing, when Evenson thought Vasquez would be ordered removed, a different judge was presiding. And with the exact same set of facts as the previous one, the new judge determined that Vasquez is protected from deportation and ordered his release pending an appeal by ICE within 30 days.
After eight months of detention, Vasquez was released less than a week later. And while the judge in Ramirez's case didn't include any comments explaining her release, Vasquez's did.
"Indeed, deferral of removal is an incentive provided because of the important humanitarian and security interests that underlie the creation of U nonimmigrant status," Vasquez's immigration court order reads. "The purpose of the statute was to 'strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to detect, investigate, and prosecute cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking of aliens, and other crimes...while offering protection to victims of such offenses in keeping with the humanitarian interests of the United States.'"
The judge quotes directly from the Battered Immigrant Women Protection Act of 2000, which protects not only the women themselves but their children and spouses when applicable.
Vasquez and Ramirez are still both waiting for their U visa hearings. Their detention cases and removal proceedings are terminated, but their immigration statuses haven't changed. The judge granted the termination "without discretion."
That means that after a collective year in detention and the loss of their livelihood, nothing is preventing the couple from being pulled over, arrested and subjected to the same fate all over again.
All they can do is try to recover and start anew.
Reconciling with release
They'd fallen about $2,100 behind on rent and about $600 behind on utilities for their Broken Arrow home by the third month of their detention.
"We were paying everything in full and on time," Vasquez said. "It's just that once they arrested us everything fell behind."
He said their family and friends all focused their energy and money on securing the couple's release. They couldn't keep paying the rent while legal fees were piling up, so they were evicted.
"Three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was very beautiful," Ramirez remembered of their home. "We wanted to buy it, but the owner wouldn't sell it."
They ended up on good terms with their landlord, Ramirez said, but they still owe a few hundred dollars in back rent, and their dreams of owning a home any time soon have fizzled. Many of their belongings were moved into storage or with family.
They are now living in Ramirez's son's two-bedroom apartment in Tulsa. They get around by borrowing her daughter's car, but whenever possible, they're driven where they need to go.
"Now, when I drive, I get on the road and put myself in God's hands," Vasquez said.
Ramirez works on an assembly line at a manufacturing company in the city, while Vasquez does odd construction jobs and focuses on getting back on his feet.
"I'm just now starting to work," Vasquez said in a late April interview. "I'm trying to save for a car and get some tools together so I can do construction for a little while longer, before I get a job with some company for the health insurance."
Health — physical and mental — would be another source of great loss for the couple. Ramirez has epilepsy and has had to increase medication doses to mitigate worsened seizures after detention.
"It used to be 500 milligrams," Ramirez said. "They upped it to 750. It's really strong. The doctor told me I need a high dose because my test results were very bad."
The price went up, too. She said she pays around $220 a month for her medicine and neurologist visits.
She takes the medicine before work in the evenings, and while it keeps her from having seizures, she said it also makes her dizzy and lightheaded.
Vasquez, who is diabetic, sometimes needed insulin, but didn't take any at all while detained. He said he didn't need it. Then they tried to give him Metformin, a pill to treat diabetes and high blood pressure, and he decided he didn't need that either.
"At first, I took it once or twice a week," Vasquez said. "Then I started exercising and within a month or two I was fine. They took me off those because …my blood pressure was better than the nurse's. And my blood sugar too."
He said he mostly lived off of salted crackers and coffee. But while the food in Cushing wasn't gourmet, it was edible. Detainees were fed three times a day, he said, including rice, potatoes and other starch-heavy dishes.
He's been able to manage his health better since getting out — a silver lining in an otherwise traumatic year.
The couple's plan for the foreseeable future is to keep their heads down and work to pay for their needs.
There's no other option, Vasquez said.
"Because in Mexico, where I am from, things are just as tragic. That's why I got out of there. I've been here for 25 years. There are no open doors for me back home."