Westchester County volunteer firefighter detained by ICE, sent to Michigan correctional center
Video taken by a neighbor shows 43-year-old Milton Guamarrigra being detained by ICE in front of his Port Chester, New York, home last Tuesday.
His daughter Joselyn Guamarrigra says he was leaving for work earlier than usual when he saw agents walking around the block.
"He went to ask, 'Who are you guys looking for?' And they tell him, 'We're looking for you,'" she said.
She was last able to talk to her dad on the phone Friday morning. It's the only way she can reach him while he's at Calhoun County Correctional Center in Michigan — an ICE field office.
"I feel like, mentally, he's holding up as strong as he can," she said.
Joselyn Guamarrigra and her mom, Rosa Zhagui, share it's in Milton Guamarrigra's nature to try to help others. They say he's been a volunteer firefighter in Port Chester for seven years and that the department can't employ him as a fulltime firefighter because he's undocumented.
He was working his way toward going to college to study IT and has worked locally as a marble installer for more than 20 years.
Milton Guamarrigra spent more than half of his life not only with his wife, but in the U.S., where he entered illegally. There's been an open deportation case against him since 2004. He's been trying to obtain citizenship for the past two years.
"The way that they took my father ... they made it out to seem like he was a criminal when that's not even the case at all," Joselyn Guamarrigra said.
CBS News New York's attempts to get a comment from both the Department of Homeland Security and ICE were unsuccessful.
The fire department and mayor's office have also been advocating for Milton Guamarrigra. The Village of Port Chester even held a meeting Thursday night looking for ways to get federal officials to also vouch for him.
The mayor and fire department sent out letters to offices at the federal level, in hopes that he's released.
"I just want to make sure that my dad knows that we tried our best. We tried our best to make sure that he would come back home to us," Joselyn Guamarrigra said.
His community is making a plea to the very country he built his life in to stay with his family.
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