What we know about claim ICE deported Chilean grandad Luis Leon to Guatemala

Yahoo

2 days ago

In July 2025, following reports in The Morning Call, a news site based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a claim circulated online that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Luis Leon, an 82-year-old grandfather from Allentown, while he tried to replace his Green Card at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office and deported him to Guatemala.
One summary (archived) of The Morning Call's report on X had more than 6.5 million views at the time of this writing.
The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived) and TikTok (archived). Snopes readers also wrote in to ask if the claim was true.
However, we could not independently confirm the details of Leon's alleged deportation as reported by The Morning Call. Since the publication of Leon's story, the Guatemalan Institute of Migration, the Guatemalan immigration service, said (archived) in a statement that no persons matching the "name, age and nationality" in reports about Leon's alleged deportation had entered Guatemala. Attempts to contact Leon's family to confirm reported details proved unsuccessful.
We reached out to ICE to ask whether its agents arrested and deported Leon on the dates reported. We also reached out to the Embassy of Chile in Guatemala to ask if it could confirm whether Leon, who is reportedly from Chile, was in Guatemala and how he got there. We await replies to our queries.
ICE told The Morning Call on July 18 that an investigation into Leon's alleged deportation was ongoing.
The Timeline
According to The Morning Call's report citing Leon's granddaughter Nataly, ICE agents arrested Leon on June 20, 2025, at a USCIS office on 41st Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Leon had gone to the office to replace a lost permanent resident card, or green card. The card allows the holder to live and work permanently in the U.S. but does not grant them U.S. citizenship.
Nataly told The Morning Call agents arrested Leon and held his wife at the office for hours. Nobody in Leon's family knew where he was. "A few days" later, a woman contacted Leon's family claiming to be an immigration attorney and said she knew where Leon was but refused to tell the family.
On July 9, 20 days after ICE officers reportedly arrested Leon, that same woman contacted Leon's family and said he was dead, according to The Morning Call.
Also on this date, Michele Downing of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, joined several other speakers at a Lehigh County Board of Commissioners meeting denouncing ICE immigration enforcement actions in the county.
Downing said (time code 01:24:13) that Leon was her "friend's grandfather."
His name is Luis, and he came here from Chile. He was born there in 1942, and he fled political torture with his wife and his small children to come here in 1987. Four kids and 16 grandkids later, about a month ago, my friend's granddad misplaced his Green Card. So, when immigration called him to come and pick up his new green card he went with his 79-year-old wife to pick it up, and they were both detained. She was released seven hours later and he was never seen again and has never had so much as a traffic ticket in his entire life. Despite reporting medical conditions, and despite obtaining an immigration attorney with every penny they had saved, I received a phone call this morning from Immigration and Customs that he was found deceased at 4 o'clock this morning.
It was unclear where Downing got her information about Leon, which varied slightly from The Morning Call's. Downing said Leon was 83 years old, while The Morning Call reported Leon's age as 82 years old. Both were possible if Leon was born in 1942, as Downing said. Snopes reached out to Downing to ask how she knew about Leon and will update if we receive a reply.
Downing also added details not included in The Morning Call's report, claiming that she personally spoke to "Immigration and Customs" who confirmed Leon's death. According to The Morning Call, the woman who told Leon's family he was dead claimed to be an immigration attorney. We asked ICE to confirm if one of its agents or lawyers called Leon's family or Downing on July 9.
The Morning Call said in its July 20 article that Leon told his family he arrived in Guatemala on July 1. If true, this would further cast doubt on ICE telling Leon's family on July 9 that he had died, as Leon would have been out of ICE's custody by that date.
Regardless, by July 20, Leon's brother in Chile had reportedly located Leon at a Guatemala City hospital who were treating him for pneumonia and, through a Chilean government contact, confirmed with an unidentified U.S. official that Leon arrived in Guatemala via a detention center in Minnesota.
According to The Morning Call, the hospital in question could not confirm whether Leon was one of its patients due to privacy concerns. Leon's family would travel to see him in Guatemala, a July 20 report said.
Snopes could not independently confirm Leon's route to Guatemala. Leon did not appear in ICE's Online Detainee Locator System through a name search. However, since Leon had reportedly left the U.S., ICE likely removed his information from the system.
In February 2025, Guatemalan President Dr. Bernardo Arévalo said during a news conference that his government would receive 40% more deportation flights of "national returnees as well as deportees from other nationalities for their ulterior repatriation."
However, the Guatemalan Institute of Migration said in a July 20 statement, "Guatemala coordinates with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) on the reception of persons deported from the United States of America, which does not include South American nationalities." It also said there was "no person matching the name, age and nationality mentioned by the media" who entered Guatemala on the dates in question, referring to reports such as The Daily Call's.
DeepL.com provided Spanish to English translations of the Guatemalan Institute of Migration's statement.
Green Card | USCIS. 8 Jul. 2025, https://www.uscis.gov/green-card.
Migración Guate. "#Comunicado | Migración Guate, Informa:" Facebook, 20 Jul. 2025, https://www.facebook.com/migracionguate/posts/pfbid02pkWhUgKqu1sgcLXsBS1FwACYoo1oELSqMesnUiCk7SpMRuZshDkuSHtzt9P6dZGUl.
Online Detainee Locator System. https://locator.ice.gov/odls/#/search. Accessed 21 Jul. 2025.
"Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo at a Joint Press Availability." United States Department of State, https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-and-guatemalan-president-bernardo-arevalo-at-a-joint-press-availability/. Accessed 21 Jul. 2025.
Sheehan, Daniel Patrick. "Is ICE Running Rampant at Lehigh County Courthouse? Protesters Say so, and Demand the County Act." The Morning Call, 10 Jul. 2025, https://archive.ph/OgGPV#selection-1339.4-1510.0.
Sheehan, Daniel Patrick, and Elizabeth DeOrnellas. "Allentown Grandfather's Family Was Told He Died in ICE Custody. Then They Learned He's Alive — in a Hospital in Guatemala, They Say." The Morning Call, 18 Jul. 2025, https://archive.ph/4wLeK#selection-1309.4-1480.0.
---. "Update: Family Says Allentown Grandfather in Guatemala after ICE Arrest. but Country Says It Has No Records of Him." The Morning Call, 20 Jul. 2025, https://archive.ph/54Jv3#selection-1309.4-1480.0.
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