When Martin Geobany Terrazas, 33, and his co-worker were run off a dirt road and arrested last week near Bayfield by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents, it wasn’t just their lives that were upended.
Terrazas’ wife, Liz Lozano, said her husband’s arrest has devastated her and their 8-year-old son, Tavo Terrazas, and brought everything in their lives to a stop.
“It’s like your whole world is put on pause,” she said. “The world around you is continuing, but your life is, like, just stopped.”
Lozano said she needs to help her husband, but her son still needs to eat, do homework and burn off energy playing outside. Their dogs still need to be fed. Her house needs to be maintained. She has coursework to plan for her day job. She has to remember to eat.
“It’s very stressful, it is hard. It’s not an easy thing at all,” she said.
The couple live in Blanco, New Mexico, but have connections to Southwest Colorado, including running a business and being past residents.
Tavo, who received a perfect attendance award at school last year, has missed more than a week of school after Terrazas’ arrest on Sept. 2. Lozano took time off work at Bloomfield School District to visit Terrazas at an ICE detention facility in Denver. She was still in Denver as of Tuesday.
Lozano is a long-term substitute teacher for a life skills class at Blanco Elementary School, and a citizen of the United States. She has a degree in criminology and criminal justice and runs a Bayfield community Facebook page she started when she lived in Bayfield. Her son is also a United States citizen.
Terrazas owns Wildgame Remodeling, a home-improvement business that operates in Southwest Colorado, including Durango, Bayfield and Pagosa Springs. He’s a Dreamer – an immigrant who was brought to the United States as a child. He’s benefited from the U.S. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
Lozano said he was brought to the United States from Mexico when he was his son’s age, 8 years old. His mother lives on the Front Range. He has never known his father and he’s never visited Mexico since he moved stateside.
Lozano said Terrazas grew up in Denver. His two daughters from his last marriage live there. He and Lozano have been married for three years and began dating five years ago. They got their marriage certificate in Durango and celebrated afterward at Applebee’s.
Terrazas was “doing everything right,” she said. His business is a registered limited liability company in Colorado. The couple was saving money to place an immigration attorney on a $5,000 retainer to renew his DACA status.
The policy provides deferred action for renewable two-year periods to Dreamers, eligible immigrants who were brought to the country as children.
“$5,000 is just the beginning. You still have to pay them another $5,000 in payments, and then the filing fees for the paperwork and everything,” she said. “You don’t just fall into the U.S. and have $5,000 to throw at an attorney.”
That’s a lot of money to save, she said, on top of savings for medical and vehicle emergencies, bills and groceries.
When Lozano told her son about his father’s arrest, the boy broke into tears. She recorded the interaction, censoring out her son’s face, in a video included in a GoFundMe raiser called “Help Reunite Geo with Liz and Their Son.”
The clip, which was also posted to social media, elicited ugly reactions – laughing emojis and phrases such as “FAFO (expletive around and find out)” from some users, she said.
“You’re going to say that to an 8-year-old? He didn’t get to choose where his dad was born,” she said. “... God forbid something were to happen to one of your loved ones and you have to tell your children, ‘Dad’s not going to come home, mom’s not coming home because of this.’ Your heart is going to break.”
She is grieving, she said. The night Terrazas was arrested, she couldn’t convince herself to enter her bedroom, knowing he wouldn’t be there.
“He’s not coming home. Like, I don’t get to hug him,” she said.
ICE comments on Terrazas’ detention
A spokeseman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Denver responded to The Durango Herald’s request for comment Tuesday afternoon after our print deadline.
The spokesperson said Martin Terrazas was arrested by Homeland Security Investigations, a subdivision of ICE, in Bayfield last week because, “He’s an alien without authorization to remain in the United States.”
The spokesperson referred The Durango Herald to an HSI Denver post on X (formerly known as Twitter) that described Terrazas as “a criminal alien from Mexico.”
The post said Terrazas’ criminal background includes “poss. of cocaine, aggravated battery w/deadly weapon, DUI, DV and driving on a revoked license.”
The ICE spokesperson said when an immigrant is arrested on immigration matters, he or she is taken to an ICE office where they are processed.
Those in custody are allowed to make phone calls and are provided information about free legal services, the spokesperson said.
“After a determination is made that ICE will maintain detention of the alien, the alien is transferred to one of ICE’s network of detention facilities in the U.S., where they are afforded access to due process throughout the pendency of their immigration proceedings,” the spokesperson said. “During removal proceedings, detainees are afforded numerous procedural protections that ensure they are provided with notice and an opportunity to be heard.”
The spokesperson said ICE does not release information about when a person in its custody might go before an immigration judge, nor does it release information about someone’s history with the U.S. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy or their current status under the policy.
Lozano said the day Terrazas was arrested began much like any other day. She woke up and packed lunch for her husband, who woke up shortly after and got ready for work. He hugged and kissed his wife goodbye. Lozano then woke up their son to get him ready for school.
Terrazas was scheduled to meet several clients in Bayfield for a remodeling project that day. But when he arrived at the address provided to him, nobody was there, Lozano said, relaying what her husband told her over a five-minute phone call from an Aurora detention center that evening.
The clients asked Terrazas to meet them at an antique shop in Bayfield. In his truck, he and his colleague followed their vehicle to what he thought was a work site. Terrazas hadn’t given the roundabout way of meeting much thought – Lozano said he wasn’t one to think of the “worst case scenario.”
They led him down Gem Lane west of Bayfield, Lozano said. Suddenly, the clients’ vehicle swerved and stopped in the middle of the road, blocking it. About five unmarked vans drove up from behind, forcing Terrazas into a roadside ditch.
One van parked about 6 inches from Terrazas’ driver-side door, preventing his exit. A group of agents left the vans. They wore ski masks and hoodies and pointed firearms at Terrazas and his colleague while demanding they exit the truck from the passenger-side door.
The agents “manhandled” Terrazas’ colleague, who is skinny and stands about 5 feet 2 inches tall, and as they pointed their firearms, Terrazas saw their fingers on the triggers, Lozano said.
Terrazas told them his colleague doesn’t speak English and to stop being rough with him. The agents responded by asking Terrazas what his immigration status was – the agents had no idea, Lozano said.
None of the agents wore clearly visible badges or insignias. Terrazas’ only hints they were immigration agents were tags around their necks and the imprints of badges underneath their hoodies.
The only man he recognized was a Homeland Security Investigations agent who has been captured in videos filmed by Colorado Rapid Response Network rapid responders, who document ICE activity across the state, Lozano said.
She found Terrazas’ truck using the last registered location pin in her maps app. The truck was empty, save for the keys on the dashboard and the lunch she’d packed for her husband.
Terrazas managed to reach Lozano and inform her of his arrest in a 28-second phone call. In a later phone call from an Aurora facility, Terrazas told Lozano that other people being held there shared similar stories – that they went to what they thought was a job only to discover it was a sting.
“It was practically like a cartel kidnapping where they just block you off and surround your vehicle and hold you at gunpoint,” she said.
She said immigration officers are “no better” than Mexican cartels, who officials criticize while using “the exact same tactics.”
“How are you guys getting away with this?” she said. “You guys are being terrorists in your own country. How are you treating other human beings like this?”
Lozano said Terrazas was worried about ICE as arrests of immigrants surged across the country and in La Plata County, but he “never thought in a million years” he would be set up through a fake work order.
Waiting for her chance to speak with Terrazas in Denver, Lozano talked to other people vising their loved ones in detention. She met one woman whose son, who is from Denmark, has been in custody 11 months. Her husband met a Durango man from a concrete business who had been in detention a month or longer.
She said she doesn’t know how long it will be before a decision is made on Terrazas, whether he is allowed to remain in the country or is deported.
She said when Terrazas asked her if she would move to Mexico if he is deported, she said, “Of course I’m going with you.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
