Family disrupted: Texas woman shares DACA husband’s immigration saga

While slurping rice noodles and steamy broth, Blanca DeArcos and Victor Hugo Gutierrez-Flores shared their first date over pho. 

Blanca, then 23, introduced Victor to new things around Wichita Falls, like pho. While only a few years younger, the 18-year-old probably would have never tried Vietnamese food without her influence. 

When Blanca sat with Victor, she had already faced so much but maintained her appetite to grow as an individual. She had her first son at 17 and her second about three years later. She was an ‘A’ student, ran high school track and worked as a waitress at the Graham Country Club all while caring for her sons, Dacian and Marcos. She had experienced divorce. She was a novice vocational nurse with a plan to grow her career. College brought her to Wichita Falls, where the two met. 

Conversation never dulled with her, which Victor loved. 

Blanca admired Victor’s attention to details. He knew she liked salted pretzel bites and cherry Coke Slurpees. He would make sure to get Blanca a gift for special occasions and just because — like a white teddy bear with a globe full of candy. 

After a couple of dates in Wichita Falls, Blanca asked Victor to come visit her in Graham. That’s when he told her about his citizenship status. 

Being undocumented was a big part of Victor’s story, still it wasn’t something he casually shared with people, especially when trying to get to know somebody.

But Victor explained everything to Blanca. How he didn’t have a driver’s license. How he was uncomfortable traveling out of town and risking getting pulled over as an undocumented immigrant. 

She wasn’t phased by Victor’s status. Rather, she signed him up to take his driver’s test.

Documenting DACA, a family story

In 1997, Victor’s parents immigrated from Guanajuato, Mexico, to Texas in hopes of finding better opportunities. Victor was 11 months old. The Lone Star State held all of Victor’s firsts: his first birthday, his first steps and his first words. 

Wichita Falls was the only home Victor knew before meeting Blanca. 

Victor is a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The 2012 program was implemented during the Obama administration, giving young undocumented immigrants a work permit and protections from deportation. Victor has been a recipient since 16, renewing every two years. 

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DACA allowed Victor to get a driver’s license, but he had put off doing so until Blanca. 

From then on, she documented their life story in a gray file folder. She collected every DACA renewal document, high school transcripts and medical records.

She also gathered paperwork related to Victor’s two misdemeanors. In 2014, he was arrested in Wichita Falls as a teenager and charged with a class B misdemeanor for possession of less than 2 ounces of marijuana. He was sentenced to two days of jail time and fined $300 plus court costs. In 2018, Victor was arrested in Graham and faced the same charge. He paid a $500 fine and incurred no jail time.

Victor was so young at the time of his convictions, and his parents didn’t have the money to fight it in court, Blanca said. Victor renewed his DACA successfully since the charges with no issue, she added. 

After four years of dating, the couple married in the spring of 2018 at a farmhouse-style venue in Bryson. Blanca walked down the aisle dressed in a white gown embellished with lace shoulders and sleeves. Her sons stood on each side of her. The couple’s almost 2-year-old daughter, Adaly, joined the rest of the family in the ceremony. 

“We were all just there, and that’s how we are — because we always do everything with our kids,” Blanca said of the wedding. 

The couple had their second daughter, Bella, that same year. As their family grew, Blanca and Victor each continued their own education. The couple received financial support through Catholic Charities Fort Worth. 

Victor moved up from landscaping and food service jobs to earn his welder certification. He landed a job at XCaliber Container in Graham, where the family lives. Blanca earned her master’s degree and became a nurse practitioner.

In 2024, Blanca and Victor welcomed a third daughter, Celeste. 

Blanca’s folder overflowed with years of family photos that spoke to Victor’s character and their family — daddy-daughter dances, marching band performances and cheer events. She also included the land permits and blueprints for the house the family planned to build together. 

In more than their decade together, Blanca never worried about Victor being deported. But she knew there would be a day he would need to become a citizen. All of the documents and photos were evidence that Victor had lived in the country for nearly all of his life — and how his absence would impact their family and community. 

Traveling to and from the border under Trump

In January, 28-year-old Victor and 33-year-old Blanca traveled to Mexico to visit one of her relatives.

It marked the first time Victor visited the country he was born in. They knew it was a risk to travel around President Donald Trump’s inauguration date, Blanca said. But after Victor received an Advance Parole document, an international travel permit for undocumented persons, the couple didn’t worry. 

Blanca and Victor returned to Texas on Jan. 26, six days after Trump took office and began delivering on his pledge to expel millions of migrants across the country.

After landing at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Victor’s fingerprints were run through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection database. Border officers saw his two controlled substance violations and detained him. 

Blanca was told they had to be separated. “What is going on?” she asked herself repeatedly as she waited in the airport for six hours during his questioning. 

Immigration officials allowed Victor to leave under one condition: Within a month, he was to visit the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport to show his conviction records, Blanca said. Officials told the couple they wanted to review the paperwork and that it was only a formality, she recalls.

The couple returned home, reentered their life of work and parenting with a date looming over their heads. In her spare time, Blanca prepared the file folder she had been working on for years. 

On Feb. 25, they traveled to DFW Airport as instructed. 

When immigration officials called Victor up, they didn’t look at the documentation he’d been asked to bring, Blanca said. Instead, Victor was detained. 

His next words are imprinted in her memory:

He handed Blanca his belt and watch. The two hugged and kissed goodbye, not knowing whether it would be their last. 

She didn’t cry. She had to keep her cool inside the office, she said. Inside her head was a different story. 

The packet she had worked on for years contained their family history. Returning home, she didn’t know what their future would be.

“You hear about these things happening, but until it happens to you, you really don’t know how bad it is,” Blanca said.

Victor’s detainment

Victor was taken to the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado. He was able to make calls to his wife through a tablet monitored by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officials. 

He was held in the facility for about three weeks until immigration officials woke Victor at 1:30 a.m. and told him he would be leaving the facility. He was allowed to call Blanca before departing.

“I didn’t know if I was getting moved or if — you know, the worst case scenario — that this was it, and I was getting removed,” Victor said. 

Victor was transferred to the Otero Processing Center in New Mexico. After booking, he called Blanca. That’s when he told her about the conditions he faced in Alvarado, he was among those moved to New Mexico as detention efforts ramped up and federal officials were trying to make room.

“He didn’t tell me until he got moved how bad it was. He had to sleep on the floor there,” Blanca said of Prairieland. “He would tell me sometimes they don’t get food, or, I know he had to go to the doctor and they took days.” 

New Mexico was better. Victor got a job as a barber at the detention center, cutting hair on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. 

Victor also turned to God. 

He asked immigration officials for a Bible and began reading it. He was raised Christian. 

After a man who was leading the sermons inside the center was deported, Victor kept the services going. He had no experience in preparing a sermon, so he would talk about whatever page he opened his Bible to or pick a scripture that he liked. 

“I took it as a big sign. I needed to get closer with the Lord. And it’s really helped me learn more about the Bible, and it helped me on this journey. It gives me strength,” Victor said. 

Driven by faith

Back in Graham, almost everything reminded Blanca of the man she loved: the high school parking lot where they taught their oldest son to drive, the arcade where they had the children’s birthday parties and their favorite family-owned restaurant in the town’s historic square. 

She and Victor would have the occasional date night at the Graham Drive In Theatre. Other nights, the couple would pick up Braum’s ice cream and drive to the plot of land they bought south of town, sit under the stars and envision what their forever home would look like. 

Forever had suddenly shifted.

Blanca was parenting their five children — ages 16, 13, 9, 6 and 2 — alone, maintaining her job as a nurse practitioner. While she had help from her mother, the man who took her sons under his wing and mastered the art of styling his little girls’ hair was gone. 

She turned to a longtime friend for advice. 

She met Isabel Smith in 2008 when Blanca was pregnant with her first child. She enrolled in Parents as Teachers, a statewide program that partners with schools to support young parents through child development and completing their education. 

Smith, who directed the program in Graham, watched Blanca grow from a teen parent to a nurse practitioner to a community leader. She motivated Blanca through North Central Texas College and asked her to join the school’s foundation board after graduation. 

Smith could tell Blanca was always conscientious about doing the best for her family, she said. With Victor gone, Blanca sought Smith’s parenting advice once more. 

“This is obviously a trauma you’re going through … so remember, you want to keep the same schedule. Everything in their lives has to stay consistent,” Smith told Blanca about the children. “They need nothing else to change. … You keep them in the same routines,” Smith said. 

Blanca listened. The family had meals together and went to church together. Blanca continued working. 

Family milestones passed by: birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. The children spent these holidays with their father on video call and received mailed drawings from Victor made in the detention center.

Each of the kids took their father’s detainment differently. The girls thought about how they didn’t get to tell him goodbye. The sons asked Victor questions during their video calls. What did he eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner? 

The 2-year-old, Celeste, often looked out the window, pointing her small finger at trucks driving by the neighborhood. “Dada,” she would say. 

Blanca’s plate was full in every direction. She sought to learn more about immigration law through videos online. She hired attorneys to help Victor’s case and worked two jobs in the medical field to cover legal costs. 

Blanca didn’t think her body showed signs of stress, but it did. She was diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune disease called lupus shortly after Victor was detained. Inflammation caused by lupus can affect joints, skin, organs and cause fatigue. On top of everything, Blanca now needed to manage her new diagnosis.

“Even though I don’t feel like (I’m overwhelmed), because I try to just lean on God, my body feels it,” Blanca said. 

Even though she and her family longed for Victor’s return, good things were coming out of his detainment as the family strengthened their faith, she said.

Victor was preaching to other detainees. Back in Graham, Blanca and the kids prayed together with Victor over calls. 

Blanca also turned to Emily Klement of Fort Worth, who she met in 2009 when Klement worked at North Central Texas College.

Klement’s initial impression of Blanca was of someone who exuded joy, she said. 

“She did not look like a lot of young single moms that I had worked with who were just really down on themselves and looked hopeless. She was hopeful. … She just comes from being such a believer all her life,” Klement said.

At the time, Klement was a dean and associate vice president for academic and strategic partnerships for the college’s Bowie campus and led the initiative to bring a campus to Graham. Klement and other school officials created a pathway for high school graduates like Blanca to become a licensed vocational nurse through the college.

Blanca struggled to afford college on top of household expenses. When Klement retired from North Central Texas College, she became an executive director at Catholic Charities Fort Worth in Wichita Falls. Klement helped Blanca and Victor join the nonprofit’s Education Navigation program, which helped the couple with expenses and budgeting. 

Blanca and Victor thrived with the charity’s support, Klement said, and she was heartbroken to learn of Victor’s detainment. She worried about the trauma Victor’s absence inflicted on the kids and worked to connect with people in Graham who could offer free counseling. 

Blanca and Victor’s situation represents a growing number of families feeling the strain of the mass deportations sweeping the country, Klement said. 

“It’s getting harder and harder for them to be successful. … We’re putting up blockades that they don’t need, and it’s not necessary,” she said. “They certainly don’t need them. But that’s not the America I know or knew.”

Small Texas town missing community good Samaritan

For the first week of Victor’s detainment, his colleagues at XCaliber knew only that he had to “step out,” coworker Tristan Hampton said. 

Victor started working at XCaliber in 2020 as a welder. Two years later, he was promoted to a production supervisor role, in which he collaborated with Hampton, who is in the company’s sales department. 

She found out Victor was detained a week later. Hampton didn’t know Victor was undocumented. Learning that didn’t change the fact that everyone at the jobsite wanted him back in Graham. 

Victor was one of the few in management who spoke Spanish. His bilingual skills were needed often to translate messages from leadership to clients and employees, Hampton said. He was the one who would grill for workplace holiday events. He was the kind of boss who would heat up his lunch and eat in the workroom with the rest of the guys, she added. 

As time went on, members of Victor’s team wrote letters to him in the detention center. The business got help with other employees for translation support while holding onto his job in anticipation of his return, Hampton said. 

Victor is a good Samaritan and demonstrated good character for his children both in and out of the workplace, Hampton said. When a longtime employee died, Victor brought his sons to the memorial. 

“Any day when he comes home, he will have a job at XCaliber. Everyone misses him. We still talk about him,” Hampton said. 

Easter came and went with Victor in detention. That following weekend was Graham’s annual Run for the Children event, one of the town’s most beloved traditions. 

The 10K, 5K and 1K races aim to bring awareness and raise money to support Virginia’s House – A Family Resource Center in Graham and its satellite office, Dr. Goodall’s House in Breckenridge. The nonprofits support children who may be experiencing neglect and abuse through prevention and mentorship programs. 

For years, race day was a family event. Blanca and Victor would wake up before sunrise to set up, often enlisting their older kids to help. As the nonprofit celebrated the event’s 20th year on April 26, Victor wasn’t there. 

Blanca serves on Run for the Children’s board of directors and was in charge of registration for the race. Even in Victor’s absence, she was there to help others, said event founder Dora Cawley. 

“They are leading their own children by example, by trying to help our community. They were very vital members.”

Immigration law saga

Blanca juggled life without Victor — and sought ways to bring him home. 

She contacted multiple attorneys, but it felt as if nobody wanted to take on the case, she said. 

“People are telling me it’s not possible. He’s going to end up getting deported. And so I’m like, ‘OK, I need somebody that’s going to try. Can you at least just try? That’s all I’m asking for.’”

Chicago-based immigration attorney William McLean and Dallas-based criminal attorney Christine Biederman took his case. 

Biederman worked to set aside Victor’s prior misdemeanors. She discovered for both convictions, Victor’s attorneys had failed to provide immigration advice. In the courts, she argued that Victor was not guilty of the convictions because of ineffective assistance from counsel, meaning that his attorneys at the time didn’t properly advise him of the immigration consequences of a guilty plea. 

Wichita County and Young County judges ruled in Victor’s favor, effectively vacating his 2014 misdemeanor on July 30 as well as his 2018 misdemeanor on Aug. 7. 

Biederman won her cases, effectively giving post-conviction relief for both of Victor’s prior offenses. 

On the immigration side, McLean worked toward canceling his removal proceedings. Victor had renewed his DACA status every two years since 2013. It was only because immigration officials had contact with him at the airport after international travel that they decided to put him in removal proceedings, McLean said. 

On Aug. 20, an immigration judge called for a hearing on Victor’s case. McLean showed that Victor’s convictions had been removed, and the government made a motion to dismiss Victor’s deportation case. 

After six months, Victor’s case was closed — but the family wasn’t sure what would happen. 

Then two days after the case was dismissed, Victor stopped showing up in ICE’s online detainee locator system. 

McLean was nervous. 

As part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, federal officials were speeding up deportations through expedited removals. The process allows immigration officials to quickly deport certain noncitizens without a formal hearing before a judge. McLean worried it might happen to Victor, too. 

“People with DACA are being deported, just like anybody else, as if you did not have it, as if it did not exist. … DACA means nothing. DACA means nothing anymore,” McLean said.

Four days after the hearing, McLean heard from Victor. He was still at the detention center in New Mexico, but no one had said anything to him about when or whether he would leave. 

The next day, on Aug. 25, Blanca emailed immigration officials a copy of the court order and asked for the date of his release. 

At 3:30 p.m. that day McLean learned Victor was being released five days after his case was dismissed. 

The clampdown on immigration arrests has been “an aggressiveness from the government I’ve never seen,” said McLean, who has been working in the field for 15 years. Blanca and Victor were willing to go the distance to get him home, something other families may not be willing or able to do, he added. 

“Their resilience, their Christianity, it got them through this,” McLean said.

Homeward bound

Victor was dropped off at the El Paso International Airport with only his Bible, some notes and the sermons he kept throughout his detainment. He had his passport but no money. 

Blanca texted everyone she knew asking how to get Victor a last-minute flight to North Texas. Without Blanca being there in person, she couldn’t purchase a ticket on his behalf, she said. 

Victor asked around the airport for help. He came across what appeared to Victor to be an older Latino couple. He borrowed a phone to call his wife. Blanca promised to pay them back immediately if they bought Victor a ticket home. 

The couple agreed. 

“(The stranger) bought the ticket, and he was very nervous about it — wasn’t very sure — but he did it,” Victor said. 

Blanca immediately paid the couple back, grateful that someone was willing to help get her husband home. 

An earlier flight that day was delayed, which perfectly aligned so that Victor could catch it. Maybe it was a coincidence, but Victor and Blanca believed God had something to do with it. 

He didn’t know where to go when he landed at DFW Airport. He still didn’t have a phone. He walked over to baggage claim and exited the terminal — that’s when he saw her. 

“Ah, it’s real,” Victor thought. 

Their eyes met. Victor looked thinner than when she last saw him. Blanca also looked thinner to him. They hugged. Once they got into the car, Blanca and Victor cried and hugged some more. They were all happy tears, he said. 

About midnight, they arrived home in Graham. 

The couple debated whether to wake up the kids or wait until the morning. They started off with the boys, who quickly woke up and hugged their father. 

The couple went to bed that night in relief. Their first night together punctuated the six months that Blanca slept in their bed alone, something that never got easier as time went on. 

At home, Victor remembered how much he enjoyed hot showers and sleeping in complete darkness. 

‘Needle in a haystack’ 

The next morning, 6-year-old Bella walked out into the hallway to talk to her mom. She wasn’t aware of her father standing on the staircase above her. Victor called out her name. As she tilted her head up, she saw him and froze. She wondered if she was still dreaming.

To test her theory, she raced over to Victor and jumped in his arms. At that moment, Bella was caught in Victor’s embrace. It wasn’t a dream. Moments later, 9-year-old Adaly heard her dad and raced out into the hall and joined Bella. Celeste was dancing. Soon, the whole family was together.

Blanca and Victor see the tumultuous journey as a testament to their faith that God would work things out. The couple turned to many scriptures during their separation. Victor dived into the Book of Romans, reading how God offered salvation to everyone who believes. Blanca felt drawn to the story of Job, a prosperous man who remained faithful even after losing everything. 

Victor remains a DACA recipient and plans to get his green card. Along with his Bible and notes, his journal documenting his journey while in detention rests on the dining table.

He heard the stories of the men he met inside. While some of them have reunited with their families in the United States, others remained in the detention center or were deported, he said. He recorded their stories in his journal and thinks someday he could write a book.

“Shedding the light on at least a small portion of it would be amazing, and just have people know the stories. It’s not as easy as everyone thinks,” Victor said. “Obviously, nobody might think it’s easy, but it’s not as quick, it’s not as efficient or as fair as it needs to be.” 

He plans to get in touch with the men he met about sharing their stories. 

“I’m probably like a needle in a haystack with my situation that I was able to come home the way I did. And there’s a lot of people that aren’t that lucky.” 

Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org.

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