Where is Carlos?
"Every day, Angela Della Valle drives an hour through central Louisiana’s yellow-pine hills to visit her husband at Winn Correctional Center, in the middle of the Kisatchie National Forest. The former state prison now houses immigration detainees. She pulls up to the gate as sunlight filters through the forest foliage.
After driving through the first security checkpoint, a second guard inspects her rental car and verifies her ID. Inside the facility, Angela empties her pockets, a guard scans her with a metal-detection wand, pats her down and asks her to spread her legs.
She doesn’t mind. She’d wear a chicken suit if she had to. All that matters is being close to Carlos, a 49-year-old Mexican national who has been transferred to more than a dozen detention centers over the last five months. His only crime - being undocumented."
Thus begins the story of Where is Carlos? An American family caught in the immigration crackdown, published on February 4, 2026, in the Miami Herald.
It's an extraordinary story in part because ICE deliberately makes it difficult to know what happens to people in their custody. Once taken by ICE, a person all but disappears from public view, leaving their loved ones bereft, terrified, often without resources, and completely in the dark. With Carlos, we have a rare window into what ICE detention is really like, day in and day out.
"Carlos, a man who could go years without getting the flu, has been continuously fighting sickness since September [2025]. Carlos resumed putting in a sick call every day. After nine sick calls, he might be referred to their medical provider (doctor). Carlos has no fever, but does have body aches, a persistent cough, significant phlegm, headache and severe congestion. We hope once he is able to see a doctor—with luck that would happen in 10 days—he might be diagnosed, and prescribed antibiotics, or something more than Ibuprofen. 3.24.26"
The story is extraordinary also because Carlos Della Valle – a 49-year-old husband, father and longtime resident of Chester County–less than an hour from Berks County–has a fiercely devoted, tenacious, resourceful wife and a community of friends and neighbors who have known and loved him for decades. Because of their efforts, Carlos is still alive, still fighting, and still telling his story. He was found not-guilty of illegal entry in August 2025 by a US Court in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. His only charge now is being undocumented. To date, Carlos has been continuously detained in ICE custody for eight months flown around to more than a dozen facilities including the concentration camp called Alligator Alcatraz in south Florida.
Remember that Carlos is one of the lucky ones. Most of the 74,000 people currently in ICE custody have no such support system. They have a loving community who miss them, but many don't speak English well, or don't have the education, sophistication, financial resources, physical stamina, or inner strength that Carlos has.
In the twelve months between March 2025 and March 2026, our Berks County Prison handed 75 people over to ICE – every one of them a human being, every one of them we let go into an inhumane system.
Berks County Prison Board must stop all voluntary cooperation with ICE.
