‘They’re Not Okay’: Local father deported watches his family struggle from afar

Melvin Solis Romero was deported to El Salvador seven months after he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Watertown. A Waltham District Court firearm-related case against him, however, remains open.

After living across the Boston area for 22 years, this is the first time Solis Romero has returned to El Salvador.

Solis Romero came to the United States in 2004 when he was 18, fleeing gang violence in his home country. Offshoots of the MS-13 and rival 18th Street gangs formed in El Salvador, he said, following a 12-year-long civil war.

“It was like war,” Solis Romero said. “When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, El Salvador was more dangerous than Iraq.”

Twenty-two years later, he was living in Massachusetts with his wife and four children, working as head of a 20-person plumbing company.

Solis Romero’s daughter is battling cancer, something he said made no difference in his case to the immigration judge.

“I was fighting my case. I told him my daughter is a citizen and she needs me,” he said. “But he told me that it would be better to stop fighting and to get deported.” 

Undermining the right to a fair trial

The Waltham Times first reported on Solis Romero’s case on Nov. 9 after he did not appear in court for a pretrial hearing the month prior. A default warrant was issued for his arrest.

At the time, Solis Romero was being held at the Denver Contract Detention Facility in Aurora, Colorado. His lawyer, Connor Hanlon, filed a motion for a special writ of habeas corpus that’s used when a defendant is in custody under a different jurisdiction in an attempt to secure his client’s appearance.

Solis Romero was allowed to appear via Zoom, not in person.

However, despite a second writ of habeas corpus issued by Waltham District Court on Dec. 29 ordering ICE to bring Solis Romero to stand trial in February, Solis Romero was deported to El Salvador. 

“The commonwealth is supposed to use diligent efforts to attempt to secure the defendant’s presence at trial if they know where he/she is being held, but more often than not the court will simply issue a default warrant instead,” Hanlon said.

Solis Romero said the deportation violated his right to a fair trial and has greatly impacted his case.

“ICE is above the law, they’re above everything,” he said, “and they only transport people when they want to.”

His case is scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 19. The case had been postponed prior to Solis Romero’s deportation, allowing the prosecution time to try to secure his appearance to stand trial.

Solis Romero said he didn’t know the status of his case, whether it was closed or if there was another warrant issued for his arrest. 

Solis Romero is one of 19 ICE detainees identified by The Waltham Times with an active Waltham District Court case who have been unable to appear for their court dates.

These cases are raising alarms among some court officers.

“When ICE does not transport defendants to state courts, it slows down court processes and deprives the individual defendants of their U.S. and state constitutional rights. It is a travesty and a usurpation of state’s rights,” said David Jellinek, a Newton-based criminal defense attorney who has represented clients in ICE custody at Waltham District Court.

“Inhumane” conditions

Following his initial arrest, Solis Romero was held at ICE’s Boston Field Office in Burlington, a facility meant to temporarily house detainees for a few hours.

“It was like we were homeless. They gave us plastic blankets and aluminum beds,” Solis Romero said.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat for the state’s 6th District, raised concerns about conditions at the facility after visiting in November.

“The facilities in there are completely inadequate and inhumane for anyone to be staying here for an extended length of time,” Moulton said at a press briefing last December.

Solis Romero said he was held alongside 100 other detainees in Burlington, recalling that he was held in a 10-foot-by-20-foot concrete cell with 50 people.

Solis Romero was then transferred to the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Maine, for two weeks before he was flown to Colorado.

The trip to Colorado, Solis Romero said, was the worst experience of his life. He recalled spending 48 hours in an airplane with handcuffs on both his arms and legs, eating bread with ham, trapped in the summer heat.

The plane, carrying more than 200 ICE detainees, traveled to Pennsylvania then Texas in search of a facility that would accept them before arriving in Colorado, Solis Romero said.

“My feet were swollen because I couldn’t move them,” he said. “It was the worst I’ve ever lived, torture.”

Solis Romero said despite family members trying to reach him, he wasn’t allowed to use the phone and was late to appear on Zoom for a Waltham District Court hearing on Dec. 18.

He said an interpreter provided to him at an immigration court hearing misinterpreted his words.

“I said ‘I didn’t do this,’ and the interpreter said, ‘I did that,’” Solis Romero said. “Interpreters are against you, the judges, everyone, they don’t want immigrants here.”

‘They’re not okay’

The Adams County Health Department recently investigated the Denver Contract Detention Facility following allegations of inadequate medical care from immigrant rights advocates and families of detainees.

Solis Romero said three detainees, including one in his cell block, took their own lives during his time in the facility. He said he still lives with the trauma today.

“They kill themselves because they’re terrified, some places are very dangerous, like Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, they don’t want to be there because it’s so dangerous so they’d prefer to kill themselves,” he said.

Solis Romero now lives in El Salvador with his sister and parents who he said have been incredibly supportive, though he misses his family in Massachusetts.

Solis Romero said he doesn’t have a job and is planning to go to school and get his diploma to continue his work in plumbing.

While violence in El Salvador has subsided, the current economic situation poses major challenges for him and his family. In Massachusetts, his wife is struggling to get by without him.

His wife, who pays more than $3,000 in monthly rent, told him she plans to use this year’s tax refund to send their children to El Salvador this summer so she has time to get another job to help support them.

“‘I have $30 to my name until Friday,’ she told me, and it was Monday, my heart stopped,’” he said.

Solis Romero, who is married to an American citizen and had submitted an I-30 petition on his behalf to begin the process to obtain a green card, said he never had any issues with ICE before last year, though like many others, he was always scared.

“I wasn’t going out because they were deporting many people,” he said. “Many women whose husbands work prefer not to work and stay at home because they’re scared.”

During an interview with The Waltham Times, Solis Romero asked about the current state of ICE enforcement in the country, wondering if anything had changed.

“They’re separating families, many children are going to be born and grow up with this trauma,” he said.

Solis Romero said he often video calls with his family in Massachusetts and can see the impact on his own kids.

“I can see their faces, they smile, but they’re not okay.”

All quotes in this story were translated to English by the reporter from an interview conducted in Spanish.