The boy called his mother, who picked him up, while the father was taken to ICE’s temporary detention center known as "La Neverita" ("the little fridge") for its extreme interior cold, where detainees are supposed to stay no more than 72 hours.
Gibelis and driver Rafael Santana, a Dominican man who has known her father since 2001 and once visited a cousin at the same facility, arrived at 9:00 AM hoping to see him before a possible transfer. Santana said the father, lacking financial resources, was pursuing a new legal process. Gibelis, daughter of immigrant parents, brought emergency paperwork for her father or his lawyers and described ICE vehicles frequently patrolling her Massachusetts neighborhood, intimidating residents.
As time passed outside the facility, a guard had not returned with instructions on whether they could enter.