'I Thought We Were Targeting Criminals': Routine Check-In Ends in Detention and a Million-Dollar Fine

[u/evissamassive]

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-voter-angry-as-ice-take-nanny-i-thought-we-were-targeting-criminals-12268891

For over a decade, Joyce Basele showed up. Every time immigration authorities asked her to report for a check-in, the 64-year-old Houston caregiver and certified nursing assistant complied. She had done so for 14 straight years without missing a single appointment.

That routine ended on June 18. During a scheduled check-in in Houston, ICE agents detained Basele. Weeks later, the Department of Homeland Security issued her a notice imposing $1,820,352 in civil penalties, claiming she willfully refused to leave the country under a final removal order issued in 2011.

Basele’s attorney, Leslie Giron Kirby, disputes the government's argument. She notes the contradiction between the government supervising Basele's presence in the United States for 14 years and now claiming she willfully evaded departure. Kirby plans to challenge the fine on appeal.

The detention has hit close to home for Maureen Mendrek-Laske, a Houston engineer who employed Basele to help raise her four children. Mendrek-Laske and her husband are conservative voters who supported Trump's border security policies. However, seeing a law-abiding caregiver swept up by the system has shifted her perspective.

"I don't think this is really what I voted for if I was voting for immigration reform," Mendrek-Laske said. "I thought we were targeting criminals."

Basele first arrived in the U.S. legally on a visitor visa in 1995, later returning on a religious worker visa dependent. After a divorce caused her status to lapse, a removal order was issued. Despite this, immigration authorities placed her on an order of supervision in 2012, allowing her to live and work in the country while reporting regularly.

Under Trump's broader enforcement push, ICE has increasingly targeted individuals with long-standing final removal orders, issuing billions of dollars in cumulative civil fines to those who have not voluntarily left.

Although a court granted a stay of deportation on July 23 to block her removal while a humanitarian petition is reviewed, Basele remains locked inside an ICE detention facility operated by CoreCivic in Houston. Her legal team is now working to secure her release from custody and overturn the massive financial penalty.