Edgar Alaniz is home.
After 10 months of paperwork, legal meetings and court dates, he was told around 6:30 p.m. Dec. 8 that he could call to ask his wife to pick him up.
He hardly believed it. He knew four people in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention at northeast Iowa’s Hardin County Jail were to be deported that night. He, his attorney and family thought his Dec. 5 court date had gone well, but he had been disappointed before.
The judge had said he could be released, but they also knew the prosecution had until January to appeal the ruling.
The corrections officer assured him the ICE office had just called to authorize his release.
Edgar called his wife, Veronica Camey Alaniz, who was five hours away in Seward. She thought at first she was not hearing correctly, but she was quickly on her way.
Edgar said it took him about three minutes to run to his room and gather his things after he made the call. The others being detained in the jail “clapped him out,” surrounding him with thunderous noise as he walked from his room to the exit.
It makes the building shake, Edgar said. Whether those walking toward the door are allowed to return home or are being deported, the others celebrate that someone is leaving jail with this loud tradition.
Some of the corrections officers waited for him outside the door to wish him well.
He had hours to wait for Veronica, but he walked all over the town, enjoying the fresh air and freedom even as the temperature dropped to about 1 degree. The jail let him go in and out of the warm lobby as he waited.
“On the way home, I did not know how to react,” Edgar said of his release. “It was so sudden. Still, once in a while I peek around, like ‘am I really here?’”
Edgar and Veronica got back to Seward at 4:30 a.m. Dec. 9 and Edgar later woke each of his five sons – Aidan, Alvaro, Aaron, Arthur and Abraham – with a kiss on the cheek.
The kids had heard Veronica excitedly tell her father-in-law, Antonio Alaniz, she was going to pick him up.
But they, too, had trouble believing it was real at first, needing to touch his beard, hugging and getting a promise that he would be there after school.
“I told them it is over. We won. We are here to stay now,” Edgar said.
Edgar’s detention began on Feb. 3 when he traveled from Seward to Schuyler to make a statement at the sheriff’s office about a disagreement he and his brother had after a family celebration in January. Though several charges were filed, all except a misdemeanor charge for disturbing the peace were thrown out.
He thought he would file his statement that day and return home to await a court date, but he was held in the jail in Schuyler until April.
Edgar’s family moved to Schuyler when he was a preschooler and he graduated from Schuyler High School. He learned he was not a citizen when he was 15. The papers his family was celebrating in January gave him the right to work and build Social Security benefits in the only country he remembers living in.
From Schuyler, ICE transferred Edgar to Antelope County west of Norfolk and then to Dakota County in far northeast Nebraska for a few months.
The Dakota County detention was difficult, Edgar said. The detainees remained alone in their cells most of the time, receiving meals through the door. Twenty men shared a shower.
After some questions about discolored drinking water, the detainees were provided two bottles of water per day – three if they were awake at 5 a.m. to get another.
He lost 30 pounds there. Detainees had one set of clothing per week and had to purchase underwear and socks from the jail. One pair of underwear cost $15.
“It was hard to be there mentally,” Edgar said, sharing that at one point he broke down in a conversation with Veronica.
“I told her I could not do this. I am not made for jail,” he said. “There are so many people that struggle in there.”
The one bright spot was a pastor who called on the detainees. Edgar and Pastor Dan became friends.
Edgar’s attorney requested a transfer to a facility outside Nebraska where Edgar and Veronica could be married. The two have been together for many years, but Edgar’s divorce from his first wife was not final until February, when they had originally planned to marry.
In May he was moved to Hardin County, a facility in northeast Iowa, about a five-hour drive from Seward.
Edgar and Veronica got permission for Edgar to participate face-to-face in the wedding, not from behind glass.
“Hardin County was actually OK,” Edgar said. “The corrections officers were very humane. I became friends with them.
“They were all rooting for me. One of them said ‘Edgar, I am going to walk you out a different door’.”
Pastor Dan connected Edgar to a pastor in the area, and Edgar and another detainee, Bradley, began a daily Bible study session.
The food was well balanced, and Edgar had easy access to a nurse who let him use the scales in her office.
“I told her ‘thank you for making me feel human again,’” he said.
Because Edgar is fluent in English and Spanish, he was often asked to assist others at the jail – the corrections officers would send newcomers to Edgar to learn what they needed to do.
Edgar often translated for other detainees receiving English-language legal documents. He said he met detainees from Russia, Spain, Africa, Romania, Burma, Guam, Honduras, Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico and Guatemala.
“Good people,” he said.
Only some detainees had criminal backgrounds, he said. Some had made simple mistakes when they were working with the immigration process.
He arrived in Hardin County on May 14 and when he left, he probably had the most longevity there. He said hundreds of people had passed through the detention center in 10 months and he knew of two allowed bond and three whose residency was approved.
Veronica told him he had an army helping him from home, where she was filing every document and letter she could with the attorney to get him released.
Edgar said he sees some of that network now.
“We are being blessed by our church, our community, our family and friends, so I am going to pay them forward one way or another,” Edgar said.
The family is falling back into its bedtime and morning routines where both Edgar and Veronica are with the boys, unless Veronica is working night shifts at Memorial Hospital.
The boys keep their eye on their dad, Veronica said, joking that “it is like I don’t exist anymore.”
But Edgar said the boys see her as a strong, powerful woman.
She looks forward to getting her family back on their feet.
The family moved to Seward in late 2019 and early 2020 from David City after Edgar’s job ended due to the pandemic. Edgar had worked a variety of jobs in the area before his detention.
He now has plans to work with a Seward friend for whom he did some concrete work, and who has helped his family throughout Edgar’s detention.
“I need to socialize a little more because it helps me realize that this is real. It is not false. Out of nowhere, I am here,” he said.
“I had no clue there was that many people who actually cared for my family and myself.
“Seward takes care of its own.”
