It's been nearly five months since Arkansas police mistook Kapil Raghu's perfume for an illegal substance and arrested him — which led to his detainment by ICE. BENTON, Ark. — A Benton man and his wife are pleading for his immigration status nearly five months after his wrongful arrest set off a series of events that landed him in an ICE detention facility. Kapil Raghu was arrested by Benton police officers on May 3 in the parking lot of a Circle K gas station on South Street. Bodycam video from the scene obtained by THV11 shows that officers believed Raghu had an illegal substance in his vehicle. “You got a vial of opium that was in your center console,” Officer Tyler Freshour is heard telling Raghu in the video. “Go and take a seat.” In the incident report from May 3, 2025, Freshour wrote that he initially pulled Raghu over due to his ‘reflective license plate cover.’ The day of the traffic stop is an encounter that Raghu said he remembers well. “He asked me, ‘Can I search your car?” Raghu said. “So, I gave the permission, because I was pretty much fine that I didn't commit any crime, or I don’t have anything wrong in my car.” Freshour arrested Raghu upon finding the substance he believed to be opium. “I'm confused on why he's going to jail,” Ashley Mays, Raghu’s wife, asked upon arriving at the scene. “He’s got a vial of opium ... liquid opium that was in the center console,” Freshour replied. However, the Benton Police Department later admitted that the bottle wasn’t the illegal substance, but instead a perfume with the same name. By the time the Arkansas State Crime Lab figured that out, Raghu was already in the Saline County Jail, where it was discovered he was on a temporary visa that had expired. He had been trying to become a permanent citizen, but the arrest put a stop to that and sent him to an ICE facility in Louisiana. “She used to call me every night,” Raghu said of his wife. “Crying, and my stepdaughter putting a Bible on her chest, crying . my stepdaughter was crying a lot. And she [Mays] was planning to sell her cars and move to some other country where we can live happily.” Raghu was released after 30 days, but now he’s in limbo. All his previous work towards becoming a citizen has been wiped out, and he’s not allowed to hold a job. “I had to take out a loan to pay for our bills and to put money on his books and hire additional attorneys and things along those lines,” Mays said. “So financially, it's been extremely, extremely rough.” That led Raghu to take the step of writing a letter to ICE’s legal office, asking that he be allowed to resolve his immigration status through the proper legal channels. That letter was delivered on Thursday. “We’re not bad people,” Mays said. “We didn't do anything wrong. We're just a normal family.” Raghu’s lawyer said he has several issues with the way Benton police made the initial arrest, but said he doesn’t blame ICE. “Their hands were tied in having to take Mr. Raghu into custody,” said Mike Laux, Raghu's lawyer. However, he’s now joining in calling on ICE to allow Raghu to continue his journey towards citizenship. “We know that there exists at that office prosecutorial discretion,” Laux said, “And they have the authority to look at a particular set of facts, and to look at a situation that has sympathetic aspects to it, and they can make a decision in terms of his deportation status or his immigration status based on that.” “We're hoping that the prosecutorial discretion will be approved and our case would look as if this never happened,” Mays added. THV11 reached out to ICE’s press office with regards to Raghu’s situation, but have not yet heard back.