Marco Antonio Ortuño hugs his wife and youngest son Marco, 10, on July 22. Ortuño, who lays cable, had been picked up June 10 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while coming home with two other workers.Sharon Steinmann/Houston ChronicleIn the over-lit downtown Houston waiting room, 10-year-old Marco sat with his family on Wednesday afternoon. Marco wore a pink polo, and his black hair was slicked down. They were there for his father’s hearing.“Are you ready?” one of the family’s lawyers asked. Marco forced a smile and gave a thumbs up. But his hand shook.Article continues below this adU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had detained his father in June, and since then, uncertainty has twisted Marco’s stomach in knots, making it hard for him to eat or sleep. Would his dad be allowed to stay in the United States, where he’s lived since 1993? Today, finally, Marco would get an answer.He sat on a wooden bench, behind a waist-high gate separating him from his dad and the proceedings, and fidgeted quietly through hours of testimony. Most of it was about him, how much he had already suffered and how much more Marco, an American citizen, would suffer without his dad. It could be enough to help keep his family together now. The lawyers had told him that he might be allowed to testify that his dad is a good father, an irreplaceable piece of his family. But the judge didn’t let him. Houston Chronicle LogoMake us a Preferred Source on Google to see more of us when you search.Add Preferred SourceFinally, the lawyers gave their closing arguments. The attorney for the Department of Homeland Security urged the judge to deport Marco’s father. Marco couldn’t take it. He raised his arms in disbelief and shouted, “What? Why would you do that?” Article continues below this adHe couldn’t understand. Marco is smart. He gets As and a few Bs in school. He earned a nomination for a national math recognition. He is also autistic, a recent diagnosis that came with referrals for speech and occupational therapy. After his older brother, Sergio, was struck and killed by a train while walking to Milby High School in 2024, Marco started seeing a therapist. For months he couldn’t say Sergio’s name. Between experts and his therapist, Marco has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and PTSD. So why would anyone want to separate Marco from his dad? One of the family’s lawyers quieted him, patting him gently.Article continues below this adMoments later, the judge ruled against Marco’s father. The court did not think Marco would suffer “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship.”“What? What?” Marco cried out again. His father would have to go back to Mexico, a country he hasn’t seen since he left his tiny, remote hometown in Guerrero, Mexico decades ago. With few connections elsewhere, he’d most likely end up there again. It’s a place caught between rival cartels, near poppy fields valuable for processing into heroin. Marco was born in Houston and has lived his whole life here. He doesn’t know Guerrero. If he were to move there with his dad, he’d have to travel almost seven hours over mountainous roads to get the therapies he needs.Marco’s breathing got short and choppy. He was sobbing. He couldn’t understand. That same day, hundreds of miles away in a courtroom in Brownsville, a Trump-appointed district court judge considered the case of an ICE agent who had been charged in Minnesota for shooting and wounding the roommate of a fleeing man and lying about it. The agent had claimed that he shot in self-defense after the roommate attacked him with a shovel. Video of the incident undermines the agent’s account, and federal prosecutors, in a rare about-face, have dropped charges against the roommate. Now Minnesota wants the agent to stand trial on four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.Article continues below this adInstead, the Brownsville judge ruled that the agent does not have to be sent back to Minnesota to stand trial. After three months in custody here in Texas, he went free Thursday, thanks to Gov. Greg Abbott’s refusal to sign the extradition paperwork. None of this is normal. Not Abbott’s refusal to hand over a man charged with a violent crime. Not the immigration judge’s decision, which shrugs off the obvious and unusual hardship that Marco has already endured. Not this mass deportation campaign, which has unleashed a deadly and apparently unaccountable enforcement agency and filled detention centers mostly with immigrants who do not have criminal convictions — or even charges.This is the state of law and order in this country. One man is set free: an officer whose salary comes from our tax dollars, and who is accused of violating his oath to uphold the law. Another man is ordered to be separated from his family and removed from this country: a father, church volunteer and longtime construction worker who installed fiber-optic cable in apartment buildings.The hypocrisy of the deportation machine’s public safety charade couldn’t be clearer. President Donald Trump is in Houston Thursday to help campaign for attorney general and Senate candidate Ken Paxton. It’s fitting that two law-challenged politicians come together here today in a state where law and order is being mocked. This editorial board urges Trump and Paxton supporters to ask themselves: How are we any safer with an accused violent criminal on the loose while a loving father is ordered removed?Article continues below this adMinnesota plans to challenge the Brownsville judge’s ruling. And the lawyers who represent Marco’s dad, Antonio, will challenge the immigration court’s ruling as well. That process could take up to four years, and if nothing else, it buys precious time with his son. But Antonio will have to wear an ankle monitor and check in every four weeks with ICE. If he’s picked up again, he would have to wait out the appeal in detention. Marco’s stomach-twisting uncertainty seems here to stay. The ICE agent released Thursday, meanwhile, has made plans to flee to Mexico to marry and buy a house for a woman there, according to Minnesota’s lawsuit. It’s a reality stranger than fiction that one man gets to evade his alleged violent crimes by running to Mexico while another is clinging for his chance to stay here and support his family and community.This is Texas today. The place where bad actors can hide out — even hold campaign rallies — while hardworking immigrants live in fear.Back outside the downtown Houston courtroom Wednesday, the lawyers tried to soothe Marco.“This is not the end,” one reassured him. “We’re going to keep fighting.”And we must.This editorial is part of a series. Read parts one and two here. In 2025, the editorial board won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on dangerous railroad crossings that detailed Sergio's death. A member of the board shared a portion of the prize winnings with the family.Aug 27, 2026Opinions from the Houston Chronicle Editorial BoardThe Editorial Board is made up of opinion journalists with wide-ranging expertise whose consensus opinions and endorsements represent the voice of the institution – defined as the board members, their editor and the publisher. The board is separate from the newsroom and other sections of the paper. Winner of the 2022 and 2025 Pulitzer Prizes in editorial writing.