IN-DEPTH Subscribe today to listen to this content Get Access A family who fled Venezuela and sought political asylum in the U.S. has been forced to return, despite their fears of continued persecution, after the Christian County sheriff stopped one family member in traffic near Highlandville this year. Angel Acosta Ramirez, 43, was reached by phone on Aug. 4. Through an interpreter, he told a Springfield Daily Citizen reporter that his life since being deported has been “really hard,” with his family now struggling to make enough money to survive. “I decided (to emigrate) mostly for my wife and son,” Acosta Ramirez said. Acosta Ramirez once had a career as a mechanical engineer. His 30-year-old wife, Maria Fernanda Arrioja Romero, had been a nurse. Their lives were derailed after Acosta Ramirez was targeted by agents of Venezuela’s dominant political regime, he said — and their journey to the Ozarks involved a month of hard travel, a treacherous river crossing, detainment, multiple moves and three weeks of sleeping on the streets. Acosta Ramirez and his family members told the Daily Citizen that they applied for asylum and obtained visas authorizing them to work in the U.S. For one year, Acosta Ramirez and his wife lived, worked, and sent their 4-year-old son, Santiago, to school in Branson. As the Daily Citizen continues to cover immigration issues and report on the Greene County Jail’s contract that leads to hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees being held at the facility daily, Acosta Ramirez and Arrioja Romero (once inmates in the jail) agreed to share their story over several interviews this year to give the community a better understanding of the personal impact of changes at the federal and local level. In early 2026, Acosta Ramirez was arrested during a traffic stop and accused of being in the country illegally. He called his wife and instructed her to bring their documents to the jail. Upon arriving, he said, his wife also was arrested. A reporter initially spoke to Arrioja Romero in February 2026, while she was detained in the Greene County Jail. The Daily Citizen attempted to obtain her immigration records from the federal government. Although most of those records requests were denied, the Daily Citizen received Christian County’s arrest reports for both the husband and wife. Acosta Ramirez and his mother, who is still living in the Branson area, spoke to a reporter in July and August. What the arrest reports say At 5:40 a.m. on Jan. 2, Sheriff Brad Cole stopped Acosta Ramirez near the 29-mile marker on Highway 65, according to an arrest report. Acosta Ramirez was speeding at 90 miles per hour, the report states. The report further says that during the traffic stop, the sheriff discovered Acosta Ramirez had entered the country illegally prior to requesting asylum. He was booked into the Christian County Jail on an immigration hold, according to the document. An arrest report for Arrioja Romero indicates that she was booked into the Christian County Jail on a hold for ICE around 8:30 a.m. that same day with no other charges. They were both later transferred to the Greene County Jail. Acosta Ramirez denied he had been speeding and claimed he was unaware he had been cited for a traffic violation. He said he stopped to get gas on his way to work that morning and noticed an officer following him when he reentered the highway. “When I got there, I saw police around, but it didn’t worry me because I knew I had all my papers,” he said through an interpreter. “From the minute I got on 65, I noticed police.” During the traffic stop, Acosta Ramirez said, a Spanish-speaking officer helped him communicate with the sheriff. He was questioned about how he entered the country and responded that he sought asylum in 2022 and was authorized to work in the U.S. Then he was arrested, he said. Acosta Ramirez still believed there was a misunderstanding and that he would be released after officers looked at his documents. Through an interpreter, he explained this is why he felt safe to call his wife and instruct her to bring the documents to the sheriff’s office. However, when Arrioja Romero arrived with the documents, she was also placed under arrest. “(I) asked him, ‘What have we done? Why are you doing this? Have we committed a crime?’ and they said, ‘No, but you’re under arrest,’” Arrioja Romero said through an interpreter in February. The couple was unaware of a Trump administration move to end Temporary Protected Status for migrants from more than a dozen countries, including Venezuela, which likely impacted their asylum cases. Reached by phone on Aug. 7, the sheriff said he did not remember interacting with Acosta Ramirez or the Jan. 2, 2026, traffic stop that caused the family to be deported after almost three and a half years in the U.S. “If they were stopped on a traffic stop, then it would have been something where they committed a traffic violation,” Cole said. Online court records show Cole ticketed Acosta Ramirez for speeding 20-25 miles per hour over the speed limit. A warrant was issued for his arrest on March 26 after he failed to appear at his scheduled court date. At that point, Acosta Ramirez had already been deported. ‘We don’t have any choice’ After being arrested, Acosta Ramirez spent six weeks in the Greene County Jail before his deportation date. Arrioja Romero was detained for 13 weeks. When asked in late February whether the family was fearful of returning to Venezuela, Arrioja Romero said through an interpreter, “Yes, but we don’t have any choice.” The most stressful part of being detained, Acosta Ramirez said, was being separated from his wife and trying to figure out what would happen to their son. “I don’t understand why they separated all of us,” he said. According to the U.S. Department of State, Venezuela is facing “significant human rights issues” with credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings and torture in addition to other crimes against humanity. Residents are fleeing en masse due to rampant violence, inflation and shortages of food and medicine, according to a July report by the UN Refugee Agency. The U.S. government in 2021 granted migrants from Venezuela Temporary Protected Status (TPS), according to a release from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, providing Venezuelan immigrants with work permits and preventing them from being deported to their home country due to the extraordinary conditions. Since March 2025, the Trump administration has revoked or announced a plan to terminate TPS for over 1 million people in the U.S., according to a report from the American Immigration Council. This includes about 600,000 people who immigrated here from Venezuela. Arrioja Romero was held up in jail for months while trying to ensure that their son, Santiago, would not be left behind in the U.S. Santiago is on the autism spectrum and his grandmother in Branson was struggling to care for him full-time, Arrioja Romero said. While Santiago’s parents were in jail, Ozark resident Denise Meyers, an English- and Spanish-speaking schoolteacher, learned about the situation and stepped in to help. Denise Meyers, an English- and Spanish-speaking educator who supported the Ramirez family, speaks to a reporter in Ozark in March 2026. (Photo by Ellie Frysztak) A mutual friend asked Meyers to “be a compassionate presence with them in a really hard time,” she said. Meyers ultimately found a local family who was able to temporarily care for Santiago. The 4-year-old initially had a court date set for late 2027, she said. “At this point, through the help of really amazing people that have volunteered through different organizations, we’ve been able to get that expedited, and so he can be reunited with his mom hopefully very soon and they can be deported together,” Meyers said in early March. Later that month, Arrioja Romero and Santiago were reunited and deported together, joining Acosta Ramirez back in Venezuela. The month-long trek to Texas In 2022, Arrioja Romero, Acosta Ramirez, Santiago and Acosta Ramirez’s parents made their way from Ecuador — where they had fled from Venezuela — to Eagle Pass, Texas. The family rode in train cars during most of the journey, Acosta Ramirez said. But in Panama, they were forced to walk for seven or eight days. They made their way through the Darién Gap — the roadless, rugged rainforest that bridges South and North America. Santiago became ill, and Acosta Ramirez’s mother injured her knee. “It was really hard,” Acosta Ramirez said. The hardest days were still ahead. Acosta Ramirez said the toughest stretch of the voyage was the trek through Mexico, where his family was fearful of the police. In August 2022, the family reached the U.S.-Mexico border. They faced the fast-moving Rio Grande River, fed by three days of rain. They managed to get across safely with help from Border Patrol agents on the other side, Acosta Ramirez said. On U.S. soil, they were apprehended for crossing the border improperly and briefly detained. Federal agents gave them specific instructions: they needed to apply for asylum first, then receive social security numbers and work visas. A judge needed to hear their asylum case and determine whether it would be accepted. Acosta Ramirez and Arrioja Romero said their family complied with these instructions. In 2022, NPR reported that a wave of migrants seeking asylum from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua had begun crossing the border at Eagle Pass, a community of about 28,000 residents. Border Patrol recorded more than 50,000 border apprehensions in the Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, in August 2022, according to the report. Settling for a year in the Ozarks Maria Fernanda Arrioja Romero, center, celebrates her husband Angel Acosta Ramirez’s birthday with son Santiago at their Branson home in early 2025. (Photo provided by the Ramirez family) Acosta Ramirez and his family got in touch with a couple relatives who were living in the U.S. once they were released from detention in Texas. At first, they moved to Miami, where Acosta Ramirez said they wound up staying on the streets for about three weeks. Acosta Ramirez’s mother found work in Branson through a family connection, leading him to move to Missouri with his wife and son. They lived in Branson for one year, he said. Acosta Ramirez was working as an Uber driver, while Arrioja Romero worked at a hotel. “So many of the families I know that are being affected believe they are doing what they can to be here in the right way, contributing in the right way, trying to learn what to do, whether that’s through asylum or anything, whatever documentations are needed,” said Meyers. “They were here in good faith, that it was a safety net for their family to come out of an area where there was great oppression and justice was not sure, to a country where it seemed that there would be a lot better place for their family to land — which is the story of any other family I’ve talked to that has been affected by this.” ‘We followed the process that was asked of us’ The U.S. government’s complicated and increasingly less accessible procedures for border entry have prompted many migrant families to enter through dangerous and unsanctioned routes. Since 2016, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers have at times blocked ports of entry at the southern border to the U.S. through a practice called “metering” (allowing only a limited number of asylum-seekers through), according to a July 2026 report by the American Immigration Council. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld metering as a lawful practice in a June 2026 ruling, determining that CBP officers have no obligation to inspect people who approach ports of entry, and that people seeking asylum at ports of entry do not necessarily have a right to access that process. The American Immigration Council argues that turning people away at ports of entry undermines “orderly” immigration practices by forcing migrants to remain “in a dangerous limbo,” often in Mexican border towns, for indeterminate amounts of time. However, federal law (8 USC 1158) states that any migrant who arrives in the U.S., whether by a designated port of arrival or elsewhere, may apply for asylum in accordance with the applicable laws. Improper entry is a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to six months in prison or a fine of $50 to $250 on the first attempt under U.S. law. Reached by phone on July 28, Acosta Ramirez’s mother shared her perspective through an interpreter. The Daily Citizen agreed to grant her anonymity because she still lives in the Branson area and fears being arrested. “We followed the process that was asked of us,” she said. “I don’t understand still why they deported Maria Fernanda and Angel.” “It seems to me that they detained Maria Fernanda and Angel illegally. … It really scared my son Angel, because he had never done anything (illegal) to his knowledge.” “That’s why I really believe that a lot of people are being deported unjustly.” The family’s paper trail After speaking to a reporter in late February, Arrioja Romero provided her consent and signature for the Daily Citizen to obtain her complete immigration case file. The Daily Citizen requested records from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which holds immigrants’ complete case files; the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which holds reports of every documented entry and deportation from the U.S.; and ICE, which holds a record of every interaction an immigrant has with federal authorities. The requests to CBP and DHS were denied. In July, ICE responded to the Daily Citizen’s request by releasing a two-page case summary of Arrioja Romero’s encounters with federal immigration agents. The report states that Arrioja Romero entered the country in August 2022 and was apprehended by federal agents. She was found to be an alien present without parole and was subsequently detained and released on parole. A brief narrative in the case summary states that a Juvenile & Family Management Transportation & Compliance Unit took custody of the entire family at the Eagle Pass Border Patrol Station on Aug. 19, 2022 and transported them to an NGO called Mission Border hope. The family members were released together and paroled, it states. Arrioja Romero was apprehended again in October 2024 and January 2026, according to the report. The document indicates that federal authorities never issued or served Arrioja Romero any charging documents related to her case, she had no aggravated felony convictions, and she was cleared for voluntary departure before leaving the country. According to Arrioja Romero, she and her husband had work visas that were valid until 2029. Although the Daily Citizen was not able to obtain a record of this from the government, Acosta Ramirez’s mother provided a photo that appears to show Arrioja Romero’s work visa with an expiration date of Jan. 15, 2029, as well as a