Adrian Ramirez stepped out of a Louisiana immigration center last week with an ankle monitor, a dead phone and the clothes he’d been wearing when ICE detained him while he was on the way to work in Syracuse in January.

Ramirez had lost 15 pounds and months with his family, including his baby son. ICE officers wouldn’t return his passport, and he was afraid he’d get stopped on his way home to Syracuse.

He said he also had another fear: What if his son, Ariel, didn’t recognize him?

Thanks to the help of a stranger in Louisiana and his dedicated Syracuse community, Ramirez made it home. When they reunited at Syracuse’s airport, Ramirez tightly hugged his partner, Talia Criollo, and nuzzled his son, who giggled and touched his father’s face with his chubby baby hands.

“Thanks to them, I’m here,” Ramirez said in Spanish, this week, back inside All Saints Church, where he was cleaning the floors for Palm Sunday. “God listened to my prayers, but he also listened to theirs.”

Ramirez came with his father to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was a juvenile. He applied for special immigrant status for juveniles in 2022 and has been approved for a visa, his lawyer said. He has committed no crimes, his lawyer said, is a working, loving father.

Still, Ramirez and his future father-in-law, Jose Criollo, were detained by ICE while they were on their way to a home building job in Syracuse in January.

Criollo was released on bond after nine days. Ramirez was sent to the infamous Jackson Parish Correctional Center.

But his family, All Saints Church community and good Samaritans didn’t give up on him.

Tap the link in our bio to read the full story of story of Ramirez’s journey home, a journey that involved a new legal strategy, an intense bond hearing, generous fundraising, delays, contingency plans, rescheduled flights and the warm hands of strangers.

📷
1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 13: @nstrimble
3, 10, 11: Provided
5, 6: Associated Press
9, 12: Michelle Breidenbach