U.S. citizen’s husband living in U.S. for nearly 30 years released from ICE
After eight months of being ping-ponged across a dozen immigration detention centers, Carlos Della Valle, married to an American citizen who committed no crimes in his nearly 30 years in the U.S. except for entering the country illegally, was released Tuesday night from a Louisiana ICE facility.
“When we thought that we had come to the end, there was hope in a person, in people we didn’t necessarily expect,” Angela Della Valle said in a press conference Wednesday to celebrate his release. Angela has been crisscrossing the country for months trying to get her husband and father of their college-age son Alessandro released.
Carlos said it was just another Tuesday evening at Winn Correctional Center in the middle of Louisiana’s Kisatchie National Forest. He was lying in bed when a guard, after completing a detainee count of his unit, told him he was going for medical. He had been requesting help after experiencing hearing difficulties in one of his ears.
He said the guard later returned and told him he was leaving.
“I kind of froze, you know, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do,” he said.
Carlos can now be united with his family while his case goes through immigration court. The conditions of his release are yet to be determined. The family has not had a conversation with immigration officials.
Carlos said he has cried more in the last eight months than in his entire life, observing people being detained simply because they didn’t realize they had an immigration appointment, or, if they did show up for it, were still detained.
He said some of the young men at Winn arrived in the U.S. when they were 2 to 3 years old and didn’t know they were undocumented until a parent told them.
“I feel pain. I feel guilt knowing that not everyone shares the same luck. Not all of us have the love—the community — behind us, helping us,” he said in Spanish.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to request for comment in time of publishing.
Carlos, a Mexican citizen, crossed the southern border in 1997 after not finding a good-paying job in his home state of Guerrero, Mexico. He said was also assaulted multiple times by cartels for refusing to join. He was detained and deported and crossed again later in 1997. Reentering the U.S. after being deported is a felony punishable by up to two years.
In their 24 years of marriage, Carlos, 50, and Angela, 49, met with more than three dozen immigration lawyers looking to adjust his status despite the complication of illegal entry, but to no avail. Carlos maintained a low profile in the small town in Pennsylvania where they were living and avoided any encounter with immigration agents.
On Christmas Day in 2024, he was detained by immigration officials at Cyril E. King Airport in Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands, while returning from a family vacation. He was held for two days then released on bond.
Community members in Chester County, Pennsylvania, wrote more than 200 letters calling for his release. The president of the company where Carlos had worked for decades wrote that Carlos deserved to be a U.S. citizen and that “President Trump had men like Carlos in mind when talking about what the new immigrants will look like.”
Swayed by the community support and letters from the community, a U.S. Virgin Island jury found Carlos not guilty of reentry into the U.S. in August of last year. It did not matter; Carlos was still an undocumented immigrant in the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. He turned himself in to immigration officials the next morning.
Moved to 12 different detention centers
During his eight months of immigration detention, Carlos was transferred to 12 different detention centers in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Puerto Rico and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In Florida alone, he was transferred more than a dozen times, going back and forth among detention centers in South Florida, Orlando and North Florida, including a stop at the controversial Everglades facility, Alligator Alcatraz.
In March, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied a humanitarian parole petition that would have released him to Angela’s custody. The immigration officials determined he was at flight risk despite ICE holding his passport.
The Della Valle family exemplifies the pain many American families with undocumented spouses have been facing under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Known as mixed-status families, many are facing the prospect of their loved ones being detained indefinitely or deported.
In 2024, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that 765,000 noncitizens, like Carlos, are married to U.S. citizens and lack lawful immigration status. Many have been married for more than 20 years.
Ashley DeAzevedo, executive director at American Families United, a nonprofit that works with U.S. citizens with undocumented spouses, called Angela an inspiration to every family they serve. What mixed-status families are going through now is a “crisis, most of us don’t know it exists until it lands on our doorstep,” she said.
“You don’t know your neighbor’s immigration status until the day they’re taken. You don’t know your coworker’s story until their desk is empty,” DeAzevedo said in a press conference on Wednesday.
Carlos said he usually is asked, “Why do you want to stay in this country?” He said he “believed in this country” and wanted to be part of it.
“I want to be a full citizen. I feel like I belong here, but I can’t belong here if I’m always hiding.”
Miami Herald staff writer Ana Claudia Chacin contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 4:12 PM.