Christian Manzanares Torres received the news while getting ready to celebrate her mother’s birthday. Ariel Sandigo Manzanerez, her second cousin once removed, was picked up by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after spending the day skiing with his wife and 13-year-old son at Mt. Bachelor Jan. 26, 2025. The ICE agent waited until Sandigo was alone running errands in Bend and later informed him he’d been followed for at least a week.
Sandigo was detained for several months and only was granted asylum papers, via his lawyer, as he stood in line waiting to board a plane to Nicaragua, his place of origin.
His cousin was the driving force in returning him home safely. His story, initially reported by the Source in February, offers insight into the harsh conditions of detention facilities, along with the struggle for freedom in which not everyone is successful. This article is based on conversations with Manzanares from November to December of 2025. Sandigo was unavailable for an interview under fear of retaliation.
Before his second term began, Donald Trump pledged to deport 15 to 20 million immigrants, CNN reported. In actuality, fewer than 600,000 have been deported, according to The New York Times. Over 1,000 have been detained in Oregon alone, according to the Oregon Capital Chronicle, and thousands more had their legal status revoked. Sandigo was the first Central Oregonian detained by ICE under the new administration. He holds no criminal record, not in the United States nor Nicaragua. His work permit was slated to expire in the latter half of 2025, but remained valid throughout his detainment. Manzanerez now holds asylum status, which supplanted the work permit.
Nightmarish conditions
Sandigo, 40, is like an uncle to Manzanares, 23, and she holds great respect for him. Amongst the dozens of people in her family, she alone began the process to return him home.
“I would spend hours on end on the phone just waiting for somebody to pick up, and then when they finally did, they would just hang up.” —Christian Manzanares Torres
Sandigo’s detainment was nightmarish, his cousin described. Officials moved him across several states over several months, including Washington, Arizona and Louisiana. At times he would be relocated to different facilities within the same state.
Facilities were often overcrowded. Detainees often had medical care delayed or denied. People often had to sleep on the floor. Showers were unclean and difficult, with only small pieces of soap that couldn’t sustain a single wash, Manzanares said.
Detainees weren’t separated by any sort of metric — such as age, vulnerability or supposed crime committed — which led to harassment, sexual assault, spread of illness and poor monitoring. Sandigo saw more than one detainee attempt to take their life during this time, Manzanares said.
Upon hearing the news of Sandigo’s detainment, Manzanares felt a wave of emotions: shock, sadness, anger and guilt — guilt because she had been mass-producing Red Cards from home, or cards that detail one’s legal rights when dealing with ICE. She had never given one to Sandigo.
She described asking herself, “What if you had given him the card, like, would it have helped him at all?”
The day after the news broke, Manzanares visited the Latino Community Association in Redmond, and after her first lawyer fell through she was referred to Brian Wolf of Equity Corps of Oregon. Wolf has been instrumental in Sandigo’s return, but due to confidentiality issues could not be interviewed.
ECO is a volunteer-based attorney service for detained immigrants. Wolf is located in Seattle and typically does asylum protection and defense against deportation and detention.
Manzanares had to gather extensive amounts of information in order to initiate the legal process and spent hours on the phone every day for a month.
She requested medical documents from both in and out of the country, some of which had to be translated to English. She was on hold for up to an hour with Customs and Border Protection in attempts to locate her cousin, whose contact with the family was abruptly cut off as he was transferred out of state.
“I feel like I was just angry at everyone, and because of what was going on. Again, I would spend hours on end on the phone just waiting for somebody to pick up, and then when they finally did, they would just hang up,” she said.
Family ties
Members of her family questioned her motives, especially as she continued to neglect herself. Her parents sustained her, bringing her food and helping her professionally. Manzanares and her mother detailed homes together, so her mother would cover the houses her daughter would normally clean.
When the incident first occurred, Manzanares took to social media to inform others. Allies reposted it. She was met not with communal support, she said, but immediate accusations of fear-mongering and claims that people knew where she worked. Her already-present anxiety heightened. She bought cameras for the perimeter of her car for protection. Manzanares attributed the effort put forth to fears circulating during her upbringing, in President Barack Obama’s first term of sweeping deportations. A time marked by fear.
Manzanares said she was wracked by anger — extending to the system, as she continued to grasp the lengths she’d need to go to free Sandigo, along with her own community.
During that time, her mother hadn’t yet received her citizenship and often warned her that one day she might return from school to find she’d been deported. She lived with that fear from early elementary school onward and broke down crying when she came home from school to find her house empty one afternoon. Even though it was merely a case of her parents both running errands at the same time, that incident stayed with her.
“I never thought that I would have to go through like a similar experience like that ever again. I’d seen the news and I was keeping up with ICE… but I never thought it would get to us here, because we’re such a small town,” she said.
For both her mother’s citizenship process and her cousin Sandigo, she had to write letters of character, explain to authorities why the person involved deserved to remain in the country. This full-circle moment was not lost on Manzanares.
Those memories weren’t the only things that motivated her. It was what awaited her uncle’s return in Nicaragua.
An asylum claim
He left at the age of 33 in 2018 after facing violent backlash from the national government, the Sandinistas, protesting for political reform. He was physically beaten by his own government and blacklisted; this enabled job discrimination, police monitoring, travel restrictions and the loss of several civil liberties, including professional licenses and access to scholarships. He traveled from Managua, the capital, to the United States. Sandigo was held in a detention center for two years while the legitimacy of his asylum status was determined, and only let go due to health concerns related to COVID.
Sandigo’s brother, Samuel Sandigo Manzanerez, who also immigrated from Nicaragua, told the family that should Sandigo return, he would likely face persecution and be considered a traitor.
Even abroad, the United Nations found that those who fled Nicaragua aren’t safe; some were refused passport renewal or access to legal documents and effectively stripped of a national identity, unable to engage with essential legal processes. Murders of those who spoke out against the government also occurred. In June 2025, a Nicaraguan veteran in exile was murdered in Costa Rica.
When Sandigo was released in Tacoma, Washington, on July 16, Christian Manzanares drove five hours alone to bring him home. Sandigo kept reiterating his disbelief about being free, and that mentally his mind was still in those detention centers.
Months later, he’s returned to his normal, quiet, life. He works with his wife in their home cleaning business and continues to raise his son. He’s appreciative for being able to remain in the U.S. Under asylum status, Sandigo is now aiming to become a full U.S. citizen.
“Detention doesn’t only affect the person that is being detained,” Manzanares said. “But it affects the entire family, especially children.”
This article appears in the Source January 15, 2026.
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I attended a training session by LCA last evening. For anyone interested in educating themselves and taking next steps in how to fight the injustice to immigrants that is currently taking place, please attend an upcoming meeting. We can to do more.
The courage and bravery of Manzanares in the face of the Trump/Miller assaults on liberty is extraordinary. We all need to continue the fight to get ICE thugs and goons out…everywhere!