Two elementary school students from Alamo Heights Independent School District and their step-mom were arrested by immigration enforcement officers while waiting for the school bus early in the morning on April 27.
Near the intersection of Gault Lane and Lynnette Road the children’s stepmother, Maria Betania Uzcategui Castillo, was walking her son Victor Jr. Labrador and daughter Monseratt Labrador to the bus stop when they were surrounded by immigration officers claiming to look for a woman who “looked” like her.
After saying they mistook her identity, officers tried to get Maria Betania to agree to an ankle monitor. She refused, and they detained her along with her children while their father Victor locked himself inside their home to avoid arrest.
It was Maria Betania’s birthday, said immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch.
Now, they’re at the Dilley Integration Processing Center, about an hour outside of San Antonio, which has received criticism from lawmakers in recent months for being one of the only ICE centers that detain children and for operating under detrimental conditions.
Hailing from Venezuela, the Uzcategui-Labrador family arrived in the U.S. in 2021. They entered under parole, were granted asylum and made it to every required appointment to keep their status.
Their next asylum hearing wasn’t scheduled until 2027, but it has been moved up to Tuesday, where Lincoln-Goldfinch filed a habeas corpus petition.
Victor Jr., 11, and Monseratt, 8, are enrolled at Cambridge Elementary School. Both students are very involved in their schools: Victor Jr. is part of the run club and the gifted and talented program while Monseratt is part of the roller skating club.
Word spread quickly of the family’s detention, and what’s normally a lively bus stop is much quieter now, said Leslie Bertolino, an Alamo Heights homeroom mom whose daughter is in the same class as Victor Jr.
Since the arrest, families have expressed fear of leaving their home, even to pick up and drop off their kids from school. Several have reported still seeing immigration officers in the neighborhood.
“Families are operating under this nebulous timeline of ‘are we safe?’” Bertolino said.
Now, fellow AHISD parents are rallying behind the Uzcategui-Labrador family and other families who are worried that they may also be targeted by the federal government’s intensified immigration enforcement.
Community shows up for neighbors
Bertolino quickly launched a GoFundMe to help the Uzcategui-Labrador family pay for legal expenses, setting an initial goal of $4,000 but later increasing it to $30,000 after realizing the lengthy process necessary to bring them back. The fundraiser met its goal on Monday afternoon and has stopped accepting donations.
The arrest also sparked a protest over the weekend at the intersection of Loop 410 and Broadway, demanding the release of the Uzcategui-Labrador family.
Bertolino has also been collecting grocery gift cards and in-kind donations to help other families who are too afraid to leave their homes for work or school.
For now, the bus stop will likely remain quiet as families wait out the situation.
Another neighbor, Beatrice Herrera, said she saw the incident unfold that morning after returning from dropping off her daughter, a kindergarten student at Howard Early Childhood Center.
Herrera tried to help Betania during the interaction as about seven immigration agents swarmed them.
After the agents took Betania and her kids, Herrera says she kept their school bags for them. A few months earlier, Betania had helped Herrera move into her apartment.
“My daughter would play with her daughter so we would just sit outside and watch.”
But in the past week since the family was taken, some of the neighbors say they have been extra cautious.
Parents are volunteering to keep an eye out on the school bus stop during pick-up and drop-off. Some are also carpooling, taking students to and from class.
“I help bring my neighbors’ kids from the bus in the afternoon, and it’s crazy how many kids used to come out, and now it’s maybe a quarter of them getting on the bus,” Herrera said on Tuesday morning.
Immigrant students in San Antonio
On Tuesday, a band of federal lawmakers from Texas, Arizona, California and Maine visited the Dilley Integration Processing Center Tuesday and shared details about the trip with reporters in San Antonio.
Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) visited the Uzcategui-Labrador family for about 20 minutes, he said.
“The kids, as you can imagine, were distraught,” Castro said. “The young girl talked about how much she missed her father… Victor was crying because he felt like he might miss the end of the school year and not see his friends.”
Victor Sr. has been in contact with Castro’s office and his attorney, though is keeping a low profile, focusing on getting back to his family.
“Victor and Maria Betania and the children have a very strong asylum claim,” based on what happened to them in Venezuela, said Lincoln-Goldfinch, an Austin-based attorney representing the family.
Citing federal privacy laws, Alamo Heights ISD declined to comment on the issue. Asked about the small school district’s protocol for dealing with outside law enforcement officers on campus, a district spokesperson pointed to a board policy manual, which states a school principal should verify an officer’s identity, authority to take custody of a student and then deliver the student.
The policy also says the principal should notify the parent, unless there’s a “valid objection” from an officer.
A small, wealthy and majority White school district, Alamo Heights ISD’s student pool has been increasingly diversifying in recent years, getting more immigrant students enrolled nearly every year.
For the 2024-25 school year, the district reported having 140 immigrant students, double the number of immigrant students it had for the 2022-23 school year, according to state data.
It’s unclear how many immigrant students the district has for the current 2025-26 school year because the information is published by the state every December.
Texas defines immigrant students as individuals aged 3 to 21 not born in the U.S. who haven’t attended schools in the country for three full academic years.
Several school districts have reported, however, having fewer immigrant students this year compared to the 2024-25 school year, including two districts directly neighboring Alamo Heights ISD.
North East ISD reported having around 3,594 immigrant students this year compared to over 4,000 for the 2024-25 school year. At San Antonio ISD, there were about 1,621 immigrant students this year compared to 1,985 last year.
School districts do not ask students about their legal status, but several district officials say that the decrease in immigrant students enrolled is because of the Trump administration’s ramped up immigration enforcement efforts.
Photographer Amber Esparza contributed to this story.
