Alamo Heights kids, mother return home after ICE detainment 

Two students enrolled at the Alamo Heights Independent School District and their stepmother are now home after spending two weeks in the Dilley Integration Processing Center.

Judge Orlando L. Garcia, who presides over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas,  ordered the federal government to release the family, stepmother Maria Betania Uzcategui Castillo and two children Victory and Moserrat, in a Wednesday ruling, granting the family’s habeas corpus plea. 

First detained on the morning of April 27 as they were waiting for the school bus, the family quickly drew support from other Alamo Heights families and neighbors, who raised money and demanded the release of the Uzcategui family from Dilley. 

The community also rallied behind other immigrant families who felt on edge in the weeks following the arrest. Parents carpooled, stood watch over the school bus and gathered in-kind donations and grocery gift cards for parents who feared leaving their homes during increased federal enforcement efforts. 

Hailing from Venezuela, the Uzcategui family arrived in the U.S. in 2021 under parole. They applied for and were granted work authorization, and the children enrolled at Cambridge Elementary School. In November, Maria Betania’s application for temporary protective status was “closed and terminated.”

On May 5, when the family filed their habeas corpus petition, they also contended that their detainment offended due process. 

In a May 13 order granting the petition, Judge Garcia agreed. Noncitizens are entitled to due process of law, the court found, and government detention violates due process unless it’s ordered in a “criminal proceeding with adequate procedural protections.” 

Garcia ordered immigration officers to release Maria Betania and her children from “custody, under conditions no more restrictive than those in the place before the detention at issue in this case, to a public place on or before Thursday, May, 14, 2026 at 9:30 a.m.” 

Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio), who has visited the Dilley center several times and saw the family while they were in detention, drove them home after they were released on Thursday morning. 

Castro’s social media pages published a picture of the children and Maria Betania in the backseat on their way to reunite with their father Victor Uzcategui, who avoided detention by locking himself inside their home on the morning of their detention. 

“Victor, Monserrat, and Maria are on their way home!” the post reads. “Thank you to the entire San Antonio community for speaking out and demanding their release from the Dilley trailer prison. We will not stop until all children are free.”

A different video from KENS 5 shows the emotional moment the family reunited. 

The Dilley processing center has been subject to public scrutiny in recent months for being one of the only ICE centers that detain children and for operating under detrimental conditions.