From Taco Drive to Detention: An Immigrant’s 25-Year American Dream Interrupted by ICE
Photo illustration by Yunuen Bonaparte for palabra
Oscar Muñoz built a life, a family, and a thriving business. He now faces deportation — and the unraveling of everything he’s known.
Editor’s note: The original story first appeared in Slice of Culture, a news site covering Hudson County, New Jersey.
Oscar Muñoz moved to the U.S. when he was fourteen years old, not knowing where life would take him; all he knew was that he would leave it up to destiny, and then ICE came knocking.
“There are people who didn’t rob anything, and they (ICE) grabbed them at the front border, and now they're here,” he said on a phone call to Slice of Culture from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a privately held ICE facility in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania.
“I’ve built everything here; it’s been 25 years!” Muñoz added, moving to the U.S. from Puebla, a city in central Mexico.
Here, in the U.S., he’s the proud owner of Taco Drive in Jersey City, N.J. Walking into the restaurant, you’ll see an upside-down Statue of Liberty, colorful Jarritos soda bottles, and the crisp smell of flared-out Mexican-style tacos.
Muñoz has two kids who were born in the U.S.
How he ended up at an ICE facility nearly four-and-a-half hours away from his family is a reality faced by many immigrants in today’s Trump 2.0. immigration sphere. Muñoz, who has spent nearly a year in the facility, told Slice of Culture the harsh conditions he’s faced inside the facility, “immigration caught me and now I am here!” He described several conditions and challenges he faced until the point of his arrest by Hoboken, N.J., police officers.
From there, he was taken to a nearby detention center where he spent two days, and then was transported to Moshannon Valley Processing Center.
“They charge me even for the air I breathe!” he exclaimed, and mentioned issues receiving basic hygienic supplies such as toothpaste and deodorant sent from his loved ones on the outside. In the detention center, at least he can cook. “We all share a kitchen together and we rotate, so I’ll make them (detainees) a burrito or a taco, obviously not the way at the restaurant, but still they like it.”
Oscar Muñoz, a restaurant owner and father of two, was detained by ICE and has been held for over a year. Photo by Jordan Coll
In several calls with Muñoz, he described being in the ICE facility for a year without having access to parole. In an attempt to visit Muñoz, Slice of Culture was denied visitation and was told to leave the facility. We had been taking photos of the facility in the parking lot, and they told us we couldn’t come in because of that.
Each year, nearly 40,000 immigrants are held in immigration detention facilities across the country. According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an average of 872 immigrants were arrested per day in late January and just under 600 in early February of this year.
The prevalence and concentration of ICE detention centers throughout the U.S. are mostly in southwestern or southeastern states – fourteen of the twenty largest immigration centers are located in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, according to a dataset by TRAC immigration.
A report by Temple University’s Beasley Law School students and the Philadelphia-based immigrant rights group Juntos found that detainees at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center were being “held under punitive, inhumane and dangerous conditions.” The report was compiled after interviewing 77 immigrants housed at the facility.
The center, a former federal prison, reopened as an ICE facility in 2021, with a capacity of 1,876 – making it one of the largest immigration detention centers in the Northeast.
Moshannon is run by the GEO Group, Inc., a private company that receives federal funds to oversee more than a dozen ICE detention centers nationwide.
A Congressional Budget Office report reviewed by Slice of Culture shows that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “Operations and Support” – its budget for detention centers – is currently $9.3 million, up from $8.7 million last year.
Entrance sign of GEO Group’s Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, where Oscar Muñoz remains detained by ICE after more than a year. Photo by Jordan Coll
“[Muñoz] was released as far as the state was concerned, but immigration was there to take him into custody,” said Gregory Jachts, the attorney taking on Muñoz’s criminal case.
ICE can step in to take custody of individuals released by the courts, even while criminal charges against them are still unresolved, as these cases became more pervasive under the Trump administration.
He was previously charged under the Superior Court of New Jersey Criminal Division with burglary and trespassing, and criminal mischief for damaging property last year while intoxicated, according to the affidavit obtained by Slice of Culture.
A judge in March dismissed the burglary and trespassing charges, and Muñoz admitted in a plea deal to the criminal mischief charge, according to court records. He faces sentencing on April 25.
Jachts pointed out that Muñoz, like many immigrants who find themselves taken by ICE officers, ended up spending several months to more than a year in federal custody “for something that’s a relatively minor charge.”
A dataset publicly listed by ICE shows monthly legal processing under the categories: “Title 42 Expulsions, Administrative Returns, Enforcement Returns, and removals,” under which a total of 579,000 immigrants were deported in 2023 – the latest year data is available – based on ICE data.
The most current figure on deportations based on Title 42 is not known on their site, but data from 2020 through 2023 indicate roughly 3 million immigrants from the Southwest border were deported back to their respective countries.
Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office for a second term, he has kept his campaign’s directive on mass deportations nationwide.
Roughly 37,660 migrants were deported in the span of a month under Trump’s second term; some 51 million U.S. residents are foreign-born, according to a PBS analysis of immigration figures – with over one quarter of this population following under legal or procedural protection from being deported, according dataset by Migration Policy Institute, a think tank on immigration policy.
The roundup of unauthorized immigrants was first aimed at those accused of committing violent crimes, though less than half of the estimated 8,200 individuals arrested from Jan. 20 through Feb. 2 have been criminal-related.
So far this year, data gathered by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonprofit data distribution organization, shows that 47,928 immigrants were detained since April 6 (the most current data), according to their site, with 46 percent or 22,046 of detainees having no criminal record.
The wave of mass deportations in the U.S. trickles down into family households, echoed in Trump’s first administration under the “zero-tolerance” immigration policy back in 2017. ICE law enforcement agents were tasked with removing children as young as four months old from parents who were seeking asylum.
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In the state of New Jersey, approximately 2.25 million immigrants lived in 2023, including around 450,000 who do not possess legal status in the U.S., according to government data.
“We are a nation of immigrants, and we follow due process,” said Jersey City Councilman Yousef Saleh, who describes himself as the proud son of Palestinian immigrants and an attorney raised in the Heights, a vibrant immigrant community. In Jersey City, more than 40 languages are spoken cumulatively across over half of the households, and nearly 50% of residents were born outside of the U.S.
“When it comes to violent criminals the federal government has every right to use everything in their power to effectuate an arrest, but when it comes to the 287(g) program it incentivizes states to essentially have a bounty program for immigrants,” he added, referring to the program under the Immigration and Nationality Act, allowing local law enforcement to have an open policy with ICE officials, when it comes to processing immigrants who do not possess legal status in the U.S.
Thirty-eight states have already agreed to comply with ICE; New Jersey is not one of them under state law.
Protesters hang a sign on the fence in front of Delaney Hall, the proposed site of an immigrant detention center in Newark, N.J., on March 11, 2025. New Jersey is among six states that have opted out of the 287(g) program, barring local law enforcement from formal collaboration with ICE. Photo by Seth Wenig/AP Photo
The federal government recently added hundreds of thousands of newly issued immigration warrants of arrest to a national database used by local police under the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), as reported by NPR, making immigrants more susceptible to arrests by local police without a signed order from an immigration judge.
Saleh is pushing for legislation enshrining the protections for immigrants in the state following a resolution passed by Jersey City, called the “Golden Door of America,” as reported by Slice of Culture, given its proximity to the Statue of Liberty. Additionally, Jersey City Councilman Frank Gilmore recently sent a letter to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in support of Muñoz’s release.
In 2018, the state issued the Immigrant Trust Directive, which limits the type of assistance local law enforcement provides to federal immigration officials.
Muñoz’s 18-year-old daughter Niomy, who was recently admitted to Columbia University for engineering, told Slice of Culture that she tried to visit her father but was denied access to the facility for not possessing her “REAL ID” at the time of her arrival.
Last December, she sent a letter to the judge in her father’s case and which the family shared with Slice of Culture. “I respectfully urge you to consider the impact my father’s detention has had on my brother and to allow him the opportunity to stay in the United States,” she wrote. “Oscar is not only a great father but also a person who has so much to contribute to this community. His release would bring boundless relief and joy to my family and would allow him to continue being the role model and support system that my brother and I depend on.”
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Jordan Coll is an award-winning journalist with a pulse for reporting stories that fundamentally and truly matter. A Miami native, he is currently a freelance reporter with over 8 years of experience as a multimedia journalist, including reporting on national breaking news events across various digital and local print media platforms. He has a love and thirst for meeting people from all walks of life. He graduated with a degree in journalism from Florida International University and has a master’s degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism. @JordanColl
Patricia Guadalupe, raised in Puerto Rico, is a bilingual multimedia journalist based in Washington, D.C., and is the interim managing editor of palabra. She has been covering the capital for both English- and Spanish-language media outlets since the mid-1990s and previously worked as a reporter in New York City. She’s been an editor at Hispanic Link News Service, a reporter at WTOP Radio (CBS Washington affiliate), a contributing reporter for CBS Radio network, and has written for NBC News.com and Latino Magazine, among others. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and has a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. She specializes in business news and politics and cultural issues. She is the former president of the Washington, D.C. chapter of NAHJ and is an adjunct professor at American University in the nation’s capital and the Washington semester program of Florida International University. @PatriciagDC