The night before, as they cuddled on the couch that unfolded into a bed in their West Scranton home, Virgilio Lema reassured his wife.
A warehouse worker, Aida Tenezaca, felt nervous about an interview for a better job as a patient intake clerk at Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton.
IMMIGRATION: AMERICAN DREAM OR NIGHTMARE?
This three-day WVIA News series focuses on the effects of federal immigration policy on Northeast and Central Pennsylvania.
● SATURDAY: The nation's clash over immigration policy is felt in region. Also: 287(g) agreements explained.
● TODAY: A young Scranton mother faces future after husband was deported.
● MONDAY: Planned Pa. detention centers, including one in Schuylkill County, raise concerns. Also: Pike County finds ICE detentions lucrative.
● KEYSTONE EDITION BROADCAST: Watch our panel discussion at 7 p.m. Monday, May 11 on WVIA-TV.
From there, Tenezaca dreamed, maybe she could study nursing, which pays a lot better than warehousing.
“I was like, I have to take it, like, it's some dream I always had,” Tenezaca, 20, said, seated inside her parents' South Scranton home. “So, I was telling him, I was like, ‘I'm so nervous.’ Like, ‘I hope I get this job.’ And he was like, ‘Don't worry.’ Like, ‘Just be calm.’ Like, ‘Go to sleep.’ Like, ‘You’ll get it. Don't worry.’ "
They fell asleep on the couch. She woke up, still groggy, about 5 a.m., with her husband noisily preparing tea or coffee before heading off to work.
“He was doing all that noise, and then I didn't say anything, I didn't get up, I didn't do anything,” she said. “And then all I remember was him coming towards us.”
Lema said goodbye to her and their two daughters, Victoria, 2, and Ana, 1.
“He kissed me on my front (forehead). He kissed my two daughters on their cheek. He was like, ‘Okay, I see you later,’” she said.
If she wanted to bring him lunch at his job site, as she often did, he said she could.
“If you don't, it's fine,” Lema told his wife. “I hope you do good in your interview, and we'll talk later.”
Tenezaca went back to sleep, but woke maybe 20 minutes later.
“I don't know why I got up ... I literally just stand up from my couch, and I see my phone ringing, and it says my husband, and then I answer,” Tenezaca said.
It was a Monday, three days before last Thanksgiving, a holiday rooted in immigration. As he usually did, Lema, a roofer, headed out in his van to pick up employees for a job.
“Come get the van,” he told his wife when she answered the phone. “Immigration got me.' I was so in shock that when he said that I was like, ‘What?’ That's all I said was like, ‘What?’ And then he was like, ‘Aida, come get the van. Immigration got me.’ He couldn't, he didn't even say I love you, or I'm sorry, or I don't know, because immigration was right there in front of him.”
Immigration agents surrounded the van in South Scranton, not far from where she now lives with her parents, Tenezaca said.
A sign of the times
The story, repeated thousands of times across the United States in the last 16 months, illustrates the heartbreaking effects of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. A friend of Tenezaca’s family confirmed she told him the story, too.
Lema was in the United States illegally. A native Ecuadoran, he entered Texas in 2016 at age 15. He never committed a crime after arriving and simply worked toward a better life.
He found it in Scranton.
Tenezaca, an American citizen born in Queens, New York, knew his status. They had talked about ICE catching up to him someday, leaving her and their two children behind.
“I never thought I was going to be next,” she said. “I really didn't, and then now I'm doing all this by myself. I'm still shocked, so shocked this all happened to me.”
'He was a roofer'
They met each other casually because Lema was Tenezaca’s best friend’s cousin. He spent his early days in the U.S. in New Jersey.
“Most of his family are roofers. Like my godfather, he was a roofer,” Tenezaca said.
They renewed acquaintances years later when he friend-requested her on Facebook, which she thought little of because he was her friend’s relative.
“And then he starts texting me, and then just starts getting serious from there,” she said.
Lema moved to Scranton. Not long after that, they moved in together and Tenezaca became pregnant with Victoria.
She graduated from West Scranton High School in June 2023 and started attending Marywood University in the fall. The next year, she felt the stress of balancing schoolwork and caring for a child and decided to leave school and concentrate on her newborn.
“He didn't pressure me. Also, he wanted me to go to school. He wanted me to go forth with my dreams. But I was like, I want my family, and I feel like my family is more important than college,” Tenezaca said. “I mean, I could go back to college anytime, you know, but family, my kids are going to be small just once, right?”
They married in February 2025.
Learning the truth
She learned of his immigration status only a couple of years earlier. When he entered in 2016, immigration authorities gave him a September 2017 court hearing.
He skipped the hearing, never understanding the implications, she said. A local immigration lawyer said missing an immigration court date virtually assures deportation.
“He was 17. He wanted to make money,” Tenezaca said. “Everyone that comes here migrating wants to make money (because they have) to pay all that debt that [it] cost them to come over here. Because when you come over here through the border, it's not free.”
Lema had to pay “guides,” also known as coyotes, $15,000 or $20,000 to get him into the country.
“And I mean, he's not going to give up one day to go to a court,” she said. “And then maybe he was scared, like they (ICE agents) were going to take him that day or something. So, he preferred to go out on the roof and work.”
Photos for memories
It’s unknown how hard Immigration and Customs Enforcement looked for Lema right after that, but he remained in the U.S. for more than eight years. ICE began looking a lot harder for undocumented immigrants once Trump began his second term.
For years after he arrived, Virgilio Lema just installed roofs, stayed out of trouble, attended Catholic Mass with his family, played with his daughters and adored his wife.
Tenezaca said her husband has no criminal record. An ICE database published online by the Deportation Data Project doesn’t specifically name Lema’s arrest but shows two arrests on the day he was arrested. Both were for immigration law violations.
In the front room of her parents’ home, Tenezaca flipped through photos of their days together for a WVIA reporter and videographer.
Her baby shower before Victoria came along.
A picture with Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera, perhaps on Palm Sunday last year.
A photo on the George Washington Bridge, a main artery into New York City. With traffic at a standstill, they simply decided to get out of their car for a bit.
Other photos at a local pumpkin patch, on top of the Empire State Building, their wedding after Magisterial District Judge Paul Ware married them, and her graduation party.
She remembers Lema’s joy seeing her graduate high school.
“I was like, ‘Why are you so happy?’ Like, ‘I just graduated.’” she said. “But for him, he never graduated. Over there in Ecuador, it's like, almost no one goes forth in school. Just grade school, and that's it. And so, he was so happy to see me graduate. I was so happy to see him.”
In another photo, she’s “pregnant big.”
“I felt insecure because I feel so big, and he just looked at me. He was looking at me like he admired me,” she said.
In a photo he snapped with her cell phone after she gave birth to Victoria, she’s asleep.
“He was taking care of our baby while I slept,” she said. “I was tired, but look at him.”
Lema smiles broadly in the selfie.
Photos for the future
Nowadays, few people as young as Tenezaca have printed copies of photos, but these prints carry a purpose. She had about 90 printed to support a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services I-130 application filed after his deportation.
That’s a petition to admit an “alien relative” into the United States and grant the relative a permanent resident card, better known as a green card.
“That's the petition for a spouse, saying, basically stating that I'm American and we're married and we're not married just for the papers,” Tenezaca said. “We're married because we're in love. We have kids, you know? ... And I literally have every moment when we've been together.”
'This is not for real'
She prefers these to the images burned in her mind of the day ICE arrested her husband.
After she hung up the phone, “I just started screaming,” Tenezaca said.
She went outside and called her mother.
“I was like, this is not for real because my kids were still sleeping. I was like, no, this is not for real,” she said. “I call my mom ... and she's already crying.”
Lema had already called his father-in-law.
“He called my dad first, and he told my dad, ‘Take care of my girls, take care of my wife, immigration got me,” Tenezaca said as she broke into tears.
She asked her mother to come over to take care of the girls.
“I need to go see him. I need to go see him. I need to go say bye,” she said.
After her parents arrived, she used her cell phone to locate her husband. ICE took him to the Pike County prison, where its Northeast Pennsylvania detainees are held.
Tenezaca and her brother drove there.
“As soon as I got there, I was like, my husband's here. I need to see my husband,” she said.
She saw him through a window once she was inside the entrance.
“And all I remember was I saw him, and he looked at me, but he went to the side,” Tenezaca said. “He didn't want to look at me. He doesn't like me crying. He hates me crying. He doesn't like me to cry or feel sad ... I was bawling my eyes out.”
She saw shackles on his legs.
“My husband's never done anything (criminal) here in the United States, ever,” she said. “I was devastated to see I saw him there. He stepped aside, and then I tried to talk to him.”
ICE agents asked Lema, but he wouldn't speak to her. Instead, they brought out a co-worker of her husband’s arrested at the same time.
She apologized to the co-worker for his arrest. He asked her to give his wallet to his wife.
She drove home.
“Everyone came to my house, all our family and friends and like started saying, [they're] 'so sorry’ for me,” Tezecana said. “It was like, I lost him, like I lost him, like he died.”
Home in Ecuador
On Dec. 2, eight days later, Lema was back in Ecuador, living in his hometown. On Dec. 13, Tenezaca and their daughters flew there to visit.
She thought about staying because she felt she couldn’t raise two daughters on her own.
“And then I kept thinking about it, and I was like, I can't do that. I need my kids over here, and I need to make money,” she said. “I mean, he can't make money over there, the economy over there is horrible, and there's no jobs. There's no way to get a job. So, I just decided I have to stay here with my parents, and my kids are going to daycare now. They're learning something every day.”
In Ecuador, “they would not have, right now, what they have,” she said.
“I want my kids here. You know, there's opportunities here. There's stuff for me to do here,” she said. “Over there, if you don't have a car, you can't go anywhere. And over there, everything is money. Everything. It's the same thing here, but the economy is really low over there.”
So, within a month, she returned to the United States. She sends her husband money now and then to help. In Ecuador, even $100 can go a long way.
Faith and forms
She’s putting her faith in the immigration system and the I-130 form that allows bringing home an “alien relative.” She filed that in February.
She hasn’t heard anything, but an immigration lawyer told her to expect a decision in a year to two years. After that, she’ll have to file another form, an I-601, which asks the federal government to allow someone in because a spouse faces hardships in the United States.
The lawyer said that could take two to three years, meaning their oldest daughter could be 7 years old before they’re reunited.
If they’re reunited.
Because of what happened, she never made the interview for the Geisinger job. She’s still at the warehouse.
The sadness left behind
Each evening, she talks with her husband by phone. They update each other on their lives. Recently, she relayed that Ana started walking, an event Lema missed.
She’s aware many Americans feel her husband should have been deported.
“I know he didn't come the legal way, but still it's the most inhumane way to do this, to separate families, especially when one has a family,” Tenezaca said. “For me, it's so inhumane. It's not something a human should do, separate families, especially families that are this young. We're both so young. My kids are so young, and just because he came here illegal to take him away from his family doesn't that does not fit right with me.”
Her husband, she said, worked on roofs, and that’s all.
“He wasn't doing anything illegal. The only (thing) illegal was him being here,” she said. “But still, that's not fair. It's really not.”
When she takes her daughters out in public, she feels sadness.
“We see other families, and they're all mom, dad and kids, and my kids are probably thinking, where's my dad, you know?” Tenezaca said.
“And for somebody to take that away from somebody that's just not, it doesn't fit right. Till this day, I'm still devastated. I'm passing through really hard times," she said. "I mean, growing up two kids, it's really hard, especially because they're still younger ... And they need a father figure, and right now they don't have that.”
