ICE arrests leave Central Texas families struggling to survive

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Pain radiated from her right shoulder, flaring with stress and aggravating skin already raw from radiation treatment. She wanted to lie down. Instead, she kept moving, preparing to flee the cold and the dark.  

Three months behind on her power bill, she was losing heat and light at the worst possible moment — just months after federal immigration agents detained her husband, the family’s primary breadwinner.

In the months since, Bricia and her 21-year-old U.S. citizen daughter have watched their savings evaporate, their business collapse and their home slip toward foreclosure — part of a widening pattern across Central Texas, where a surge in immigration arrests is quietly destabilizing families and pushing many toward financial ruin. 

Such stories are becoming increasingly common in Bastrop County, including Elgin, a majority-Hispanic exurb of about 12,000 residents, roughly 30 miles east of downtown Austin. In the “Sausage Capital of Texas,” gravel roads wind past goat and horse pens on properties belonging to immigrant families who commute to the city to work construction or clean homes. Many were drawn to the area decades ago by affordable land and rent. Now, deportations are eroding that stability.

Other area residents are also absorbing the financial shock of losing a primary breadwinner. They include a recent college graduate in Camp Swift who is supporting the family after her father’s deportation, and another Elgin mother who is selling pan dulce late into the night, taking on her husband’s work.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in Central and South Texas have climbed to an average of 2,000 arrests per month during the Trump administration, according to a New York Times analysis. About 9 in 10 of those arrested locally are men, the American-Statesman found, leaving women and children to shoulder the economic fallout. 

ICE did not respond to the Statesman’s requests for comment. 

Bricia’s husband, a construction subcontractor, was detained 11 months ago after a traffic stop by Elgin police — an arrest that triggered the family’s financial unraveling. Bricia, a Mexican immigrant living in the country without legal status, and her daughter have since lost two cars and a small plot of land where they once raised cattle to creditors. They’ve also fallen behind on property tax payments on the family home. (The Statesman is withholding Bricia’s last name because of her legal status.)

That icy weekend in January, the family fled to San Antonio to stay with Bricia’s mother. They remained there for more than a week as Bricia sought financial help from relatives and family friends to pay their $1,000 power bill. Her daughter found work painting houses but said she was never paid.

Then they returned home — and to a future that remained uncertain. 

“I have the clock against me and I don’t know what to do,” said Bricia, who has lived in the United States for more than 25 years. “I don’t know what comes next.”

For the past two decades, Bricia helped her husband run his contracting business, hiring workers and scheduling jobs installing walls, stuccoing and painting new houses. The business employed several workers and generated about $8,000 per month, Bricia’s husband, Miguel Morales, told the Statesman in a phone interview from Mexico.

The work supported the entire family and helped them build their home piece by piece beginning in 2013. 

The family’s finances tightened after Bricia’s 2023 cancer diagnosis, which required costly chemotherapy, radiation and surgeries, the family said. The last surgeries, to remove metastasized growths in Bricia’s left foot at the start of last year, resulted in the amputation of parts of each of her toes and left her bedridden and in a wheelchair for months. Morales’ deportation came during this time. 

The family, who had struggled for years to pay property taxes on time, defaulted on a payment plan to keep their home, prompting legal action by the county. 

Bricia’s husband was arrested in May 2025 on outstanding warrants related to driving without a license, after which ICE picked him up from the county jail. People in Texas without legal status are not eligible for driver licenses. Miguel Morales had previously been cited for outdoor burning and multiple instances of driving without a license, according to Bastrop County records. The Statesman could not find a criminal record for Bricia. 

Although Bricia spent more than $5,000 on her husband’s defense — first hoping he’d be released on bond to continue working and later just long enough to close out business dealings — Morales was deported to Mexico in November. 

By then, the family’s finances had collapsed. Bricia and her daughter, Karla Morales, tried to keep the business going, but after Miguel Morales was detained, contractors stopped paying, leaving them about $7,000 short for work on half a dozen houses, the family said. 

“I think they thought they weren’t going to be able to finish,” Miguel Morales said.

Due to her health, Bricia has been unable to take on other work. Karla Morales lost her job translating forms at a notary’s office in February. The family is trying to make a $6,200 payment before the mid-April court judgment.  

Bricia’s story is not an outlier. Across Bastrop County, deportations are shifting financial responsibility overnight — often onto daughters and wives who must quickly replace lost income while navigating systems they’ve never had to manage alone.

Michelle Zavala, 24, had just moved back to her family home in Camp Swift, just south of Elgin, when immigration agents detained her father. His deportation left Zavala — a recent Texas State master’s degree graduate — suddenly responsible for supporting the household.

Roberto Zavala, 53, a floor installer who had lived in the United States for three decades and was in the process of applying for legal residency, was on his way to the dentist when state troopers pulled him over and quickly turned him over to an ICE agent, his wife, Jaqueline Rodriguez said. 

The Department of Public Safety did not respond to the Statesman’s questions regarding its cooperation with immigration agents. 

She scrambled to secure funding for her unpaid social work internship. Of the $2,000 monthly stipend she eventually received, half immediately went toward utility bills, groceries and money sent to her father, who has struggled to find work in Matamoros, Mexico. The family used the last of its savings to pay last year’s property taxes, Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez, who has spent decades caring for her children (“they could both read by preschool because of me”), said she’s nervously preparing to enter the workforce. 

“I have to go out into the world now,” said Rodriguez, who only recently became a permanent resident. “But it’s like I don’t know where to start.” 

For some families, the fight for survival is even more immediate.

About 13 miles north of Camp Swift, near Elgin’s historic downtown, Margarita, a 43-year-old mother of five, begins to prepare the pan dulce each morning after sending her daughter to school. Her thick palms mix pink, yellow and chocolate sugar toppings for conchas as sweet potatoes boil nearby for empanadas. (The Statesman is withholding Margarita’s last name because of her legal status.) 

By afternoon, the small oven, set at 475 degrees, fills the dark kitchen with heavy heat. Around the corner, her 2-year-old son, ill with a chronic intestinal condition, coughs as he sleeps on her bed. 

Until her husband was detained by immigration agents in late January, most of this work had been his. She’s had to relearn some of the recipes and now goes out each evening with her son to sell bread for $1 apiece around local shopping centers. 

Seven days a week, often until 9 or 10 p.m., Margarita stays out until she sells the 50 to 60 pieces she makes daily, far fewer than the roughly 150 pieces she and her husband once produced together. On days when reports of traffic stops and ICE activity circulate through the community, fewer customers venture out, stretching her workday even longer.

“There’s not a lot of people at the stores,” Margarita said. “People don’t want to go out. I mean, I don’t want to either, but I have to.”

Like many families interviewed by the Statesman, Margarita has struggled to keep up with bills. Last month, she came within a day of having her water cut off. At the start of April, she had fallen behind on her $1,200 monthly rent. 

“I have almost none of it,” said Margarita, who as of Friday had only gathered $400 and had been given a final one-week extension by her landlord.

She sought help from community organizations but was told no assistance was available. Rental aid has largely dried up since the pandemic, but Margarita likely wouldn’t qualify for state utility assistance, the largest available pool of money, because of legal status requirements, said Ben Martin, deputy director for Texas Housers, a housing advocacy nonprofit. 

Although the immigrants interviewed said they have not received government assistance — many had not applied — the need is being felt by local service providers. Pastor Roland Nava — director of the Bastrop County Salvation Army and founder and CEO of the In the Streets-Hands up High Ministry, an emergency shelter — said immigrants without legal status are increasingly turning to his soup kitchen and food pantry after losing primary earners. 

The Salvation Army is one of the few local organizations able to offer aid such as utility assistance to immigrants because it operates on private donations, though limited funding means individuals can receive only $100 every six months. Many wait too long to ask for help, he said, and some end up in shelters after eviction. 

“I ask them, ‘Why didn’t you come earlier?’” Nava said. “And they say, ‘We didn’t know if coming here would mean someone would call.’”

Researchers at the Center for Migration Studies and American Immigration Council estimate that deportation of an adult can cut mixed-status household income by half to two-thirds. In households where no one has legal status, the impact can be even greater because those households tend to earn less, said Matthew Lisiecki, a researcher at the Center for Migration Studies. 

Because most deportations involve men, the loss is compounded by wage gaps in many immigrant households, according to UC Merced sociologist Tanya Golash-Boza. 

“I think over the course of a man’s career in a working class job, he is moving to better quality jobs. Women are going to stay at the low end” of wage earning, Golash-Boza said. “It’s literally the way the labor market is structured.” 

Despite the uncertainty, the families persist. 

The constant medical attention Margarita’s son’s intestinal condition requires has convinced her to remain in the United States, and she’s planning to move in with her sister if she cannot make rent. 

The Zavala family is beginning to stabilize after Michelle found a counseling job at a high school.

But for Bricia, the pressure continues to mount. She has tried unsuccessfully to sell half the family’s two acres to settle back taxes. Other efforts have also floundered. 

In February, Bricia invested $300 into a Sunday food sale. Family members traveled more than 100 miles from San Antonio to help her prepare enchiladas mineras, tacos al vapor, barbacoa, aguas frescas and cakes. She texted neighbors and posted flyers on community Facebook pages. Yet, on that particular Sunday, only a few friends stopped by or called in orders. She made about $130.

In times like these, Bricia said she has thought about leaving everything behind and returning to Mexico. But each time, she comes back to the same question: What would be left for her daughter? 

“This was my husband’s youth,” she said of the home they built over years. “It’s not a grand home, but it’s a home.” 
If they lose it, she said, everything they built disappears with it.

“It’s like we’re throwing her into a pool without a life jacket.” 

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