Early Wednesday morning, outside the Tops supermarket in Rhinebeck, friends of 23-year-old Gerson Josué Santamaría Turcios hopped on a charter bus to Manhattan, ready to support him in court.
“We’re going to try to get him out and do what we have to do to bring him home," says resident Idania Williams. "He deserves to be home."
Williams says Santamaría Turcios, a Honduran immigrant and graduate of Rhinebeck High School, has been living in the U.S. for about five years. She considers him family — she says he has been living with her sister, as he builds his own lawn care and landscaping business.
Last Friday, Williams says she got upsetting news: Santamaría Turcios had been arrested by Immigration & Customs Enforcement while coming home from work. At the time, they didn’t know where he was. Williams says the agents were initially looking for someone else.
“They put a device in front of his face that takes a picture of him, and he doesn’t even get a chance to walk out the door of his car, and they arrest him," Williams continues. "And it was heartbreaking to see. He just stood there and cried, and was thanking [my sister] and the family, like, ‘Thank you for everything you guys have done.’ I don’t understand why this would happen.”
Santamaría Turcios is currently in ICE custody at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, according to ICE’s online detainee locator.
In a statement to WAMC, an ICE spokesperson describes him as an “illegal alien from Honduras who admitted to unlawfully entering the United States through Texas without admission or parole by an immigration officer.” The agency says an immigration judge ordered Santamaría Turcios removed from the U.S. in 2023, and that ICE had a warrant for his deportation. Friends say Santamaría Turcios does not have a criminal record.
His detention has sparked a local campaign to raise funds for his legal fees. More than 800 donors with “New York Neighbors United” have raised over $70,000, according to Luciano Valdivia, president of the Rhinebeck Area Chamber of Commerce and a lead organizer with the group. Within days of his arrest, Valdivia says the group found a lawyer to file a habeas corpus petition for Santamaría Turcios in the Southern District of New York.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams issued a temporary restraining order preventing ICE from moving him out of the southern district. That stay was extended at his Wednesday court hearing — but only for a week, until July 30.
Valdivia is calling it a win, even if it’s a temporary one.
“While the judge established that she doesn’t have the jurisdiction to reverse his removal order, she extended the temporary order of protection and stay for a week, so he could retain immigration counsel, and hopefully his case would be moved before an immigration judge," he explains.
Valdivia says more than 40 people, many of them from Rhinebeck, went to Manhattan to support Santamaría Turcios Wednesday.
Friends describe him as “kind” and “hardworking.” Jenny Friedberg has employed him to take care of her property for years. It was her house that he was returning from when he was arrested by ICE, and it was she who started New York Neighbors United.
“He is absolutely an angelic person: warm, sweet, caring, always willing to contribute to whatever the situation is with ideas, with showing up," she says.
Valdivia says Santamaría Turcios has retained Manhattan immigration lawyer Paul Grotas to represent him in the immigration aspects of his case. Grotas did not return a request for comment to WAMC, but Valdivia says he’s hopeful about how things will move forward.
“What’s unique about this situation is that we had organically, and coincidentally, a really tight-knit group of friends who had the perfect skillsets to, in a matter of hours, produce a result like this," he adds.
