says her son was detained last month by ICE agents amid the US crackdown on immigration. Ángela Vergara says she decided to go public with the case last week in part because her son has not yet been allowed to return to Colombia despite having requested voluntary departure, but also to raise awareness about the harsh conditions Colombian immigrants are facing in the US. The case has sparked a debate online, with critics questioning why Vergara, a member of a party that often backs Trump, came out in defense of immigrants only after her son’s detention. Vergara has pushed back against the criticism, insisting that she has never supported immigration policies that she says violate human rights. “This isn’t a political issue; it’s really a human rights issue,” she told CNN. “Being a conservative politician doesn’t mean I agree with human rights violations in Colombia or anywhere else in the world.”

Vergara says her son Rafael, 23, has been locked up for more than 20 days at the River Correctional Detention Center in Louisiana, in what she describes as “inhumane conditions.” She says he is being held along with a number of Colombians waiting for a repatriation flight home. “He told me that he was with 70 people in a cell, that they had gone 12 hours the day before without drinking water, (and) everyone was sick,” Vergara recounted to CNN. The congresswoman said Rafael had been detained by ICE agents after a routine inspection while driving a commercial cargo truck in Louisiana. She insists Rafael has been living in the US legally with a work permit and paying into social security. She says he applied for asylum a year after arriving in 2022 and was awaiting an asylum hearing scheduled for 2028.

CNN has reached out to the US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, for more information. After learning of her son’s arrest, Vergara said the family requested his voluntary return to Colombia, thinking it would be the quickest way to resolve the matter. But more than 20 days after his arrest, she says her son remains in detention. She attributes the delay to a “bottleneck” in the repatriation process that has left thousands of Colombians stranded in the US waiting for a limited number of flights. (CNN/AFP)