ICE rams Avondale man’s truck, arrests him after hours-long standoff

Avondale resident Willian Castillo-Hernandez began his Thursday morning by leaving his cookie-cutter suburban home and climbing into his white pickup truck to go to work. He never got there.

As he drove away from the house, the 21-year-old undocumented Honduran immigrant noticed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were following him. ICE attempted to pull him over, but Castillo-Hernandez turned around and fled back into his house for safety. 

Only hours later, after some negotiation with Castillo-Hernandez’s family and pro-immigrant activists who responded to the scene, Castillo-Hernandez left the house and ICE arrested him. ICE also arrested his uncle, Abel Ochoa; it’s unclear if Ochoa is also undocumented. While an ICE statement to ABC15 suggested Ochoa was also in the truck, Castillo-Hernandez’s family said that was not the case.

Spokespersons for ICE and its subdivision, Homeland Security Investigations, did not respond to a request for comment from Phoenix New Times. It is not clear if Castillo-Hernandez or Ochoa has any criminal record.

Castillo-Hernandez has lived in the U.S. for 11 years, which is more than half of his life, according to his wife, Charlyn Flores. A few months ago, his mother and brother were also arrested by ICE in Arizona while walking to school. Two weeks ago, his mother self-deported. 

ICE hadn’t even been after Castillo-Hernandez, Flores said. When immigration agents came to the door, they had a warrant for a man named Lucas Ochoa, a relative of Castillo-Hernandez who returned to Honduras a year ago, according to Flores. ICE did not have a warrant for Castillo-Hernandez and Flores told agents they could not enter her home without one.

That resulted in a standoff that lasted hours, involving the FBI and causing a spectacle in the otherwise sleepy neighborhood across the street from the Phoenix Goodyear Airport.

“He was just scared,” Flores said of her husband, speaking through tears. “He just wanted to come home to his family.”

ICE involved the FBI because, according to ICE’s statement to ABC15, Castillo-Hernandez “rammed into an officer’s vehicle.” As a result of that crash, the FBI was called onto the scene to conduct an “assault on a federal officer” investigation, FBI Phoenix spokesperson Kevin Smith wrote in a statement to New Times. ICE told ABC15 that two ICE agents involved in the crash were “transported to the hospital for medical evaluation” but were “expected to be released without serious injuries today.”

However, Flores tells a different story. She said a black ICE sedan swerved to hit Castillo-Hernandez as he turned a corner back onto his street. Footage captured by a neighbor’s doorbell camera, which was shared with New Times, seems to confirm that version of events. Despite damage to the side of his vehicle — which was on the passenger side and not the front, where one might expect to see damage if it rammed something — Castillo-Hernandez drove on, exited the truck and ran into his home, with the car still in drive.

For more than six hours, the Castillo-Hernandez barricaded himself and his family — including his wife, child, mother-in-law and uncle — inside the home, fearing that if he came out, he’d be whisked away and never returned.

“We’ve always been living in fear,” Flores said, sitting on the curb across the street from their home. “But we never thought that today was going to be the day that it was going to happen.”

When the FBI arrived, Flores said, agents told her they were going to “help us” and “weren’t gonna take my husband,” only seeking to “question him at the police station.” According to witnesses at the scene, federal agents blocked off parts of the neighborhood. From inside the home, the family connected with the rapid-response network People First Project, whose founder, Clarissa Vela, arrived at the scene at around 10 a.m. 

Vela began negotiating with the agents to ensure that the house wasn’t breached, windows weren’t broken and that the community wasn’t put into danger. She also attempted to broker an agreement to prevent Castillo-Hernandez’s arrest if he left the house. But despite promising that ICE wouldn’t take him, Flores said, he was arrested the second he and Flores and their child exited the home around 2 p.m. (Nothing requires federal law enforcement agents to abide by any verbal “agreement” they might make with an intermediary.) Abel Ochoa was also arrested at that time.

Flores told reporters that the pair would be taken to a field office in Phoenix and likely transferred to a detention center in Eloy or Florence. 

Before her husband was taken away, Flores told him “that I love him and that I’m gonna fight to get him back with me or what I’m gonna leave and be with him over there, wherever they take him,” she recalled with tears streaming down her face. “I don’t know if they’re gonna deport him or anything.”  

The People First Project is setting up a legal fund for the family.