Normally, for the Payán family, the end of March is marked by celebration and tres leches cake.
On the eves of the 21st and 31st of the month, Erik Payán would drive home early for his youngest daughters’ birthdays from his tire shop in Colony Ridge.
His wife, Alejandrina Morales, would wait with his three daughters and granddaughter for his arrival. Then, they would gather to celebrate and sing Las Mañanitas, a traditional birthday song, while recording a video to upload on Facebook. In years when it was affordable, the family would throw a bigger party: one year, on his middle daughter’s 18th birthday, there was a DJ.
This year, the celebrations will be simple, said Morales.
That’s because, on Feb. 24, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested her husband during a major immigration enforcement operation in Colony Ridge as she watched over the family tire shop security cameras. In the weeks since, Payán’s absence has caused cascading financial difficulties, which Morales acknowledges she has struggled to cover, and emotional pain. Morales is battling to keep the family afloat while also rallying support among family, friends and the public to help her prepare to pay thousands of dollars in bond for her husband— If, that is, the judge grants it.
On Thursday, Payán has an 8 a.m. hearing in Conroe, where an immigration judge will decide whether to grant bond for the family’s sole breadwinner and decades-long Texas resident. Either he will return to his family in time for his daughter’s birthday on Friday, or he will stay detained and fight to apply for legal immigration status far from home.
“This is one example of how this immigration enforcement is also affecting innocent people who are just working and trying to prepare a better life for their family,” said his lawyer, Silvia Mintz, on Tuesday.
Morales initially told her daughters that her husband was immediately released – in hopes he would be home before they realized the fib. Nearly a month later, she prays that Payán will be freed and the judge will see him as the man he is: kind, funny and selfless.
“It’s not just because he’s my husband, but I feel like he deserves it,” she said. “These types of fathers should be rewarded because they give everything to their family, they forget about themselves.”
Immigration enforcement in Colony Ridge
Payán was but one of more than 100 people detained during the joint operation between state police and federal immigration authorities on Feb. 24, after state police and unmarked ICE vehicles flooded parts of the Santa Fe subdivision. Gov. Greg Abbott said the agents were “targeting criminals and illegal immigrants,” but Colony Ridge community members and Morales have decried the rhetoric as a lie. Out of the 118 detained during the one-day operation, only two have been confirmed by ICE to have been charged with a crime.
The Colony Ridge development in Liberty County has been the target of anti-immigrant rhetoric from state and national Republican politicians years before the 2024 presidential election. Conspiracy theorists claim the majority-Latino community is a hotbed for crime and cartel activity — an assertion the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office disputed with data in 2023.
The joint immigration operation in the development is a prime example of a ramping up of immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump, who campaigned on the promise of mass deportations and falsely linking immigration with criminality. Outcomes can vary widely based on which judge and county the case is filed in. In Texas, over 56,000 deportation cases have been filed in the first two months of the year,.of which Payán is one, according to Syracuse University’s TRAC project, which compiles immigration court data.
Payán has lived in the United States for more than two decades with no criminal convictions, according to public court records. He is currently detained in a Montgomery County immigration detention center for immigration violations, an ICE spokesperson confirmed.
“No further comment can be provided at this time due to an ongoing investigation into Mr. Payan and the Payan Tire Shop for suspected violations of federal law,” wrote an ICE spokesperson four days after the operation, in response to the Landing questions about the arrest.
Humble but very happy
Payán –a former trapeze artist and circus performer– first saw Alejandrina Morales 32 years ago at a dance club in Santiago Papasquiaro, in the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico.
“He walked down to me and said: ‘You’re going to be my wife,’” Alejandrina recalled.
They were married on New Year’s Day in 1994, and Alejandrina recalled when they bought their first bicycle, which would take them to their work as waiters and where they would place their firstborn daughter on a seat on the front of the bicycle.
Alejandrina called her marriage “humble but very happy,” despite it being marked by tragedy and start-overs: losing the clothing they sold, a car battery explosion that took some of Payán’s teeth, and losing their first home in Santiago Papasquiaro. Then, there was the day their two-year-old daughter was paralyzed after being struck by an elderly driver. Her medical expenses and care needs led Payán to take a job in the United States.
Payán took a job working with a tree company in Kansas on a work visa in 2004, and Morales and her daughters followed him to Houston the next year, she said.
“I’m a woman who says that nothing bad comes unless it’s for good,” said Morales. “I always say that because after going through so many tragedies, I’ve seen the good things they bring. And now with what’s happened to my husband, I won’t say I didn’t crumble – I did. But I calmed myself, I took a breath and said: ‘What will I do about it?’“
Immigration court
At Thursday’s immigration court date, Payán will see a judge for the first time in the over twenty years since he came to the United States on a work visa.
In most cases, the initial hearing in immigration court is procedural, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. The government will explain why they believe the person has broken immigration laws and the judge will set a date for the next court appearance.
But in Payán’s case, his application for bond will be reviewed that day, and he and his lawyer will make a case that he is not a flight risk because of the mechanic’s strong family, community and financial ties. Ultimately, however, it’ll be immigration judge Mark Evans who will decide whether Payán is allowed to pay bond and freed to await the outcome of his immigration case.
In immigration court, bonds are set at a minimum of $1,500 with no maximum cap.
“Erik has been here for many years. He really doesn’t have any issues that make him ineligible for bond. He has a business, he has a U.S. citizen kid, so we’re hoping the judge will grant him bond,” said Mintz, who is representing Payán pro bono and noted she would like to start the process to adjust his legal status.
Starting that process is more difficult from behind bars, she said. However: “If the judge doesn’t grant the bond, then we will fight the removal with him detained,” she said.
The search for money
Morales says that she has been in survival mode since her husband’s detention. Before, he would have set aside money for the various bills that have popped up since his detention: the mortgage for their land in Colony Ridge, the electricity bill, a traffic ticket. Now she has to deal with them on her own.
Without his income to support the Payán women, family and friends have rallied to help with small gifts: a duck and 14 ducklings, a rooster, a bottle of tequila, and a toaster oven that have been raffled off to support the family.
Morales has sold eggs from her hens, and led games of lotería to raise additional money for the family. She’s continued to support her granddaughter —who has a heart malformation— and daughter —just released from the hospital following an amputation— through their multiple medical appointments.
Two weekends ago, women attending one lively lotería get-together of over a dozen community members in a friend’s backyard said they were there to support Morales, but refused to be directly quoted or identified for fear of immigration enforcement.
Meanwhile, his youngest daughters continue to field calls from tire shop clients from home as they await their father’s fate.
“Are they regular or are they all-terrain?” 19-year-old Alondra yelled across the living room to her mom one afternoon in March.
24-year-old Erika Payán, whose birthday is Friday, also immediately took to TikTok to defend her father in the wake of his detention.
She told the Landing from her hospital bed in early March that the birthday sisters couldn’t even enjoy a video of her father anymore that used to cheer them up.
“It used to make me laugh so hard,” she said. “And when we watched it, instead of making us laugh, we started to cry.”
Payán, who has been calling his family from the Conroe detention center, worried about the mounting financial stress on his girls and about their flock of chickens, according to Morales.
The family started a GoFundMe that had raised $2,775 by Wednesday, but Morales has had to pull from it for the family’s basic expenses. So, she says she hopes she’ll be able to rely on loans from friends and family, and potential support from nonprofit organizations, to cobble together the money for her husband’s bond.
“Each day I’m like: ‘What can I do today?’… because I want him to be calm, to not be worried,” noting she made sure to buy plenty of feed for the hens.
She says that in phone conversations with her husband, she always reassures him that the family is waiting anxiously for his return. Lately, he’s fallen ill with a sore throat —he said it’s been cold inside the facility— and she wishes she could be there to give him tea or another natural remedy.
“It’s become hard to lead this boat without my captain,” she said she told him on the phone in Spanish.
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