When Débora Rey and Martín Verdi voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, they were drawn to his promises of restoring order at the U.S.-Mexico border and cracking down on undocumented immigration.
As Argentine Americans living in North Carolina, they believed in the need for stronger immigration enforcement—but what they never imagined was that the administration’s policies would be turned against their own son, a legal permanent resident. Now, they say they feel betrayed.
Their 31-year-old son, Agustin Gentile, is currently being held in ICE custody at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia—one of the largest immigrant detention facilities in the United States.
Located in a remote part of South Georgia, the Stewart facility is privately run and houses roughly 1,700 detainees, most of whom are undocumented. But Gentile, unlike the others, holds a green card.
He has lived in the United States since the mid-1990s, arriving from Argentina as a toddler, and is the father of two young U.S. citizen children, ages 6 and 8.
On a recent Sunday, Verdi and Rey sat quietly on the back porch of El Refugio, a hospitality house that offers free lodging and meals to families visiting detainees at Stewart.
They had driven nine hours from their North Carolina home to see their son and were trying to make sense of the situation. “This is craziness,” Rey said. “He said he was going after criminals who came here illegally. Not people like our son. Not people who have lived here nearly their whole life.”
The family’s nightmare began earlier this year when Gentile, returning to the United States from an international trip, landed at Los Angeles International Airport.
There, Department of Homeland Security officials confiscated his green card and Argentine passport, flagging a 2020 misdemeanor conviction in California.
Gentile had been found guilty of infliction of injury, sentenced to five years of probation—later reduced to three—and completed his legal obligations by the case’s closure in 2023.
But under the Trump administration’s newly aggressive enforcement policies, that single offense was deemed grounds for removal.
He was instructed to report to a Customs and Border Protection office in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 14. When he complied, he was immediately detained and held at a county jail for two days before being transferred to Stewart.
According to Rey, her son is the only detainee at the facility who holds legal status. “Everyone else is undocumented,” she said. “My son has papers. But that didn’t protect him.”
The couple has avoided telling Gentile’s children the truth. “We told them he had to leave on an urgent trip,” Verdi explained. “They ask, ‘Where is my daddy?’ And we can’t tell them, ‘Daddy is in jail.’” Rey added, “We had to lie because we don’t want to hurt them.”
ICE officials charged Gentile with committing “acts which constitute the essential elements of a crime involving moral turpitude,” a vague legal category that has long served as a justification for initiating deportation proceedings.
Though green card holders enjoy broad rights to live and work in the U.S., they can still be subject to removal for a wide range of criminal offenses, some of which date back years and may have already been resolved.
Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney based in the Atlanta area, said cases like Gentile’s are becoming increasingly common under the current administration.
“Under previous presidents, a conviction like this might not have triggered detention,” Kuck said. “It would be considered a minor offense, not worth the government’s resources. But now there are no minor things. There is a zero-tolerance policy under Trump.”
He noted that border officials now apply intense scrutiny to all non-citizens—green card holders included—particularly at airports and ports of entry where immigration agents wield sweeping authority.
Even more concerning, Kuck added, is the panic spreading among legal immigrants. His office has been flooded with calls from green card holders seeking reassurance, including some who have lived in the U.S. for decades without incident.
“People are terrified,” he said. “We had a U.S. citizen—naturalized for 25 years—come in crying, afraid she wouldn’t be allowed to return if she went to a family wedding overseas. That’s the level of fear we’re seeing.”
The legal uncertainty surrounding Gentile’s case has taken a toll on his family. Verdi and Rey say his notice to appear before an immigration judge is riddled with misleading language.
It suggests he served years in jail, when in reality, court records confirm he spent only two days in Los Angeles County custody. “It’s like they’re rewriting the facts to justify locking him up,” Verdi said.
The family has filed a habeas corpus petition challenging his detention, but Gentile is not guaranteed a court hearing before May 12. In the meantime, he remains in Stewart, enduring conditions his parents describe as dehumanizing.
According to Rey, Gentile has told them that the facility is overcrowded, with lights left on all night and some detainees sleeping on the floor. He has struggled to obtain basic toiletries and relies on instant noodle cups from the commissary, having found the facility’s food nearly inedible.
Similar complaints about Stewart have been reported for years. The center, operated by the private prison company CoreCivic, has drawn criticism from human rights groups for its poor conditions, lack of access to medical care, and high suicide rate.
For Rey and Verdi, the most bitter pill is the political irony. They believed Trump would restore order and safety—not upend the lives of legal residents like their son. “We feel betrayed,” Rey said.
“We feel tricked.” They say they supported Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, not realizing that lawful immigrants—people who pay taxes, raise families, and contribute to society—would be swept up in the same dragnet.
The Trump administration’s immigration policy has quickly extended beyond undocumented migrants. Within its first 100 days, ICE began targeting even those with legal status, revoking student visas en masse and reopening old cases for green card holders with minor infractions.
A recent sweep resulted in 1,500 foreign students losing their legal status. Many legal immigrants now live in a state of uncertainty, unsure of whether past mistakes—or even misunderstandings—will land them in detention.
Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham of U.S. Customs and Border Protection defended the administration’s actions, saying, “Green card holders who have not broken any U.S. laws, committed application fraud, or failed to apply for a reentry permit after a long period of travel have nothing to fear.”
But Rey doesn’t believe that anymore. Her son’s conviction was not hidden, not recent, and not violent. Yet it has left him behind bars, separated from his children, facing deportation to a country he barely remembers.
“They’re punishing him for something he already paid for,” she said. “And in doing that, they’re punishing us all.”
The Stewart Detention Center, where Gentile is held, has become a symbol of the sweeping reach of federal immigration enforcement. A sign at its entrance, visible to all who visit, marks the boundary between freedom and uncertainty.
For Rey and Verdi, it also marks the line between faith in a political promise and the pain of a system they once supported—but now feel crushed by.
