Max McCoy
Posted May 8, 2025
The story of Rosi Alvarado is a story about home.
The 42-year-old mother was lured from her residence in Pittsburg to an immigration office in Kansas City under the pretext of an interview for a green card application. Accompanying Alvarado to that April 23 appointment was her husband, a recently naturalized U.S. citizen, and their 20-year-old daughter.
The daughter, Carina Moran, said in social media posts that Alvarado — who has deep ties to her southeast Kansas home — was tricked by ICE agents.
“I am the daughter of two immigrants,” Moran posted. “My father was born in El Salvador and my mother was born in Guatemala. My dad recently became (a) citizen after a decade of hard work and multiple long drives to interviews and today was my mom’s turn to present herself for her first interview. For an entire week leading up to today I cried and prayed that my mom would stay home and that she was going to a routine interview, but unfortunately we were lied to.”
The family had brought with them documentation to show Alvarado’s life in Pittsburg, including testimonials from community members. Her husband, Nixon Moran, had been a citizen since March. They expected Alvarado, too, would eventually become naturalized, and they hoped the spousal interview would be the first step.
Instead, officials at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Office asked Nixon Moran, 44, to step outside. Alvarado was taken into custody. The family learned that Alvarado had a deportation order from failing to appear in court when she was a youth, in the 2000s, and another issued that morning.
Alvarado, who suffers from diabetes and hypertension, was soon on her way to the Chase County Detention Center at Cottonwood Falls, two hours away in east-central Kansas. It’s a town of about 900 in a pastoral county known for its historic courthouse. The entire population of Chase County is only around 2,600. It’s the kind of place known for its history, Friday night jam sessions at the local cafe and postcard-perfect prairie vistas.
So why are detainees sent to Chase County?
Because for years the 148-bed detention center, owned and operated by the county, has been a major source of revenue. Under a contract with ICE, the jail is filled mostly with foreign nationals from Mexico and Central and South America. When I wrote about the jail in 2021, county officials said the jail was self-sustaining and helped ease the local tax burden. Back then, the jail averaged 70-75 inmates a day, and received $62 for each from ICE.
Now the jail has 143 inmates.
Of those, 119 — or 83% — are listed as “deportable alien,” according to the detention center’s online roster as of April 30. The remainder are either held on unspecified charges or on charges unrelated to immigration, such as assault or robbery.
The entry for Rosemery Alvarado included her mugshot and the two deportation counts. No other charges were listed.
The separation has torn the family apart, Carina Moran said in a post.
“I will not get to hug my mom or say goodbye, my siblings won’t get to either and my dad has to take on all of her responsibilities alone,” she said. “I am heartbroken that she will not watch us graduate, she won’t be there during the most important moments of our lives and I won’t get to share my first experiences with her anymore.”
There’s an online video of the March 19 naturalization ceremony in which Nixon Moran became an American citizen, held at Johnson County Community College. He was among 352 candidates for citizenship presented to U.S. Magistrate Judge Angel Mitchell, who noted that most Americans are either immigrants or descended from immigrants.
The event was both joyful and solemn.
It included the singing of “God Bless America” and a PowerPoint showing the countries of origin of the applicants who, among other requirements, had successfully passed a citizenship test. An oath required the newly minted citizens to renounce foreign princes and potentates, to support and defend the Constitution, and to take up arms for America when required by law.
“We should never take these freedoms for granted,” Mitchell advised, “lest we lose them someday.”
Perhaps Rosi Alvarado was inspired to begin a path to citizenship because of the unabashedly patriotic ceremony. She may have been frightened by stories of other undocumented individuals and even international students being taken from the street and placed in vans. Or she may have just delayed taking the necessary steps for so long because of her poor English skills, as noted by her daughter in a social media post: English proficiency is a requirement for most applicants under the age of 50.
It is unclear from statements made by the family why Alvarado had not obtained a green card, which grants foreign nationals the right to live and work in the United States. But what is abundantly clear is that Alvarado had made a home in Kansas, that she has a family that took their responsibilities to America seriously, and that she had resolved to do the right thing under the law.
The amount of resources ICE invested in removing Alvarado from her family and whisking her away to the detention center at Cottonwood Falls seems disproportionate to any offense she appears to have committed. In a reasonable and just society, the fact that Alvarado was married to an American citizen and had a family here should have moderated the response. But we no longer live in a reasonable or just society, and people living peacefully but without authorization in the United State have become the victims of a thirst for misguided vengeance.
This kind of hatred of others is not new.
It’s been with us in one form or another since the founding of the country, but every lifetime or so the old poison is channeled anew. Slavery could not exist unless it was doctrine that Black people were racially inferior, antisemitism was fueled by lies about secret cabals for world domination, and discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community persists because of fear, lies and hatred. We have entered a new era of government-sponsored bigotry in which even the mention of equity, diversity, and inclusion is being scrubbed from the official record.
Part of the effort to whitewash America is the campaign against migrants who lack necessary documents to remain here legally. As a nation, we have always been more than happy to exploit their labor as farm workers and housekeepers. Now, by government decree and action, we are unwilling to treat them as human beings worthy of respect, a living wage, or a secure place to call home.
Where is Rosi Alvarado tonight?
Not in Kansas, unfortunately.
As of April 30, she was no longer listed on the Chase County Detention Center online roster. The same day, I filed a media request for her location with ICE officials. If the agency couldn’t tell me her exact location, I asked, could they at least confirm she was still in the United States? So far, I’ve received no response.
Carina Moran, however, posted on April 30 the family had received word Alvarado had been transferred to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center awaiting deportation. Carina has set up a GoFundMe account to help with legal and medical costs related to her mother’s deportation. As of May 2, it had raised $18,430.
That Louisiana facility has become notorious in recent weeks as the location where Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was held after being snatched by immigration authorities. Ozturk was accused of supporting terrorism by co-authoring an opinion essay in a student newspaper asking Tufts to “recognize Palestinian genocide.”
The Louisiana holding facility is also a for-profit prison, run by Geo Group.
The Marion County Record reported on May 1, that Jay Whitney, the director of the Cottonwood Falls jail, said ICE had ordered her removed from the facility. He said he didn’t know the context of Alvarado’s arrest or “how this lady’s getting all this attention.”
A small group protested outside the detention center Sunday.
“I just have a contract to house her,” Whitney told the Record. “I don’t ask questions of how come you’re detaining her or how you’ve come to the conclusion to detain her. That’s on their end.”
It’s difficult to believe Whitney is unaware of Rosi’s case, considering 10 people were holding signs outside the facility over the weekend. But what is more disturbing is his lack of curiosity about the charges against those in his care.
Every jail — even a revenue-producing, tax-lowering enterprise like the Chase County Detention Center — has an obligation to ensure that inmates it is holding are not being denied basic constitutional protections. American law makes little distinction between citizens and noncitizens when it comes to basic rights such as free speech and due process.
Who is in jail and why is at the core of our system of law.
Habeas corpus is an ancient and foundational legal principle that means a person must be bodily presented before a judge on demand. It ensures that individuals are afforded due process and not illegally confined, held in secret prisons, or simply disappeared. While Congress and the courts have narrowed in recent years the ability of those in federal custody to seek relief under habeas corpus, it remains an essential safeguard to civil liberties.
I don’t know what Rosi Alvarado’s legal status is, whether she was given a chance to appear before a judge to protest her deportation, or why she had a failure to appear on her record. The family’s social media posts have been unclear and Carina, her daughter, has not responded to requests for an interview. Frankly, I’m not sure the family understands exactly what is happening. But if what Carina has posted is true, that her mother was lured to an immigration office in expectation of a green card interview and then whisked away in a white van, it raises disturbing and fundamental questions about ICE deportations.
In other cases, the government appears to be playing a sort of shell game with detainees, moving them quickly to jurisdictions far from their places of residence and then putting them on planes without sufficient due process. In at least one case, that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the government appears to be defying a Supreme Court order to facilitate the individual’s return from a notorious El Salvadoran prison.
The toll of the second Trump administration’s first 100 days is long and loud. It includes economic chaos, civil unease, the unraveling of the federal government, our diminished standing on the world stage and a threat to the rule of law at home.
I have seen no evidence that Rosi Alvarado was a threat to her community. Judging from her daughter’s comments and social media posts, she seems to have been the kind of mother most of us knew, precious to her children, one who held her family close and who enjoyed simple things like watching her kids play football. I think of Rosi and it brings to mind my own mother, long dead now, but still vibrant in memory.
The story of Rosi Alvarado is a story not just of her home, but ours.
It is a snapshot of America in 2025, a glimpse of the place where we live now. Don’t like the surroundings? Then act to change them. As citizens, we have a duty to our neighbors to make sure the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, is observed. If we don’t, home will start to feel less like a castle and more like a dungeon.
Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. This commentary is republished from Kansas Reflector under a Creative Commons license.
