The Spanish citizen forgotten by everyone at an ICE center: ‘I am literally abandoned, as if I don’t exist’

At the Kenton County Detention Center in the southern state of Kentucky, a migrant passes like a ghost among the dozens of detainees, as if the world has forgotten he exists. “I’m literally abandoned, it’s as if I don’t exist,” he told EL PAÍS in a phone call last week. He is Miguel Barreno López, a 39-year-old Spanish citizen, who has been in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for six months, despite a judge approving his voluntary departure from the country on November 17, 2025, after he expressed his wish to return to Spain. But no authority has informed him of anything since. “It’s as if they said: Are you the only Spaniard here? Then you’ll stay until we decide otherwise.”

Migrants from Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other nationalities he can’t even identify come in and out of the detention center every day, he says, but Barreno López remains as if he were not only the man ignored by ICE, but also the one forgotten by the Spanish consulate in Chicago, where his family sought help. He longs for the day he can board a plane, land in Spain, and eat a proper meal. He has spent half a year surviving on the little food provided in detention and on Maruchan instant soups he can buy at the center with the money his family sends him.

Barreno López arrived in the United States from Spain on November 4, 2017. He decided to cross to the other side of the world, first because he had lost his job at a call shop more than a year earlier. “There was a lot of unemployment, and I had been laid off,” he recalls. Second, because he fell in love with Leticia Centeno, a Nicaraguan woman passing through Madrid. When Centeno returned to her country and later moved to the United States, Barreno López followed her. He entered on a tourist visa that he overstayed, and his visit turned into nearly 10 years living as an undocumented immigrant in a country that is now aggressively pursuing anyone without papers on its streets.

Barreno López does not fit the racial profile ICE typically targets when its agents patrol migrant neighborhoods or wait outside immigration courts in cities like New York or Miami. He is white; he does not have the stereotypical appearance of a Latin American migrant. In fact, he never imagined it would happen to him: “Although I was a little wary with this president, I didn’t think I’d be arrested like this just leaving my apartment. It caught me completely by surprise.”

On October 18, 2025, at 6:30 a.m., Barreno López was on his way to the Indian food factory where he worked near the city of Carol Stream, west of Chicago, in the state of Illinois, where he lived with Centeno. Because he was one of the few workers in the apartment complex who owned a car, he always drove Centeno’s son‑in‑law and two of his brothers, all Nicaraguans. About five minutes from home, they were, according to Centeno, “ambushed.”

A vehicle carrying federal agents followed them and pulled them over. The four men were initially taken to the Clay County Detention Center in Indiana. The three Nicaraguan citizens requested voluntary departure from the United States and were eventually returned to their country. In November, before an immigration judge, Barreno López also requested voluntary departure. He wanted to return to Spain.

“He says this is too much humiliation for him, that no one in his life has ever done this to him,” says his partner, Centeno.

Then Barreno López was transferred to Kentucky. “To this day I’m still here, not knowing anything,” he says over the phone, notably desperate. “They’re keeping me here to see how long I can take it, but what I want is to go back to my country now. I feel like, being Spanish, they’ve forgotten about me. And the consulate should be the first to help me.”

His word against the consulate’s

“How can Miguel be locked up if he hasn’t done anything wrong and has already requested to be released?” Centeno has wondered all these months. His partner, she says, never “gets into trouble, doesn’t look for fights, and doesn’t go around drinking.”

A few years ago, when they started a new life in the United States, Barreno López bought a car and was pulled over by a police officer as they were returning from work at midnight for not having a driver’s license. “That was the only traffic violation Miguel had in all these years he’s been in this country,” Centeno says. On that occasion, he was summoned to court, and he immediately obtained his license.

The couple had previously considered ways to regularize their status in the United States, but in Barreno López’s case, being a Spanish citizen, he had been warned that it was nearly impossible to apply for political asylum. “They told us that, being European, I didn’t have a situation like the one in Nicaragua, or like the one Venezuelans have. That’s why we never applied,” the woman says.

By the end of last year, Barreno López was counting down the days until he could leave the detention center. The anguish was consuming him. His partner, unsure how or where to seek help, thought the solution might lie with the Spanish Consulate General in Chicago: “I called, and they told me they couldn’t do anything. I said, ‘But why is that? I imagine that if you’re here as the Spanish consulate, it’s to look after the well-being of Spanish citizens.’”

She contacted the Spanish consular authorities again on another occasion. “I’m very sorry, but we can’t do anything because ICE has him,” they told her, Centeno says. “So what are you doing here?” she replied. On a third attempt, a man answered her in a “very rude” manner, according to Centeno. He told her, “If you’re not his wife, I can’t give you any information about him. I’m very sorry, but if you’re not his wife, you have no reason to call us.”

EL PAÍS contacted the Spanish consulate in Chicago seeking clarification on the case. The Subdirectorate‑General of the Office of Diplomatic Information (OID) at Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation said in an email on Saturday that “the consulate has been in contact with the individual concerned and has offered him the appropriate consular assistance.”

Spanish diplomatic sources in the United States also said that in November 2025, Barreno López was offered a safe‑conduct document to travel back to Spain, but he did not contact the consulate again after that. With this document, which certifies his identity and nationality, the Spaniard — whose passport has expired — would be able to travel to his country.

Barreno López says that no one has “ever” offered him the option of safe passage. “I haven’t received an email or a letter at any point. I haven’t had any contact with the consulate, nor have they contacted me, nothing like that,” he says from the detention center. “It’s been six months now, and no one has lifted a finger for me. It’s too long, half a year illegally detained here. It’s very frustrating.”

Centeno, who has even sent unanswered messages to immigration authorities offering to pay for his return ticket to Spain, also denies that the consulate offered her partner an alternative to arrest. “If they had offered him safe passage, he would have left immediately; all he wants is to leave,” she insists. “Every day he asks me to help him get out of there, and I don’t even know what to tell him anymore; he’s desperate.”

From the Kenton County Detention Center, Barreno López’s voice comes across as a cry for help. “This is an injustice. I haven’t committed any crime, I haven’t bothered anyone, I haven’t had any problems. They know perfectly well that I’m clean,” he says. At times, he feels that, among the loneliness surrounding all the migrants there, he is the loneliest of all. “Nobody comes to talk to me here. I spend every day waiting to see when they’ll call me.”

He recently phoned Centeno. “Right now I’d be getting home from work and watching a movie,” he told her. Centeno breaks down when she hears him so fragile, so worn down. More than once, she has imagined the day he is released, arrives in Spain, and starts over in the country that he calls home.

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