Photo courtesy of Oscar Muñoz.
Oscar Muñoz moved to the U.S. when he was only four years old not knowing where life would take him; all he knew was that he would leave it up to destiny and then ICE came knocking through.
“I just didn’t think I would end up here,” said Muñoz on a phone call to Slice of Culture from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a privately held ICE facility in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.
“I’ve built everything here, it’s been 25 years!” he added, moving to the U.S. from Puebla, a city located in east-central Mexico.
Here, in the U.S., he’s become the proud owner of Taco-Drive, located on 195 Newark Avenue in Jersey City. Walking in the restaurant, you’ll see an upside down Statue of Liberty, colorful Jarritos and the crisp smell of flared out Mexican-style tacos.
Muñoz has two kids who were born in the U.S.
How he ended up at an ICE facility four hours away from his family is a reality faced by many immigrants in today’s Trump 2.0. immigration sphere. Muñoz, who has spent nearly a year in the facility, told Slice of Culture that he practically “lives in a prison.”
He described to Slice of Culture several conditions and challenges he faced up until the point of his arrest by Hoboken police officers.
From there, he was taken to the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility where he spent two days at the site, and was then transported to Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, he told Slice of Culture.
“They charge me even for the air I breathe!” he added and also expressed issues in receiving basic hygienic supplies such as toothpaste and deodorant coming from his loved ones from outside. “We all share a kitchen together and we rotate, so I’ll make them (detainees) a burrito or a taco, obviously not the way at the restaurant, but still they like it.”
He added that in order to take calls from loved ones, he pays into a system called Getting Out, to schedule virtual and in-person visitations.
Slice of Culture has taken several calls with Muñoz, who described being in the ICE facility for a year without having access to parole. In an attempt to visit Muñoz and after being informed cell phone usage was not allowed, Slice of Culture was denied visitation to Muñoz and was told to leave the facility.
A request sent to Moshannon Valley Processing Center inquiring as to the nature of the visit termination has not been provided to Slice of Culture at the time of this writing.
Each year, thousands of immigrants are held in immigration detention facilities across the country. One figure, according to ICE, indicates an average of 872 immigrants were arrested per day in late January of this year, and at the start of February was under 600, the average daily new detentions, according to ICE data.
In a report put out by Temple law students and Juntos, a Philadelphia-based immigrant rights group, found detainees were being “held under punitive, inhumane and dangerous conditions,” after interviewing 77 immigrants held at the facility–by community-based organizations and legal groups such as the ACLU of Pennsylvania, in the spring of 2023, according to the findings.
The center, which formerly served as a federal prison, reopened as an ICE facility back in 2021, with a capacity of 1,876–making it the largest immigration detention center in the Northeast.
GEO Group, Inc., a private company, currently oversees the operations at Moshannon along with more than a dozen ICE detentions across the U.S., which is primarily funded through annual federal budget appropriations and supplemental funding.
A fiscal congressional budget report, reviewed by Slice of Culture, indicated that financial costs within maintaining “Operations and Support” for the Department of Homeland Security were $9.3 million, compared to 2024, which was $8.7 million, and the previous year remained the same.
A written request to the facility by Slice of Culture was sent out inquiring about the food and water budget by the facility, but a response has not been provided at the time of this writing.
“[Muñoz] was released as far as the state was concerned, but immigration was there to take him into custody,” said Gregory Jacths, who is the attorney taking on Muñoz’s criminal case.
He is currently being charged with burglary, trespassing and criminal mischief for damaging property under the Superior Court of New Jersey Criminal Division, according to his indictment obtained by Slice of Culture.
In a court hearing held on March 11 in a Zoom call related to Muñoz’s case, the judge dismissed charges related to burglary and trespassing while Muñoz admitted guilt to criminal mischief—this was under a plea deal.
He is expected to face sentencing on April 25 on the criminal mischief related charge.
The attorney defending his case pointed out that Muñoz, like many immigrants who find themselves taken by ICE officers, end up spending months to over a year in federal custody “for something that’s relatively a minor charge,” added Jachts.
A publicly listed dataset by ICE shows the monthly legal processing under the categories: “Title 42 Expulsions, Administrative Returns, Enforcement Returns, and removals” under which a total of 111,000 immigrants have been deported this year based on ICE data.
Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office for his second term, he has kept his campaign’s directive on mass deportations nationwide.
From the get-go of Trump 2.0., there’s been the ending of humanitarian parole programs for immigrants coming from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua—putting more than 500,000 immigrants already living in the U.S. in a state of edge, as the administration continues to roll back on previous immigration policies set by the Biden administration.
Recently, the Trump administration unveiled an app encouraging immigrants who are not here legally to apply for “self deportations” called “CBP Home.”
“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now and self deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on her X social media account. “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”
Roughly 37,600 migrants have already been deported in the span of a month under Trump’s second term, with the U.S. making up 51.3 million individuals who are foreign-born, according to immigration figures offered by PBS.
The roundup of unauthorized immigrants was first aimed at those accused of violent crimes committed, though less than half of the estimated 8,200 individuals arrested from Jan. 20 through Feb. 2 have been criminal related.
Crunching those numbers a bit further, 49 percent of those foreign-born naturalized U.S. citizens, while 19 percent were lawful permanent residents who were eligible for citizenship and 5 percent of those fell under various visas (student, work, diplomatic or other temporary visas).
In today’s latest figures put out by the U.S. Census Bureau, 2.8 million people migrated to the U.S. between 2023 and 2024. In 2022, the top five countries of origin where undocumented immigrants were sent back to are the following: Mexico (10.6 million), Indian (2.8 million), China (2.5 million), Philippines (2 million) and El Salvador (1.4 million).
A screenshot based on ethnicity shows which countries immigrants were coming from
The Trump administration has doubled down his efforts in dissolving immigrant communities, with many of those individuals already possessing legal status in the U.S.
In 2023, of the 51.3 million people living in the U.S., 49 percent or 25 million became U.S. citizens through the pathway of naturalization, according to data by Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank based in D.C.
This year alone, data publicly made available by ICE indicates that 43,759 immigrants were detained, 52 percent detained by ICE enforcement, while 48 percent were arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The wave of mass deportations in the U.S. trickles down into family households, echoed in Trump’s first administration under the “zero-tolerance” immigration policy back in 2017. ICE law enforcement were tasked with removing children as young as four months old from parents who were seeking asylum.
Trump’s crackdown on immigration and student protests returned to headlines this past week as protests have been erupting throughout New York, demanding the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful U.S. resident and graduate student at Columbia University.
Khalil, a Palestinian activist, was arrested in his university apartment on Saturday by federal immigration authorities, according to CBS News; Khalil’s attorney claimed they were acting on a state order to revoke Khalil’s student visa and green card, putting him in the face of deportation.
Back to Muñoz’s case, his 18-year-old daughter, Niomy Muñoz, was recently admitted to Columbia University for engineering at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering.
She told Slice of Culture that, last year, she attempted to visit her father, but was reportedly denied access to the facility for not possessing her “REAL ID” at the time of her arrival.
In December 2024, she wrote a letter—obtained by Slice of Culture—to the judge of her father’s case, asking, “I respectfully urge you to consider the impact my father’s detention has had on my brother and to allow him the opportunity to stay in the United States.”
“Oscar is not only a great father but also a person who has so much to contribute to his community. His release would bring boundless relief and joy to my family and would allow him to continue being the role model and support system that my brother and I depend on.”
