U.S. Border Patrol detained Spokane asylum-seeker and his 10-year-old daughter, held them a month at Texas facility

On January 10, 2026, Border Patrol agents detained Arnoldo Tiul Caal and his 10-year-old daughter, Karla Tiul Baltazar, when the pair returned to the Border Patrol's Spokane, Washington office as directed, and transported them to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas, where they were held for roughly a month. The detention followed an initial stop the morning before: agents stopped Tiul Caal shortly after he dropped Karla off at Logan Elementary School, held him for three hours at the Border Patrol's Spokane sector office, then released him to retrieve Karla from school and directed him to return the next day. According to family volunteer Olga Lucia Herrera, agents pressured him to sign voluntary-departure paperwork and threatened to separate him from his daughter if he did not comply.

Tiul Caal, who is originally from Guatemala and had lived in Spokane since 2019, had an active asylum case, a valid work permit and Social Security number, and no criminal record. At a December 3, 2025 hearing, he had been told his next court date would not be until 2027. U.S. Customs and Border Protection later said the arrest followed a series of missed check-ins with ICE's Alternatives to Detention program, including a termination from that program in July 2025 for missed check-ins. Herrera disputed that the check-in requirements had been adequately explained, citing language barriers -- Tiul Caal's first language is the Mayan language Q'eqchi' -- and unreliable phone service.

While detained at Dilley, Karla ran a fever and vomited; Herrera said the facility, the subject of multiple lawsuits over food and medical care, may have contributed. Texas immigration attorney Dan Gividen took the case pro bono and filed a habeas corpus petition arguing DHS had violated its own regulations in detaining the family.

Updates

2026-02-06 — DHS released Tiul Caal and Karla without contesting habeas petition [3]

DHS released Tiul Caal and Karla from custody on February 6, 2026, without litigating Gividen's habeas petition. Gividen said the government's decision not to fight the petition amounted to an acknowledgment of the due-process problem: "We are not going to fight this one. We are letting them go." The court's ruling on the petition remains under seal. The pair returned to Spokane the following night.