What happened to SLO County man detained by ICE? Family hopes for return

Nota del editor: Para leer una versión en español de este artículo, haga clic aquí.

Ismael Garcia Cruz grew up in San Luis Obispo County.

He graduated from Paso Robles High School. It’s where he’s worked as a landscaper and built his life to stay close to his family.

Now, he will likely be deported to Mexico — the place where he was born but has had no ties to since he moved to Paso Robles at 8 years old.

Garcia Cruz disappeared on July 2 after he attended his sentencing hearing at San Luis Obispo Superior Court. He had been convicted of misdemeanor criminal threats and violating a court order and was sentenced to time served in jail and probation.

If Garcia Cruz had been born in the United States, he would have been able to work toward completing his probation and building a better life — a plan to which his younger sister told The Tribune he was committed.

However, because he arrived in the country as a child, his fate is now in the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We’ve been here our whole life,” his younger sister, who was born in the United States, told The Tribune.

She spoke to The Tribune on the condition of anonymity because she said she feared retribution from community members.

“We’ve never been to Mexico,” she said. “He doesn’t have anybody there.”

Family worried after man doesn’t come home

The day her brother went missing, Garcia Cruz’s sister was at work.

Typically she and her brother would attend his court hearings together, but this time she didn’t know he had a court hearing so she did not request the day off.

Her brother typically left the house about 30 minutes after her, and they both got home from work in the early afternoon. If her brother was home before her, which happened often, he would leave food on the table.

On July 2, however, Garcia Cruz’s sister was home by 2:30 p.m. and her brother was nowhere to be found.

“It’s weird,” Garcia Cruz’s sister recalled. “There’s nothing on the table. His car is not here. What happened?”

Her mother arrived by 3 p.m. and the two of them waited for Garcia Cruz to come home.

When he wasn’t back at the house by 4 p.m. and he hadn’t texted his sister to let her know where he was, she knew something was wrong.

Around 5:30 p.m. she left to check if her brother was at a friend’s house in San Miguel, but he wasn’t there. Then she called his attorney, Hogan Ganschow, who told her that court went well and that he watched her brother walk out of the courtroom.

They drove to a store near Creston and a bakery in San Miguel where he had friends — but he wasn’t there either.

She and her family then drove to the San Luis Obispo Superior Court courthouse around 7 p.m.

That’s when she found Garcia Cruz’s truck left where he typically parked it.

“He wasn’t there,” she said. “I was like ‘What happened to him?’ Like we got scared.”

She drove his truck to the San Luis Obispo County Jail and asked if her brother was in custody, but jail staff told her he wasn’t there.

Finally, around 8 p.m. as she drove home, she received a phone call.

The call started with an automated message that said it was from a detention facility. Garcia Cruz’s sister didn’t catch which one. Then she heard her brother’s voice say, “I’m in Los Angeles.”

“What do you mean L.A.?” she replied.

Then the phone call cut out.

The Tribune confirmed Garcia Cruz was in ICE custody on July 3.

As of Tuesday, he was being held in the Adelanto Detention Facility in San Bernardino County.

Man taken by ICE was a DACA recipient

After graduating from Paso Robles High, Garcia Cruz legally worked in Paso Robles for years as a landscaper, his sister said.

When he had trouble renewing his work permit in 2024, he was no longer able to legally work and switched to landscaping and painting homes for cash.

Garcia Cruz’s sister wasn’t sure exactly why her brother was having trouble renewing his DACA, but suspected a 2016 conviction for misdemeanor drug possession may have been an issue.

Garcia Cruz was a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly known as DACA, which allowed people who were brought to the United States as children to work legally and pay taxes. The permit must be renewed every two years.

DACA does not provide someone with legal or protected status, but it defers immigration enforcement action, Santa Maria immigration attorney Rodolfo Marquez told The Tribune.

Someone with DACA can still be deported, he said.

Whether someone is approved for DACA is up to the agent who is reviewing the case, Marquez said, but convictions for a felony or “significant misdemeanor” could be grounds for someone to be denied the permit.

Crimes that would disqualify someone from DACA include domestic violence, sexual abuse, burglary, drug sales, driving under the influence of intoxicants or any other crime that would result in more than 90 days in custody, according to the Code of Federal Regulations.

Marquez said losing a DACA work permit “could have devastating effects on someone’s livelihood” because it takes away their ability to legally work and puts them at greater risk of being deported to a country they have no connection to.

“There should be a legal path to citizenship for people who were brought here as children,” Marquez said, adding that someone brought to the United States as child should have the same opportunity to rehabilitate from their mistakes as someone who born in the United States.

Marquez said anyone can apply for relief from removal from the country for various reasons, including their removal being an undue hardship for U.S. citizen children or asylum.

Man was convicted of drug, domestic violence charges

In 2016, Garcia Cruz was accused of being a part of a meth ring bust that was connected to Mexican drug cartels, according to the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.

His sister maintained however that her brother was part of no such thing.

Garcia Cruz was ultimately convicted of one misdemeanor count of possession of a controlled substance while two felony conspiracy charges and a felony drug sales charge were all dismissed.

He had a clean record for the next eight years. He was married, had two kids and continued to work and provide for his family, his sister said.

He and his wife separated in 2022, his sister said, and that’s when her brother moved in with her and their parents.

Around a year later, Garcia Cruz’s sister said, he was in a relationship with a new woman that was toxic for both of them and he began acting out of character.

In 2024, Garcia Cruz was arrested twice on suspicion of domestic violence following the pair’s breakup — once in October and again in November.

According to police reports that San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow shared with local media following The Tribune’s initial reporting on the case, Garcia Cruz was accused of threatening the woman’s life, pushing and slapping her and taking her phone from Aug. 30 to Oct. 2.

Garcia Cruz pleaded no contest to misdemeanor domestic battery, and on Nov. 14, he was sentenced to time served in jail — 20 days — and three years of probation.

In addition, a restraining order was put in place prohibiting him from contacting or being near his former girlfriend.

About two weeks later, on Nov. 30, Garcia Cruz was arrested again, this time for allegedly threatening the life of the new man the woman was seeing and violating the restraining order.

After fleeing the scene, Garcia Cruz turned himself into the Paso Robles Police Department and cooperated with the investigation, the police reports said.

He admitted to acting out of jealousy and letting his emotions get the best of him, the reports said.

Garcia Cruz was charged with felony criminal threats and violating a court order, but with a plea deal, the criminal threats charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. He was sentenced to time served in jail — 108 days — and three years of probation on July 2, court records show.

According to Garcia Cruz’s sister, her brother knew what he did was wrong and vowed to do better. The second arrest was a wake-up call, she said, and he told her his goal was to abide by the law and not repeat his past mistakes.

From then on, he never missed a court date or his court-ordered domestic violence classes, his sister said.

Hogan Ganschow, Garcia Cruz’s attorney, also said his client wanted to take accountability for his actions and learn to control his emotions.

“He was not blaming anybody for his situation but himself,” Ganschow said.

Ganschow said that his client qualified to be released from jail on GPS monitoring in January.

By May, Garcia Cruz earned the trust to be able to be released without GPS monitoring and continued to follow court orders and attend court hearings.

Ganschow said that rehabilitation is a key part in domestic violence cases, which require convicted defendants to take classes “intended to reduce recidivism, to educate and rehabilitate offenders, so that they learn from their mistakes, and they learn how to control their emotions.”

Just because Garcia Cruz was born in another country doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be afforded the same opportunity to rehabilitate as others who are convicted of the same crimes, Ganschow said.

“I don’t believe that there is a meaningful distinction between somebody who has was born in another country but lived here their whole life, versus somebody who was born in this country — especially as it relates to their capacity for rehabilitation and following probation guidelines,” Ganschow said.

Based on his client’s history with showing up to court on time, Ganschow added, Garcia Cruz likely would have appeared at an immigration proceeding and should have been given a written notice instead of being taken from the street.

Sister of man in ICE custody hopes for his return

Since her brother’s disappearance, Garcia Cruz’s sister has only heard from him one other time.

She said another detainee called her on July 7 and told her that her brother needed to talk to her.

Garcia Cruz’s sister said her brother hadn’t been assigned an identification number yet, so his family had no way to put money on his account so that he could call them. He had also yet to receive a court date and told her the process will be long.

The conversation lasted only a minute or two.

Garcia Cruz’s sister said she only had time to inform her brother about what people were saying about him online and he told her while the comments were hurtful, he didn’t care what they said, she told The Tribune.

He knew the people who cared about him knew who he was.

Garcia Cruz told his sister not to stress out because he didn’t want her to get hurt. Then the phone call ended.

“That hurt me more, because you’re telling me not to stress about it, just to let it go,” she said. “But I can’t because my brother’s not like that. I need to say something.”

Her brother was her biggest supporter, she added, and he always encouraged her to stay in school and not follow the path he did.

Garcia Cruz would remind his sister that she was the first one in her family to go to college and said he wanted her to have a better life.

“Honestly, I feel alone,” his sister said. “He’s always there for me. If I need something — even if he’s far way — and I’m like ‘Hey I need you,’ he’s always there, he’ll come and help me out.

“I felt safe because he was there,” she added.

Part of her was relieved to hear her brother was in ICE custody — at least something hadn’t happened to him and she knew where he was — but the uncertainty of whether she will be able to be reunited with him is hard for her to think about.

Her hope is that Garcia Cruz is able to be reunited with their family in Paso Robles.

“I can barely sleep. I feel weird because he’s not around and he was always there trying to defend me,” she said. “When I go home I just get sad because I don’t see my brother there.

“He was someone I could talk to.”

This story was originally published July 15, 2025 at 2:00 PM.

Chloe Jones

The Tribune

Chloe Jones is a former journalist for The Tribune