A years-long wait for a critical asylum interview ended in chaos and detention this week, after a Venezuelan-born physician serving a medically underserved South Texas community was taken into immigration custody at McAllen International Airport, keeping her from the appointment she and her husband had prepared for over 10 years.
On Thursday, Milenko Faria, the asylum seeker husband, appeared alone at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office outside Los Angeles. Meanwhile, his wife 33-year-old Dr. Rubeliz Bolivar, who had been set to join him, began her sixth day behind bars in a Texas immigration detention center. The couple’s 5-year-old American-born daughter was also detained alongside Bolivar when Border Patrol agents arrested her last Saturday, as she prepared to board a flight to California to reunite with Faria for the joint interview.
Bolivar is not the only Venezuelan medical provider to be swept up in recent immigration enforcement in South Texas. Just one week prior, another Venezuelan doctor, Dr. Ezequiel Veliz, was detained at a local checkpoint on April 6; an immigration judge ultimately ordered his release just this Wednesday, according to his defense attorney Victor Badell.
Since starting her emergency room residency at a McAllen hospital in June 2025, Bolivar has worked in a region federally classified as medically undersigned, filling a critical gap in local healthcare access for the border community of roughly 150,000 residents. Faria, who has worked as an information systems technician at a California employer since 2019, described his wife as deeply committed to her patients and the community they serve.
“We have never broken any U.S. law. We followed every regulatory step required to pursue permanent residency, completely by the book,” Faria told The Associated Press in a phone interview, adding that Bolivar first entered the U.S. on a valid tourist visa in 2016, shortly after graduating from medical school in her native Venezuela.
Before her initial authorized stay expired, Bolivar was added to the asylum application Faria had already filed. The couple has also pursued employment-based green cards through a skilled worker petition sponsored by Faria’s California employer. For years, they were protected from deportation under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a federal program that shields eligible migrants from designated crisis-hit countries from removal. But the Trump administration moved to terminate TPS protections for Venezuela, along with Haiti, Syria, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and other nations, a policy that is currently being challenged in federal court.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has defended the arrest, asserting that Bolivar lacked legal status. DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis stated that Bolivar “overstayed her visa since 2017, nearly a decade, and had no legal status.” But Faria and local immigration advocates push back on that claim, noting that Bolivar carried a valid Real ID-compliant Texas driver’s license and active work authorization valid through 2030 at the time of her arrest, and was in the process of adjusting her immigration status to obtain permanent residency.
South Texas immigration attorney Jodi Goodwin said a noticeable shift in enforcement policy targeting people with pending USCIS applications emerged around the fall of 2025. “It just became a very apparent trend where anyone that had some kind of application pending with USCIS, whether it was an adjustment of status or asylum, anything like that, they were going to be arrested,” Goodwin explained.
Before her residency, Bolivar lived with Faria in Santa Maria, California. She relocated to South Texas last summer to take up her residency position, and Faria traveled to visit his wife and daughter every two months. The trip to California for the asylum interview marked Bolivar’s first domestic travel since moving to Texas.
When Bolivar arrived at McAllen’s airport, she was taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection officers before passing through security screening, even after presenting her valid identification and work authorization. After confirming her Venezuelan nationality, officers demanded proof of legal permanent residency — a status the couple was actively seeking through the asylum interview she was on her way to attend — and detained her on the spot, Faria recounted, adding that he received text messages from his wife in real time as her arrest unfolded.
Their 5-year-old citizen daughter was held alongside Bolivar for 19 hours before being released to her grandfather, and has since been reunited with Faria in California. Bolivar was transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody Sunday and is currently being held at the El Valle Detention Facility in Texas. Faria said his wife has repeatedly asked officials for an explanation of her detention but has not received any formal response to date.