Three sisters have had their lives turned upside down after their father was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while their mother is in hospice care.
Adriana Gonzalez, 20, Citlalli Montes, 26, and Iris Gonzalez are begging for their father, Armando Gonzalez, 49, to be returned home after he was detained by ICE on Tuesday around 7.40am.
He called his family, causing Adriana to run out of their house without shoes on as they rushed to his aid, they told Big Bear Television.
'Upon arrival, he was already gone,' Adriana said.
Despite the family claiming he has no criminal record and was living peacefully in Big Bear, California, for 20 years, Armando now faces deportation.
'All I can say is he's innocent,' Adriana told ABC 7. 'He didn't do anything.'
Armando, a Mexican national who moved to the US in his teens, had been on the way to a job where he works as a handyman and a house cleaner when he was stopped by ICE agents and detained.
He was later taken to a detention center in Adelanto, where his daughter was able to visit him for a few minutes, she told the outlet.
Adriana Gonzalez, 20, and her two sisters fear they will lose both their parents as their father, Armando Gonzalez, was detained by ICE and their mother is in hospice with brain cancer.
The sisters are hoping Homeland Security will release their father before their mother, who is battling stage four brain cancer, dies.
Their mother, Erika, is currently in hospice care and has days left to live, they said.
'He would make sure we were okay, he would cheer us up. When he would walk into the room, we felt reassured that everything is going to be okay,' Adriana told the outlet.
'He was the light of the family right now,' she continued. 'We were barely starting to grieve my mom. She's on her last few moments of life, and her time is so limited.
'Now it feels like we're not just losing my mom but my father.'
Adriana had recently left college to move home after her mother got sick to spend time with her, she told Big Bear Television.
'I just wanted to spend the last few weeks with her,' the young woman said through tears.
Adriana was in the process of getting her father permanent citizenship, but she's not allowed to sponsor him until she is 21.
By the time his family arrived to where his truck was, he had already been whisked away.
DHS told the Daily Mail the Mexican national had a prior conviction for a public order crime.
Armando has been in the US since he was a teenager.
A lawyer told her prior to his detainment that her father had a good chance of getting it.
DHS told the Daily Mail that Armando has a prior conviction of a public order crime.
'He will remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of his removal proceedings,' a DHS spokesperson told the Daily Mail.
'Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US.'
Both parents were involved in their community and enjoyed living in the Big Bear community.
The family started a GoFundMe to help pay for legal representation and fees.
Federal records showed ICE agents made 14,302 arrests across Los Angeles County, Orange, Riverside, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and San Bernardino, where Big Bear is located, in 2025, ABC 7 reported.
It was nearly 10,000 more arrests than the previous year, which saw 4,684 detainments.
In 2026 so far, ICE has arrested 2,612 people in the LA area.
Roughly 40 percent of those detained have no criminal history, and 87 percent of them were men.
Across the US, ICE has detained 384,490 people since Trump retook office in January 2025.