A 17-year-old member of El Paso High School's dance team is being held with her parents and younger sister at a South Texas immigration detention facility, caught in a dispute between federal immigration authorities and the family's attorney over exactly how and why they were taken into custody. Michell Germán, her 11-year-old sister and their two parents are being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley while their immigration case moves through the system.
The family is in active immigration proceedings, according to KTSM 9 News, which first reported that Germán is also a magnet student at the Center for Career and Technology Education. ICE confirmed to KVIA that as of Nov. 7, the family was together in custody at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center pending a hearing before an immigration judge.
Conflicting Accounts of the Arrest
Exactly when and how the family was detained depends on who is telling the story. ICE told El Paso Matters that Michell's father and Michell herself were detained during what the agency called “targeted enforcement arrests” on Oct. 22, with Michell present and taken into custody alongside him.
The family's attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, gives a different account. According to the attorney, the station's report states, the father, Pablo, and his daughters, Michell and Paola, were detained while he was taking them to school near the bus stop, with their mother detained the following day. Lincoln-Goldfinch has said that the family members were initially separated from their mother upon being taken into custody but have since been reunited within the detention center, a detail the station also confirmed.
Dueling Claims on Documentation
The two sides also disagree sharply on the family's legal footing. El Paso Matters reports that Lincoln-Goldfinch said the entire family is in valid immigration proceedings, has a lawyer and work permits, and has no criminal record. ICE, in the same report, said neither parent had any documentation to remain in the United States legally.
Lincoln-Goldfinch has said DHS's stated basis for the family's detention was that its members were immigrant asylum seekers, and she has argued that ICE's position allows the detention of asylum seekers, including people with legal status or work permits, and can result in children being separated from their families. She has also said the family filed the proper applications, complied with every requirement, and has no criminal issue in the case, and that the family has followed the rules since arriving several years ago. ICE told KTSM it was working on a response to the station's request for details and a reason for the family's detention.
A Senior Season Interrupted
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro has called on ICE to immediately release the Venezuelan family from the Dilley facility, saying in a social media post that Germán was expected to miss senior night and related milestones with her detention. Lincoln-Goldfinch has said she plans to fight to get the girls released and returned to their regular lives, and that the family is enduring poor food and medical care while its life has been upended.
The attorney has also said she expects the incoming Congress to challenge the administration's actions toward immigrant families. The case comes as President Donald Trump has appointed Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff, a figure known for supporting hardline immigration enforcement.
Dilley's Record on Holding Children
The family's detention adds to a broader pattern documented at the Dilley facility. A Texas Tribune analysis found that at least 60 children had been held at Dilley for 100 days or more, far exceeding the 20-day limit described in that reporting, and that roughly 3,000 children were held there for deportation in the facility's first year after it reopened in March 2025, with more than half held longer than 20 days.
That same Tribune investigation detailed the case of a 16-year-old Los Angeles student who, along with his mother, had spent 123 days at Dilley while his father was held at a separate Texas detention center. A separate Tribune report from April described a Venezuelan family of three arrested after an El Paso immigration court hearing and held for a month at the same Dilley facility. Population figures at the center have fluctuated throughout the year; Scripps News reported in July that ICE was holding 539 people at Dilley, including 84 families and 112 children, citing figures from Rep. Castro, while a Senate Judiciary Committee site-visit document put the population at 330 residents, including 49 family units, during an April visit.
Under federal law, as summarized by the Congressional Research Service, people who establish a credible fear of persecution or torture “shall be detained for further consideration of the application for asylum” once placed in formal removal proceedings. That general statutory framework does not by itself resolve the specific basis cited for the Germán family's detention, which remains disputed between ICE and the family's attorney.
