Two Argentine acrobats landed at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on a flight from Florida Saturday morning expecting to attend a friend's funeral. Instead, Agustin Baccega and Gustavo Romanello were met by plainclothes agents and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before they could leave the terminal.
The arrest was first detailed by KJZZ, which reported the men arrived at Sky Harbor on Saturday morning on a flight from Florida. According to friend Jonathan Batchelor, two plainclothes men approached the acrobats right after they landed, and ICE agents told him they were arresting Baccega for being in the country illegally. When Batchelor followed the agents seeking information about Baccega, agents detained Romanello too, reportedly asking whether they had another pair of handcuffs for the second man.
Prensa Arizona reported that the pair had traveled to the Valley specifically to attend the funeral of a close friend who had died the night before, according to Prensa Arizona. The outlet also reported that Baccega and Romanello had performed in productions at Walt Disney World and at Universal, including Universal's The Untrainable Dragon.
Visas, Asylum Claims and a Dispute Over Status
Batchelor told KJZZ the men came to the U.S. on visas and applied for asylum once they arrived, and said both men have valid work permits, pending immigration cases and no criminal record. The men had been based in Phoenix before moving to Orlando, Florida, to perform with theme parks, per Batchelor's account relayed through the station's reporting.
An ICE spokesperson offered a different timeline, telling KJZZ that both men legally entered the U.S. in 2020 and overstayed their visas. The agency said the men were arrested for violating U.S. immigration laws as part of a targeted enforcement action, according to the ICE spokesperson quoted by the station. ICE did not respond to KJZZ's questions about why the men were arrested despite their pending asylum claims. Separately, Prensa Arizona reported that both men had asylum applications it said were accepted and confirmed by Department of Homeland Security agencies, and that they had renewed their work permits — an account that conflicts with ICE's description of the men as visa overstays.
Fernando Burgos-Ortiz, an ICE spokesperson in Arizona, said in an email that employment authorization does not confer immigration status or prevent ICE enforcement, arrest or removal proceedings. U.S. law recognizes seeking asylum as a right, though the evidence gathered in this case does not independently establish the procedural status of either man's pending claim.
Conflicting Accounts of Where the Men Are Held
Friends told KJZZ that Baccega and Romanello are being held at the Florence Service Processing Center, and that as of Tuesday, no one had been able to visit them in person. A separate account carried by Yahoo, carrying a 12News report, quoted Batchelor saying only that one of them is known to be at the Florence Service Processing Center, with the other man's location unconfirmed. The two reports do not agree on whether both acrobats ended up at the same facility.
Under general USCIS guidance on asylum, applicants are not automatically authorized to work unless they meet specific requirements, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That general rule does not establish the specific work authorization or legal status of Baccega or Romanello, whose case remains disputed between friends and federal officials.
Part of a Broader Enforcement Push
The Phoenix detentions come amid what the Los Angeles Times described as immigration arrests continuing across multiple states following Republicans' midterm losses. Advocates reported arrests from California to Michigan to Massachusetts, while ICE had not released arrest numbers, according to the Los Angeles Times. The same report noted twin 19-year-old brothers from Venezuela were arrested while driving back to college in Alabama a day after the election, one of several cases cited nationally alongside the Phoenix arrests.
