Jose Mario Rodriguez Grimaldi was weak and unable to eat in his final days after contracting COVID. He died peacefully in his daughter’s Winnetka home two years ago, at age 88.
Years after his death, he was facing deportation proceedings.
In August, his daughter received a notice addressed to him from the Department of Homeland Security: “It is charged that you are subject to removal from the United States.”
Homeland Security ordered Rodriguez Grimaldi to appear before a judge in December. Then a few weeks later came another notice to appear for a hearing in September. If the feeble man were still alive, his fate might have been clear.
The department has been aggressively seeking to deport unauthorized immigrants, scanning records for expired visas and reviving cases once administratively closed for deportation, sometimes a decade ago. But in the case of Rodriguez Grimaldi and several others confirmed by The Times, they died before officials could go after them. Some of the immigrants were in their late 80s. Some had legal status. But the intense push to ramp up deportations is dragging in even the dead, unnerveing immigrant households, cramming court calendars and sapping stretched immigration attorneys’ time.
The letter panicked his daughter, Lorena, a naturalized citizen. For weeks, she had been anxiously watching the Trump administration’s crackdown play out on television with images of immigration officers throwing people to the ground, grabbing them out of cars and violently taking them from homes. And she feared that she would be targeted.
Jose Mario Rodriguez Grimaldi died in 2022 but received two letters — one in August and another in September — for deportation. His daughter, shown holding a photograph of her father in October 2025, resolved the matter with the help of a lawyer.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“I thought they were going to come down to my house and knock down my door looking for my father who they think is here,” said Lorena, who asked not to use her last name because she feared retribution. “I was so nervous, I didn’t know what to do.”
So she went directly to the Van Nuys Boulevard Immigration Court and tried to fix what she figured was a mistake. She brought his birth certificate and the order to appear. The clerk took a photocopy and told her a judge would review it and she’d get a response. That never came. Instead, weeks later came another letter, demanding that Rodriguez Grimaldi appear in court in September. She tracked down Edgardo Quintanilla, an immigration attorney of 30 years to help her terminate the proceedings.
“I have never seen a case like this,” Quintanilla said. “Their marching orders are to move fast, move quickly and prosecute cases that result in a situation like this.”
The notice came from Homeland Security. Typically, government lawyers run background checks through the department’s database before filing cases, but there is no formal process, according to Paul Hunker, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s former chief counsel in Dallas. And those databases don’t always capture deaths.
Hunker said that he wasn’t surprised dead people were showing up in the system.
“They are just issuing more notices to appear and ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) is arresting more people,” he said. “It can be unnecessary work.”
Immigration lawyers said the trend is troubling and depletes them and already overwhelmed courts of resources. Immigration attorney Heng Yong had a similar case of a man, now dead, in his late 80s whose visa expired and was ordered to arrive at a deportation hearing. Patricia Corrales, a former Homeland Security attorney, said she’s been battling to close a decade-old immigration case of a deceased construction worker. And Vera Weisz, whose been practicing immigration law for more than four decades, said the department sent letters to several deceased clients. One of those immigrants died more than six years ago.
“They are so sloppy and the courts are having to deal with it,” she said. “There is some absurdity to it, but that’s the least of it.”
In one of her cases, the deceased man already had a green card, legal residency, but was being summoned for deportation proceedings.
For Lorena, the ordeal unearthed grief and new worries about whether naturalized citizenship can be rescinded in a country that can feel hostile to immigrants.
“It’s a very difficult time for Hispanics,” she said. “We are not people who cause problems, we are workers. We achieved the American dream.”
Lorena said she came to the U.S. nearly three decades ago after fleeing El Salvador, a country emerging from a civil war and still wracked by violence. She always followed the law here, never even receiving a traffic ticket. She’s grateful that the U.S. gave her the life she has now, with her two children, a home on a tree lined-street and a steady job.
The deportation letters panicked his daughter, Lorena, a naturalized citizen, who feared that she would be targeted.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
She applied for his green card shortly after she was granted citizenship almost a decade ago. The process can take years.
Rodriguez Grimaldi came to visit on special occasions, for his granddaughter’s first communion, for graduation and at Thanksgiving.
A retired bank teller, Rodgriuez Grimaldi always dressed dapper. He cherished his independence and after every trip to the U.S. returned back to his native El Salvador where he had a modest home and lifelong friends. A few days after she picked him up from the airport on Nov. 19, 2014, he fell seriously ill. Doctors told him he had Stage 4 chronic kidney disease. He also had Alzheimer’s. Too weak to return home, his daughter applied for an extension on his tourist visa.
“He didn’t want to stay, but he was so sick,” she explained. “I couldn’t send him to my country. There was nobody to take care of him over there.”
Immigration officials asked for more documents as part of the extension. But she couldn’t pull them all together. Some would require a trip to El Salvador. Months turned into years as she alternated between night shifts as a nursing assistant and days caring for her father.
A visa rejection letter came. But it didn’t seem to matter. Her father began to slide further.
“I always followed the law and my father was the same. But they didn’t give him permission to stay and he was so sick,” she said. “I bathed him and cared for him like he was a little baby.”
“There was no other option. He couldn’t go,” she said. “He didn’t want to stay here. He was happy in El Salvador, in his home.”
She arrived early to the Van Nuys courthouse. She sat stiffly in the front of the packed courtroom with her lawyer, Quintanilla.
The courtroom galleys were packed. Sitting nearby was a girl in pink who fidgeted with her hair. Another man with two adolescent children held a plastic folder full of documents. Next to him a man’s ankle bracelet beeped loudly as he bounced his leg nervously.
When Immigration Judge Jeannete Park called the case, Quintanilla stood. The respondent, Mr. Rodriguez Grimaldi died in 2022, he explained.
“I filed a motion to terminate the proceedings.” he told the judge.
“I will take a look at it,” Park said. She scanned the screen and a docket in front of her.
“My condolences to the deceased and their family,” moments later.
And the two walked out. A wave of relief washed over Lorena. But she still fears for another summons in the mail — or the knock on the door.
“I have a clean record, but I am still afraid.”