{"id":226659,"date":"2025-09-14T17:28:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/226659\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T17:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:28:15","slug":"man-detained-by-ice-agents-at-phl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/226659\/","title":{"rendered":"Man detained by ICE agents at PHL"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 If you ask Jason Javie about his husband of four years, Henry Diaz, Jason is more of the Eagles fan in the marriage, but Henry is the one who knows how to throw a party.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe does the tablecloths and the flowers, and it\u2019s usually exquisite food,\u201d Jason said. \u201cHe has attention to detail, impeccable taste, sense of style.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just two weeks ago, Henry pulled out all the stops for his annual White Labor Day party at their place in Point Breeze for friends and family. Ever the traveling couple, too, the plans for this weekend were to fly alongside Jason\u2019s mom to Kansas City to visit Jason\u2019s brother and see the Eagles play at Arrowhead Stadium.<\/p>\n

Instead, Henry was detained by ICE agents as he was boarding the flight to Kansas City early Friday morning at Philadelphia International Airport.<\/p>\n

Jason, who had scanned his boarding pass right before Henry, said the first sign of something being wrong came when Henry scanned his.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was sort of a strange beep and a man came and sort of took Henry by the arm,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Jason said Henry was taken out of the boarding line and quickly surrounded by ICE agents.<\/p>\n

One of them pulled out a smartphone and showed Henry a photo of himself on the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know you have a final removal order, right?\u201d Jason heard the agent say.<\/p>\n

Jason\u2019s mom, who was making her way onto the flight right before Jason and Henry, returned to the gate entrance to see the commotion and immediately called her sister-in-law Sharon Javie when she saw Henry being detained.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe called to ask us to pray because agents surrounded Henry, they handcuffed him, and they took him away,\u201d Sharon said. \u201cAll I could say was, \u2018Oh dear lord.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When reached for comment, an airport spokesperson said they didn\u2019t have any details about Henry\u2019s detention on Friday morning or ICE\u2019s operations at the airport and directed KYW Newsradio to ICE.<\/p>\n

ICE has not responded to a request for comment from KYW Newsradio regarding the incident.<\/p>\n

\"Henry<\/p>\n

Photo credit Jason Javie<\/p>\n

Henry\u2019s final removal order dates back to when he first came to the United States as a 17-year-old from El Salvador. As Jason tells it, Henry\u2019s parents sent him north with a group led by a coyote from the nation\u2019s capital, San Salvador, to the U.S.-Mexico border. He crossed into Arizona and was eventually detained by immigration authorities.<\/p>\n

Henry was sent to a detention center for unaccompanied minors and was released from there into the custody of his brother, who lives in South Jersey. He also got a court date, but his brother never took him.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeep in mind, at the time, spoke no English and was 17 years old,\u201d Jason said. \u201cIt was a removal in absentia because he wasn\u2019t there. That, apparently, at least under immigration law, is not an excuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Henry also got busy carving out a life for himself in the U.S. Jason said one of his first jobs was at a McDonald\u2019s while he was in high school, and he also picked up contracting work with a family member. That kept up for Henry through college, and he eventually entered the hospitality industry and started a career.<\/p>\n

Over the years, he\u2019s never had a run-in with the law and has tried multiple times with many different lawyers to get his final deportation order reopened and thrown out, but those efforts were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

Henry met Jason in 2015 while he was still in South Jersey, and Jason was in Philly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe met on an app,\u201d said Jason. \u201cWe disagree about what app it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Love blossomed over the next six years, and the pair married at City Hall in 2021, followed by a memorable surprise party organized by both their friend groups at the Jersey Shore \u2014 a regular summer destination for the pair.<\/p>\n

Henry had also moved to Philly to live with Jason, and after their marriage, the pair moved to Point Breeze, where they live to this day.<\/p>\n

\"Jason<\/p>\n

Photo credit Sharon Javie<\/p>\n

For work, Henry got into the city\u2019s restaurant industry and worked his way up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of the things that I really admire about him,\u201d said Jason. \u201cIn any situation, he\u2019s able to rise to the occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason\u2019s aunt Sharon met Henry for the first time in 2018 and said she was immediately enamored with the kind-hearted and considerate man her nephew brought into the family.<\/p>\n

\u201cHenry is one of the kindest, most loving people you\u2019ll ever meet,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s just been the person you want in your community and in your family.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their relationship, Jason said Henry brought up his immigration status on one of their first dates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that Henry from the past had dealt with situations where he\u2019s dating somebody, he would bring that up, and that would be a dealbreaker,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a dealbreaker for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something Jason said was always a concern in their relationship, but it didn\u2019t stop the pair from trying to live their best lives, going on trips and making memories at home in their community. When President Donald Trump was re-elected, the pair weighed trying to get Henry\u2019s deportation order thrown out again, but decided against it after Trump\u2019s campaign, full of anti-immigrant rhetoric.<\/p>\n

As a lawyer himself, Jason developed a game plan in the event Henry was ever detained by ICE.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur strategy was just to be as prepared as possible \u2014 having money for a lawyer, be prepared to do what you need to do,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think like so many other things, you\u2019re never as prepared as you think you are or as you want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jason<\/p>\n

Photo credit Jason Javie<\/p>\n

That hit home on Saturday, when Jason visited Henry at the Federal Detention Center on Arch Street and saw his husband for the first time since his detention Friday morning, in a prison jumpsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if there\u2019s anything that could prepare you for that moment when I saw him,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ll think about probably for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason said he also wasn\u2019t prepared to go back to their Point Breeze apartment after the canceled trip to Kansas City.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s strange,\u201d he said. \u201cThe place looks exactly the way we left it, with one difference: he\u2019s not there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jason\u2019s game plan is still just getting started. He called it a \u201ckitchen sink\u201d approach to getting Henry out of ICE custody, and has retained a legal team to come up with different strategies. The first effort was to have as many friends and family members write letters on Henry\u2019s behalf for a judge to review at a future hearing.<\/p>\n

That hearing or those series of hearings, Jason hopes, will be the ones that finally get Henry\u2019s deportation order rescinded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s people like him, that have the strong work ethic, that follow the law, that try to do the right thing, that touch everybody, that add to society, that make this country great,\u201d Jason said. \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that the people that are going to make that decision see that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 If you ask Jason Javie about his husband of four years, Henry Diaz, Jason…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":226660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-226659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115203834828341815","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}