A Wichita Family's Unwavering Dignity in the Face of Immigration Detention
Wichita, Kansas | October 25, 2026
By Claudia Amaro | Planeta Venus
Last Wednesday, October 14, at 8:30 a.m., at the federal immigration offices located at 555 N. Woodlawn in Wichita, Kansas, community entrepreneur Yessica Marisol Peña Olivas (26 years old), her mother Maricela Olivas (46 years old), her brother Mario Silvestre (22 years old), and her sister Maribel (20 years old) were arrested and taken into ICE custody. The family went to the building after receiving a notification by mail on Tuesday, October 13, at 5:00 p.m., leaving them less than sixteen hours to get legal advice or representation and appear for their credible-fear interview about returning to Mexico. At the end of the process, immigration agents detained them immediately and transferred them more than seventy miles away to the Chase County Jail in Cottonwood Falls.
The family's detention, in separate cells, reveals the serious flaws of the U.S. immigration system, where seeking legitimate refuge often ends in dehumanizing incarceration and a profitable business for rural prisons. The Peña Olivas family members are not just numbers; in Wichita, they are known for their hard work and community service through Lady Burritos. Their incarceration shows how difficult it is to overcome legal barriers to obtaining asylum without adequate representation and how some counties fund their coffers by holding applicants for international protection.
From violence in Chihuahua to community building in Wichita
To understand the case of Olivas Peña and her family, it is essential to go back to 2013, when they were forced to flee Chihuahua, Mexico. Her biological father was tortured by organized crime in an attack in which armed men broke into her home and pointed guns at her mother and younger sister, who was only 8 years old at the time. "When I looked at my dad after he was tortured, it's something that I still live with in my mind every day; we were threatened with death, and we had to leave everything behind," Peña Olivas says of the trauma that led them to cross the U.S. border in 2013 to seek asylum.
After her parents separated in 2015, her mother, siblings, and stepfather moved to Wichita to find safety. Peña Olivas attended East High School, attended college, and worked tirelessly, something she learned at age ten by selling bread door to door to help at home. With a $50 loan from her mother, she prepared her first 15 burritos and sold them at gas stations, carrying them in a small cooler. Thus was born Lady Burritos, which grew from borrowed kitchens and gas station sales to a space in Pinole Blue, offering banquets for hundreds of people at businesses, schools, and civic organizations across the region.
Peña Olivas' impact on the Wichita community was swift and profound. Raquel Reyes, a designer and cultural promoter who worked with Peña Olivas on brands such as Sol's Sweets and Lady Burrito, as well as Cumbia Social Sessions, highlights her social value: "I'm trying to help her in any way possible because I've never met anyone who works harder, smarter, and gives back so much to their community, even when they have nothing. She does it from the heart... something her mother definitely taught her."
Reyes also says that she has seen Peña Olivas guide young people in boxing gyms and neighborhood activities: "She sets an example, shows them how to be a positive, supportive, caring person who contributes to the community. I feel like they don't deserve this because they're working to live a better life, always doing the right thing and sharing love with others."
The complexity of an overcrowded asylum system
The labyrinth faced by the Peña Olivas family is the same one that imprisons thousands of migrants: U.S. law defines asylum as protection for those who have suffered serious harm or have a well-founded fear of suffering it for specific reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a certain social group. The law makes clear that generalized conditions of violence, insecurity, or poverty are not enough on their own to obtain protection.
In addition, initiating an asylum application with Form I-589 does not guarantee its approval or grant an immediate work permit. This permit requires a wait of 150 to 180 days, as long as the applicant is not responsible for delays. The bureaucratic system has collapsed: by the third quarter of fiscal year 2026, immigration courts had some 2.32 million asylum applications pending, well above the nearly 412,000 in 2016. In this context, quick interviews such as "credible fear" interviews, if conducted without legal defense and with last-minute notices, leave families vulnerable to immediate detention or hasty deportations.
Prisons as a Business: The Human Cost in Chase County
After detention, family members were taken to the Chase County Jail in Cottonwood Falls, which holds 148 inmates. Between 80% and 83% of the people held there are in ICE custody. Official documents and audits show that the federal government transfers more than $100,000 a month to Chase County authorities under this contract, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Jail administrators have said publicly that this revenue makes the prison "self-sufficient" and reduces the tax burden for residents, making migrant detention the prison's main source of revenue.
However, human rights defenders and the ACLU have repeatedly denounced overcrowding and lack of medical care at the facility. For the Peña Olivas family, the confinement has led to accelerated physical and emotional deterioration. Mario Silvestre cannot communicate with his sisters or mother and maintains contact only through family members outside the facility. Peña Olivas' mother, Maricela, injured her leg and sprained her ankle on the stairs after being assigned to the second floor of the prison, without receiving adequate medical attention.
Confinement has reactivated past trauma. "My sister has anxiety and nightmares every day when imagining that something like this will happen again; due to our post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this has brought us back to the moment when all this happened," Peña Olivas denounced from prison, where they find comfort only in prayer groups with other women detainees.
Despite being detained and the uncertainty of a difficult judicial process, Peña Olivas continues to speak on behalf of her family: "We are a hardworking, responsible, respectful family; we have not committed any crime; we were just looking for a safe life without violence. We have many dreams and goals to fulfill... we ask for one more chance to continue fighting and to be able to return home without fear of losing our lives."
Today, the Peña Olivas family asks for the support of the community they have given so much to. Advocacy organizations, local leaders, and friends are asking for solidarity: financial assistance is needed to pay for qualified legal representation to defend their right to due process in the asylum process, as well as letters of community support and conversations with local leaders. Not letting their effort be silenced in the cells of Chase County is an ethical duty to a family that has always worked for the common welfare.
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