Philadelphia resident detained by ICE at airport ‘followed all the processes that she was told’
Lick was transferred from Philadelphia’s Federal Detention Center to Cambria County Jail in Pennsylvania to detention centers in Louisiana and Texas. She is currently being held at Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico, Melchiorre said, where she will have a bond hearing on Aug. 4.
Emelchin Brunner said four of the people who were detained at the airport that her organization is connected with are women, which is “striking,” she said, since most people being detained by ICE are men.
There are fewer holding spaces for women at detention centers, so women detainees are often sent farther away from their families, Emelchin Brunner said.
“For the majority of women, in particular, not just at the airport, but in the Philadelphia region, it’s very difficult to not only keep track of where they’re going,” she said. “They’re also typically being sent pretty far, comparative to men.”
She said her organization is working to support families of those detained and help them get legal support and pay for commissary funds “so families can stay connected, and so that people don’t lose their humanity or don’t become invisible within the system.”
Together with two families who employ Lick as a babysitter, as well as other community members and friends in Philadelphia and beyond, Melchiorre has raised more than $15,000 for Lick’s legal fees.
Britni Zahodnick and her husband, Zane Schultz, live in Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood and have employed Lick as a babysitter for their two young children, aged 4 and 1, for more than a year.
They found out about Lick’s detention from Melchiorre on July 11, when he showed up at their door asking for their help.
“Neither of us have family or parents in Philadelphia, so Iliana was really our main support system for our family,” Zahodnick said.
The couple has supported Melchiorre in the aftermath of Lick’s detention, and has also been able to message Lick through various detention centers’ communication apps to express their support.
Her detention has affected the whole family, Zahodnick and Schultz said, including their son, who often looks forward to the Friday afternoons he spends in Lick’s care during the school year.
Zahodnick said she explained to her son what happened to Lick, in part because he had already come home from school earlier this year “asking us about police taking people from their families.”
“It’s … kind of upsetting that he already had a frame of reference for this, and it turned out to be, I guess, helpful in us explaining what happened,” she said.
Schultz said that as young parents, they felt like they “hit the jackpot” with Lick and she “became family very quickly.”
“It’s just sad through multiple lenses to have to watch him process this, maybe grow up a little bit quicker than he would have to otherwise,” he said of his son. “[It’s] just all around, kind of heartbreaking, and having to step up and think through … how do we now communicate this thing to a 4-year-old and help him understand?”
Melchiorre said there has been “incredible support” from community members.
He said he is “empathetic and totally aware of the immigration process.”
“I understand that ICE has a legal right to detain Iliana in the situation,” he said. “I’m not oblivious to that, and I also believe that people should kind of follow the … immigration rules. But I also see that the immigration process is very confusing. And Iliana entered the country in 2023 under a different president at the time, and that she followed all the processes that she was told and that she thought was right at the time.”
