Celebrity chef and humanitarian José Andrés urged Donald Trump on Sunday to intervene in the immigration case of Jose Jaimes, a long-time U.S. resident who was arrested by armed immigration agents as he dropped off his son at a Michigan middle school this week.
“Sir please release this man….Mr. Jose Jaimes is a hard working immigrant … and please can you pass asap Immigration reform?” Andrés wrote on X, “Could be your biggest contribution to USA…..remember the immigration issue is not a problem for you to solve but an opportunity for you to seize…”
Jaimes, a father of five who has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, was apprehended on Wednesday after he took his son, who has Asperger’s, to school in Trenton, Michigan.
“We just want him back home,” his other son Hector Jaimes, a college student in Tennessee, told the Detroit Free Press. “We’re worried about him.”
The Trump administration has touted its immigration efforts as “getting illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and drug dealers off our streets,” but Jaimes, who owns a painting business, has no criminal records or cases pending in Wayne County, according to the paper.
“It’s so hard to even process because even he told us when we talked to him this morning that one of the agents even told him, ‘You know, honestly, I don’t even know why you’re here because you have no record, you didn’t do anything bad,” the man’s daughter Ana told WXYZ.
Family members said Jaimes, who was born in Mexico, had a work permit and documentation to live in the U.S., while Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintains Jaimes was ordered removed by an immigration judge in 2014.
Jaimes, who is currently detained in St. Clair County Jail, will now be processed in federal immigration court.
An immigration judge will decide his fate, not President Trump, though even if the president could stop the case, it’s doubtful he would in response to an appeal from Andrés.
Trump fired the chef in January from his Biden-era post on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, claiming Andrés was “not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again”.
In January, the Trump administration rescinded guidance restricting immigration arrests at sensitive locations like schools and churches.
The change has prompted multiple lawsuits from religious groups and a Colorado school district, who argue immigration arrests at these locations deter migrants from using public services and freely exercising their religious rights.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has removed more than 50,000 people from the country, the White House announced this week.