Category: Pennsylvania News

When Nelson Contreras-Gelves arrived at an immigration appointment in June, he worriedly “already saw myself being back in Venezuela.”

The threat of deportation had loomed ever since he arrived in the United States in March 2022, surrendering at the border and requesting asylum. It hung over conversations he and Ariel Whaley had about marriage. It dictated when they held their wedding reception.

And just a week after the Chester County newlyweds celebrated their marriage, Contreras-Gelves, 35, walked into an immigration appointment in Philadelphia. An hour later, he called to tell his wife he had been arrested and detained by ICE.

That is, until Sept. 10, when he was abruptly released after months at Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the giant ICE detention center in Philipsburg, Clearfield County.

Contreras-Gelves and Whaley say he has no criminal record.

“Those first couple of days, we just kept on looking at each other, like, ‘Wow, I cannot believe that you are here,’ because it was so out of the world,” said Whaley, 27, during a recent interview in Kennett Square’s Cypress Beach Park, where the pair had volunteered planting trees and rehabbing the park together. Contreras-Gelves does not speak English; Whaley translated his comments during the conversation.

Contreras-Gelves is one of an increasing number of immigrants taken into custody as they pursue asylum, a long-established legal process that can grant permission to live in the United States to people who could be harmed at home.

It comes as President Donald Trump takes an aggressive approach on immigration, departing from prior administrations that largely allowed asylum seekers with no criminal record to remain free while they pursued their claims. But in recent months, applicants have been detained across the United States, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Contreras-Gelves and Whaley are now starting a new chapter — not life as it was before. They don’t know precisely why Immigration and Customs Enforcement granted Contreras-Gelves’ release after a string of denials. And he is under more surveillance than before his detention. He was fitted with an ankle monitor; is limited to traveling only within Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware; and has frequent in-person check-ins in King of Prussia.

“There’s still uncertainty, but at the very least, we can go through it together, and not have the same sense of immediacy that we have to make some sort of decision,” Whaley said.

‘If she enters my heart, she won’t leave’

When it came to Whaley, Contreras-Gelves was nervous to make the first move.

The two met in 2023 at Mighty Writers, a nonprofit educational program for children that also offers food and other resources for underserved families in the Philadelphia region.

Whaley, a Downingtown native, was working at the Spanish-language preschool; Contreras-Gelves started as a volunteer in the food pantry, working his overnight shift at a mushroom farm and then arriving just a few hours later at the nonprofit.

They spent a lot of time together there. Whaley remembers sorting donations together, sifting through an array of lotions and shampoo. He sniffed each one.

Something about it struck her: “I just saw a curiosity and a wonder for the little things that I don’t normally see in a lot of people,” she said. “It made me fall in love very quickly.”

He was likewise smitten. He told a coworker “that muchacha is so pretty.”

“If she enters my heart, she won’t leave,” he recalled saying.

As their relationship got more serious and they both considered marriage, they had to discuss it “kind of like in a business way,” Whaley recalls.

They hesitated for a bit. But ultimately, they bought their rings, and despite his nerves about the pressures of an American proposal, he asked Whaley to marry him in February 2025 at the park where they had their first date.

After a ceremony in May, Whaley wanted to celebrate their love. They picked the date for their June 2026 reception because it was “literally the last weekend” before Contreras-Gelves could possibly be detained, Whaley said. Whaley’s panic attacks about it got worse, a sharp come-down from the pure happiness she had felt at their reception.

Though this appointment was routine, and he had been to immigration check-ins previously, they saw what was unfolding around them. They knew the government was increasingly taking people into custody when they appeared. Something similar had happened to Contreras-Gelves’ friend.

‘Keep the faith’

When the appointment came, what typically was a 15-minute process — fingerprints, a photo — took two hours. Immigration officials asked Contreras-Gelves to report back a few days later with another form of ID from Venezuela.

Friends and family told Contreras-Gelves not to go back. But he knew it would be worse if he didn’t.

One week after their party, Contreras-Gelves stopped Whaley 50 feet from the door to the immigration office, told her he would go in alone, and kissed her goodbye.

He didn’t come back out.

It was a scramble for Whaley, who mobilized to contact lawyers with the Defender Association’s immigration unit. She struggled to figure out how to see him while he was held at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia for roughly three weeks, before he was transferred to the 1,880-bed Moshannon center.

For months, his detention consumed Whaley’s life. She was constantly on alert, answering calls from the lawyers and waiting to hear from Contreras-Gelves, unsure if the next time he would tell her he was being deported.

But a community sprung up around them. Whaley helped other detainees contact their loved ones, and helped families navigate adding money to their accounts. She connected others with Contreras-Gelves’ attorneys, and visited another man at Moshannon whom Contreras-Gelves had been detained alongside in Philadelphia, helping him communicate with his wife in Mexico.

A GoFundMe page, set up by loved ones, raised nearly $40,000 to support Whaley and Contreras-Gelves as they fought for his release. They launched a letter-writing campaign, sending postcards to elected officials.

Over the months in detainment, Contreras-Gelves faced repeated denials to be released on bond. The conditions of Moshannon were “horrible,” he said. He recalls scalding shower water that burned; a mysterious and unsettling number of bugs; and poor food quality. Medical assistance was often just a pill. He shared his commissary purchases with other detainees who did not have the same access.

A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to a request seeking comment about the conditions at Moshannon or the reason for Contreras-Gelves’ release.

He began to get weary. He thought about signing a voluntary departure form and returning to Venezuela. Whaley, at first, agreed, not wanting him to remain locked up when he could be free — and they could be united — somewhere else. But she pressed him to wait.

“Everybody in our community that already knew us played such a large role in helping us keep the faith, and then all of the people that we’ve met and we’ve been able to help or have helped us have done the same thing,” Whaley said.

And then on the morning of Sept. 10, as Whaley was heading into work as a graduate assistant at West Chester University, she got a phone call. Contreras-Gelves was talking so fast, it took her a minute to understand: He was being released.

She hesitated to tell anyone. It didn’t feel real. But after she talked with an ICE agent to coordinate picking him up, she started calling people.

“I still was like, I’m not going to believe it until he comes out the gate,” she said. “And then he did.”

‘Incredibly lucky’

When people ask them what comes next, they say there is still a lot of uncertainty. They don’t feel like they are returning to the lives they had before.

There’s a lot of ambiguity around the relations between his home country and the United States, and what it could mean for his status. But he will have a new court date, some time in the future.

They hope the momentum they built around Contreras-Gelves’ detention can be directed to others who are still at Moshannon, Whaley said. They continue to help others detained there when they can.

After Contreras-Gelves’ release, they drove a woman and her children to Moshannon to visit her husband, from whom she had been separated for more than a year without the means to visit.

“We were so incredibly lucky. There’s so many people who don’t even get the opportunity to fight as hard as we have, and so we are just so grateful to have the support from everybody,” she said. “We both feel a responsibility to help others who are still going through it.”