RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Omar David Panqueva and his husband Santiago Paez had been set to depart on a flight to Washington D.C. to start a series of Karol G afterparties following her tour around the country Sunday.
Panqueva, known as DJ TUNJO, performed at Sueños Music Festival in Grant Park in May and the couple founded the Chicago-based Latin music and community event organization La Mesa Presents.
As they exited an Uber to go into Midway Airport, they were surrounded and detained by federal agents.
Silvia Paez, Santiago’s sister, described the two in social media posts as “not only partners, but a power team.” She said in a statement that the couple had been taken to a detention center in Indiana after being detained at Midway.
“They are good within the circumstances,” she wrote on social media. “[But] they are still separated.”
The Department of Homeland Security said it detained the couple for overstaying their 2021 visas that expired in 2022, but wouldn’t say if the two were accused of any crimes or had pending asylum cases the department was aware of.
Both will be held “pending removal hearings,” the federal agency said.
However, their attorney, Enrique Espinoza, said the two had pending asylum cases, and that those cases had been filed within the legally mandated time after their arrival in the United States, but the government was “skipping past that part.”
He said the couple had been cooperating with the government on the pending case, even providing the required biometric information.
“They have been proactive [in] requesting information about the status of their case, and the government said they were working on it,” Espinoza told the Sun-Times. “And here we are now with them detained even though they followed every rule by the government and have no criminal background. … It seems like they were just easy targets.”
A GoFundMe for the couple’s legal defense and travel costs had raised $21,000 by Thursday evening. The couple’s lawyer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Paez’s sister urged people to “be safe” and avoid airports. She also wrote that the support and “how much people are caring” was “one of the things keeping them strong.”
“Santiago and David are very aware of how the community has shown up for them,” Paez’s sister said. “They are so grateful for all of your support and your kindness, and overwhelmed by the love coming from you guys.”
In another social media, she said: "I wish we lived in a world where being Latino wasn’t a crime."
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