Community, NC Democrats rally for Wendell woman detained by Border Patrol
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- About 150 people rallied in Wendell; Democratic officials urged her release
- Border Patrol detained Velasquez-Antonio Nov. 18; judge denied bond, deportation risk
- Local officials criticized federal immigration policy and demanded due process
Standing on the wooden gazebo of J. Ashley Wall Town Square in downtown Wendell Saturday afternoon, Bryan Sanchez held a sign with a message in all caps and black marker: “Fatima is not a criminal. She deserves freedom.”
His girlfriend, Fatima Issela Velasquez-Antonio, was detained by Customs and Border Patrol agents while working in Cary on Nov. 18, The News & Observer previously reported. In the left margin read the letters ‘H,’ for Honduras and ‘SV,’ for El Salvador, with a heart in the middle.
The two had similar reasons for coming to the United States. At 12, Sanchez was twice held at gunpoint by gang members in El Salvador before fleeing with his mother and brothers in 2016. Velasquez-Antonio’s father was murdered by a gang member in Honduras two years after her mother died of cancer before she sought asylum in the U.S.
Yet the couple met two very different fates. Sanchez got his green card last week. Velasquez-Antonio is at Stewart Detention Center in Georgia and is at risk of imminent deportation after a judge denied her bond, The N&O reported on Nov. 25.
“She’s stressed out about it,” Sanchez told The N&O. “But I told her, just believe in God, everything will be OK, and you’re gonna be at home as soon as possible.”
Sanchez was one of roughly 150 people who came to Wendell’s town square to call for Velasquez-Antonio’s release on Saturday. Family and friends, three Wendell town commissioners and several Democratic elected officials — including U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross — spoke at the rally.
Several speakers were visibly teary-eyed and choking up while speaking about Velasquez-Antonio, including Ross, who decried the Trump administration’s Justice Department ruling that effectively bars judges from granting bond to those who have entered the U.S. without legal authorization.
“I am here to tell you that she would’ve gotten bond if not for this administration,” Ross said.
Hearing what happened to Velasquez-Antonio was Wendell Commissioner Braxton Honeycutt’s tipping point. He had been considering registering as a Democrat for some time. For most of his life, he said, he considered himself a Ronald Reagan-style Republican.
Honeycutt has been unaffiliated for the last four to five years before registering with the Democratic Party last week. Seeing the divisiveness in the country, Honeycutt told The N&O, he no longer believed he could “solve the problem being on the sidelines.”
He wants to see the U.S. re-examine its immigration laws — saying at the rally that “history has shown us that the law and justice are not always the same thing” — starting by addressing the lack of transparency about and due process for those detained.
“Did not the Statue of Liberty once say and still says, ‘give me your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to be free?’” Honeycutt said. “So if that’s what we’re going to say, we got to have a better way to execute that.”
Wendell Commissioner-elect Dustin Ingalls invoked the poem and compared it to the sign near the town square reading Wendell’s motto: “Small town, big charm.” Ingalls criticized the possibility of Velasquez-Antonio being deported to Honduras when she has a work permit, pays taxes and owns a home with Sanchez.
“It’s not her fault that our immigration system is broken,” Ingalls said, “that it takes so long to gain asylum and to become a citizen. That it takes too long to do things the right way.”
“But instead of trying to fix the problem, this administration is taking a Gestapo approach to immigration enforcement, breaking the law themselves, and targeting American citizens and legal residents based on the color of their skin and where they were born.”
Bryan Sanchez’s best friend, Victor Sanchez (no relation), went to high school with Velasquez-Antonio. Victor remembers Velasquez-Antonio as someone always willing to help people with their homework even when she had trouble with her own. The three, plus Victor’s girlfriend, went on a double date to the Tennessee mountains last month to explore caves and other attractions.
Victor Sanchez said he was shocked to learn Velasquez-Antonio, who only has two traffic violations according to court records, was detained by the Border Patrol — or even that she was working at all. He thought she’d try to stay home after hearing news of the Border Patrol coming to the Triangle. But having just bought a $220,000 home with Bryan Sanchez, Velasquez-Antonio wanted to work to pay the mortgage.
Reading Facebook comments of people asking why Velasquez-Antonio hasn’t applied for citizenship upset Victor. He wished people knew how “broken” the immigration system is.
“Especially for what she’s seeking for, since she’s seeking asylum, it’s a very lengthy process,” Sanchez said. “It’s not something that you can just get overnight.”
Wake Democratic Chair Wesley Knott had barely cracked a smile the entire rally, taking labored breaths but never quite choking up as he spoke.
But at the end of the rally, when Knott told the crowd the first thing Velasquez-Antonio said to her family when they got in touch with her upon her arrival in Georgia, he could no longer hold his tears back.
“The first thing she said is, ‘I’m glad it was me and not one of you,’” Knott said.
This story was originally published November 29, 2025 at 6:52 PM with the headline "Community, NC Democrats rally for Wendell woman detained by Border Patrol."
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