EVANSVILLE — Ana Karen Gonzalez was standing outside the Evansville-Vanderburgh Civic Center, asking anyone who would listen where federal agents had taken her uncle, when she looked out toward the parking lot and saw him.
Teodoro Vazquez-Moreno was sitting in the back of a white van, waving at her through the window, Gonzalez recalled in an interview with the Courier & Press.
Upstairs, courthouse staff had just told her they had no records pertaining to her uncle. Downstairs, a man working the building’s security desk told her it didn’t matter that her uncle carried a valid driver’s license and a federal work permit.
“He said, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter what kind of documents you have with you if you’re not a U.S. citizen,'” Gonzalez recalled. The man, dressed in a short-sleeve button-down shirt, was not a law enforcement officer and did not give his name. Vanderburgh County sheriff’s deputies staff the Civic Center’s security checkpoint, but the front desk behind it is not a law enforcement post.
Vazquez-Moreno, 58, is one of at least a dozen Evansville-area residents detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the past week, part of a surge in local arrests that has left families scrambling for basic information about their relatives’ whereabouts.
The Courier & Press could not independently corroborate the unnamed Civic Center staff member’s comments to Gonzalez, nor could it confirm Vazquez-Moreno’s legal status. But, like many of those detained, Vazquez-Moreno did not appear to face pending criminal charges in Indiana.
As of Monday afternoon, ICE’s online detainee locator system listed Vazquez-Moreno as being held at the Clay County Justice Center in Brazil, Indiana, about 100 miles north of Evansville. Booking records there list his only charge as an “immigration hold.”
Many other Evansville residents arrested by ICE last week ended up at a different facility. According to booking records, they were taken to the Hopkins County jail in Madisonville, Kentucky — another local jail that takes in funds to hold federal and state detainees for brief periods.
Clay County has held detainees on ICE’s behalf for years and separates them from the general jail population: an arrangement immigration attorneys and advocates say makes detainees harder for families and reporters to track. A Department of Homeland Security oversight body found in 2024 that the facility had repeatedly violated ICE’s own detention standards.
Gonzalez said she learned her uncle had been detained through a text message from his son, who owns a popular food truck that often sets up shop on Evansville’s East Side. First, she went to visit Vazquez-Moreno’s house, in her words “to learn what had happened,” then traveled Downtown to ask local officials for information — arriving, unknowingly, just as the van carrying whom she believes to have been her uncle parked outside the Civic Center.
With no help forthcoming at the Civic Center, the Clerk’s Office or local courts, which likely would house little or no information relating to an ICE-led arrest, Gonzalez said the family relied on Vazquez-Moreno’s phone-tracking app, Life360, to trace her uncle’s movements while he and the phone were in custody. She also said it was a bystander’s Facebook post, who witnessed Vazquez-Moreno’s initial arrest by federal agents, that led them to his abandoned work truck near the Cass Avenue and South Governor Street intersection, several blocks from his home, rather than any official notification.
They picked up the truck, avoiding costly tow and impound fees.
“How do we not know he just got abducted if the system can’t even give us any information?” Gonzalez asked Friday, exasperated hours after her uncle’s arrest.
Gonzalez’s family says Vazquez-Moreno’s only scrape with the law came in the form of a DUI arrest years ago in Dubois County — she couldn’t recall if it was less or more than 10 years ago — and that he has been clean and sober ever since.
“He’s been super loyal to Holy Rosary Catholic Church here in Evansville,” Gonzalez said, describing the core of her uncle’s recovery and his faith “He’s served many, many people. His life was turned around.”
Despite the reported years-old DUI case, a Courier & Press review of Indiana court records turned up no criminal cases — active or closed — against Vazquez-Moreno under various spellings and formattings of his name, including in Dubois County. Likewise, a search of Vazquez-Moreno’s name in the federal court records database PACER did not return any results, either.
At the time of his arrest Friday, Vazquez-Moreno was being represented by Indianapolis-based immigration law firm Flora Legal Group, according to Gonzalez, who said lawyer Jason Flora served as a kind of a “family attorney” on immigration matters.
By Saturday, the family had confirmed by phone that Vazquez-Moreno was, in fact, the man in the van. In a voice message to the Courier & Press, Gonzalez said her aunt had spoken with him directly.
“(She) just got off the phone with him, and the white transit (van) where we thought he was at — it was him,” Gonzalez said. “As of right now, he has called her, and I think they said they’re sending him on to Mexico. Why? I don’t know.”
Gonzalez confirmed her uncle was born in Mexico. She said the family has not seen any documentation of a final removal order.
“As family, you just want to hear that they are fine and what the next step is,” Gonzalez said in a text message Monday.
Neither the Evansville Police Department nor the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office has assisted with the recent wave of arrests, both agencies have said, and neither has entered into an agreement authorizing its officers to perform federal immigration duties.
The sheriff’s office’s involvement is limited to notifying ICE when people arrested on local charges are suspected of being in the country illegally — not the mechanism that led to Vazquez-Moreno’s arrest, since he was never booked in Vanderburgh County. He was instead apprehended following a traffic stop.
The Indiana State Police is on a different footing from the EPD and VCSO as it relates to immigration enforcement and President Donald Trump’s aggressive, so-called “mass deportation campaign,” which administration officials have warned would not only target violent criminals but anyone who may lack legal status to remain in the country. The ISP has entered into what’s known as a 287(g) task force agreement with ICE, allowing specially trained troopers to exercise limited federal immigration authority during ordinary patrol duties, including traffic stops.
Asked whether state troopers assisted in this week’s Evansville arrests, ISP Evansville Post spokesman Sgt. Seth Rainey did not confirm or deny their involvement.
“Indiana State Police does have troopers who have completed 287(g) training … as part of Governor Braun’s public safety initiative,” Rainey said in a statement. “Indiana State Police does not comment on federal immigration detainees or related federal enforcement actions.”
Gonzalez said the recent arrests have pushed many Hispanic families in Evansville to remove religious and cultural symbols from their vehicles — Mexican flags, Spanish lettering, images of the Virgin Mary or Saint Jude — out of fear the items make them “targets” for stops.
Gonzalez said she still doesn’t know what comes next, only that the family is waiting — for another phone call, for a court date, for someone in the government to explain what will happen. Tensions remain high in Evansville’s Hispanic community.
“Right now, we’re pretty much trying to protect everybody we can,” Gonzalez said.
Houston Harwood may be contacted with questions and feedback at houston.harwood@courierpress.com at houston.harwood@courierpress.com
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: ‘Why? I don’t know’: ICE arrest shakes Evansville family
Reporting by Houston Harwood, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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By Houston Harwood, Evansville Courier & Press | USA TODAY Network
