José Gregorio González is inside an immigration detention center almost a year after he donated his kidney to save the life of his brother, who has end-stage renal disease.The Venezuelan man was taken into ICE custody July 21 during a routine check-in appointment with immigration authorities in Chicago.González had been reporting to Immigration and Customs Enforcement since April on a weekly basis, sometimes more than once.
The agency had placed him in an intensive supervision program to monitor his whereabouts after his yearlong humanitarian parole expired, according to his lawyer and brother.“I don’t really see a need to necessarily detain him,” said Peter Meinecke, an attorney handling his immigration case and the managing attorney at Resurrection Project, a nonprofit group in Chicago.“He has no criminal record and has been dutifully complying with supervision,” Meinecke told NBC News.José Alfredo Pacheco, González’s younger brother and the recipient of his kidney, had just finished a follow-up medical appointment to monitor his recovery from the transplant he received last August.
He texted González to let him know he was on his way to pick him up from his ICE check-in.“Three minutes later, he replied, ‘Brother, I love you.They’re about to deport me.’ That was the only thing he wrote to me,” Pacheco told Noticias Telemundo in Spanish on Wednesday.“My world came crashing down,” he said, noting that González is his sole caregiver.
“My biggest fear is being left alone here.”González’s story first made headlines in March 2025, when ICE detained him before he could donate his kidney to Pacheco.Community members in the Chicago area rallied in support of the brothers and advocated for González’s release under humanitarian parole.
The brothers share the same mother.González was temporarily released from ICE detention that April, and the brothers successfully underwent a lifesaving kidney transplant surgery in August.“Som...