UIC student to attend State of the Union after father's deportation left him raising his sisters

Less than a year after college student Jaime Coria Jr. lost his mother to a rare form of cancer, his father was detained by federal agents during the peak of Operation Midway Blitz and sent over 2,000 miles away to Mexico City.

In the months since, Coria Jr. has balanced the pursuit of a psychology degree at the University of Illinois Chicago with raising his two younger sisters as they live off survivors' benefits they received after their mother's death.

"It's very hard talking about this emotionally because we lost our mother in the beginning of 2025 and then we lose our father eight to nine months later," Coria Jr., 21, told the Chicago Sun-Times from Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning.

Coria Jr. is in Washington to attend the State of the Union address Tuesday night as a guest of U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi. The two connected after Coria Jr.'s father was detained in early October near their Mount Prospect apartment complex in Krishnamoorthi's district.

"It's a story of a family that was going through tremendous hardship," Krishnamoorthi said. "Donald Trump says he was going after the worst of the worst when he came into office, and I think Jaime's family represents really what has ended up being the target of Donald Trump's efforts — loving families who are trying to survive ... and now he's torn them apart."

Coria Jr.'s father spent four days in "inhumane" conditions at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in west suburban Broadview before self-deporting to Mexico where he is working full time and living in his childhood home.

He was packed into a windowless room with about 60 men, denied showers, forced to sleep on the floor or stand up and witnessed multiple detainees hauled away on stretchers, according to Krishnamoorthi. He signed a voluntary departure form and was deported the next day, although his attorney secured an emergency hearing that could have halted his removal.

"He decided to pretty much sign his rights away," Coria Jr. said. "He wasn't made aware of his legal options at that point."

Krishnamoorthi inspected the Broadview facility in December after previous attempts were denied and said the building was "not designed in any way to house people."

"What it shows is that if there's not oversight, bad things happen. And bad things were happening in Broadview. ... So that's all the more reason for people like me to do oversight duties," Krishnamoorthi said. "I'm going to stand up to them eight days a week because of what happened."

Krishnamoorthi emphasized that Coria Jr.'s story highlights a broader pattern of detainees being "put in inhumane conditions, coerced into signing away their rights and denied due process."

Less than a month after Coria Jr.'s father self-deported, a court ordered 615 detainees released in an attempt to "restore the status quo that existed before the Trump administration recently changed its interpretation of immigration law."

Coria Jr.'s father was recently denied an immigration visa during an appointment at the Consulate of Mexico, and the family's attorney is working on a response to that denial, Coria Jr. said.

He also noted his father "breaks the Trump administration’s agenda" about immigrants. He paid taxes every year for roughly two decades, never owed money to the IRS, never voted in an election and never has taken government benefits.

Coria Jr.'s father has been a roofer for three decades and played a pivotal role in helping take care of his wife of 10 years as she battled cholangiocarcinoma, a rare kind of liver cancer.

The college junior's father took her to the emergency room on multiple occasions and waited until she was stabilized before working his labor-intensive job and returning to the hospital, staying overnight to make sure she was OK.

"My mom's oncologist even wrote a letter talking about my dad's moral character," Coria Jr. said. "He never got angry with me or my siblings [and] he always gave us advice."

Coria Jr. urges others who had loved ones detained under harsh conditions at Broadview to speak out.

"The way we treat people is not something that should be up for debate," Coria Jr. said. "We as a country should expect better for the treatment of immigrants in general."