ICE arrested a 76-year-old man with stage 4 prostate cancer at his own citizenship interview. He has lived in the United States for over thirty years, renewed his green card multiple times without incident, and has never been charged with a crime in this country. This is what the administration calls targeting the "worst of the worst."
The Man, the Cancer, the Citizenship Interview
Loreto Javar moved to the United States from the Philippines in 1995 to join his father, who was already a US citizen. He got a job. He paid his taxes. He renewed his green card, most recently in December 2025. In November 2025, he applied for citizenship. In June 2026, federal agents arrested him at the interview.
As of this week, according to The Guardian, Javar is sitting in the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington. He was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in January. He is 76 years old. He has a wife and a daughter in the country he has called home for three decades.
His daughter Daisy Javar told the Seattle Times, which first reported the story, that her father has no criminal history in the United States. "He's been following all the rules, paying his taxes, everything," she said. She is not wrong. By every available metric, Loreto Javar is exactly the kind of immigrant the government used to point to when it wanted to argue the system worked.
What ICE Says Happened 50 Years Ago
Here is ICE's justification. According to court documents reviewed by the Seattle Times, federal officials allege that Javar was involved in a fatal altercation in the Philippines in the 1970s. That is not a typo. The 1970s. Javar reportedly told officials at the time of his arrest that he served about three years in a Philippine jail before being released on parole.
An ICE spokesperson told the Seattle Times that Javar failed to disclose this conviction when he originally applied for a visa in 1995. The spokesperson's position is that the omission made him ineligible to enter then, and therefore "ineligible to remain in the United States now." Thirty-one years later. With a green card he just renewed. While dying of cancer.
Daisy Javar told the Seattle Times that her father had obtained police clearance from the Philippines' National Bureau of Investigation as part of securing his visa in the first place. She said her father had never told the family about the conviction before his detention. Make of that what you will. But whatever he did or didn't disclose in 1995 to a consular officer, the US government renewed his legal residency multiple times since, including as recently as six months before they arrested him.
Missing Oncology Appointments in Detention
The Filipino migrant advocacy group Tanggol Migrante Movement has organized a petition calling for Javar's release and has been tracking his medical situation inside the facility. The picture it paints is grim. According to the petition, Javar had been actively receiving cancer treatment before his detention. Since being taken into ICE custody, that treatment has been interrupted. He has missed two oncology appointments that occur on the fourth of every month. He has recently developed a blood clot in his stomach.
Daisy Javar told the Seattle Times that her father's meals are often delivered late, with lunch sometimes not served until 6pm and dinner arriving at midnight. Those delays, she said, have complicated his medication schedule. He is prescribed two oral medications for the cancer, plus additional medication for high blood pressure. Medication timing matters when you have stage 4 prostate cancer. This is not a controversial medical opinion.
The petition also notes that the Seattle Philippine Consulate visited Javar, promised to help him, and pledged $300 for his commissary account. According to the petition, they have not delivered on either commitment. The Philippine government, apparently, is doing what governments do when their nationals are in trouble abroad: making reassuring noises and then doing very little.
The Violent Criminals ICE Keeps Finding
Donald Trump and his allies have been consistent in their public messaging about the deportation campaign. It targets violent criminals. The worst of the worst. Bad hombres. You know the framing by now.
A Guardian analysis of government records tells a different story. The vast majority of people who entered deportation proceedings for the first time during the first year of Trump's second presidency had no criminal conviction at all. Loreto Javar does have a conviction, technically, from a Philippine court in the 1970s, after which he served his time, was released, emigrated legally, and then lived quietly in Washington state for thirty-one years. If that is who the "worst of the worst" program is sweeping up, the program is not what it was advertised to be.
A PBS News, NPR, and Marist poll conducted after ICE agents killed US citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis in January found that 62% of Americans believe ICE has gone too far in enforcing the administration's immigration crackdown. Sixty-two percent. That is not a fringe position. That is nearly two out of every three Americans looking at what ICE is doing and saying: this is not what we asked for.
The Dingo Take
A 76-year-old man with stage 4 cancer, a valid green card, thirty-one years of law-abiding American life, and an appointment with an oncologist he is no longer allowed to attend is sitting in a detention facility in Tacoma while the administration pats itself on the back for cracking down on dangerous criminals. The United States government renewed this man's legal residency in December. Then arrested him in June. For something a Philippine court resolved before disco was dead.
There is no version of this story where the math adds up to good governance. ICE's own logic here is that they renewed a green card for someone who should never have gotten one, and the appropriate response thirty years later is to lock him up while he misses cancer treatment. If the system had a genuine problem with Loreto Javar, it had thirty-one years and several renewal cycles to find it. Instead, it waited until he showed up asking to become a citizen, then arrested him for his optimism.
This is the cruelty that the administration has decided is a feature rather than a bug. Not surgical. Not targeted. Not the worst of the worst. Just a sick old man in a detention center eating dinner at midnight and hoping someone in either government remembers he exists. Two governments have now let him down. One locked him up. The other promised him $300 and never showed.
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