‘A miracle will be the only thing to save him’: Spokane immigrant who fled persecution in Nicaragua running out of options to stay in U.S.
Thu., Aug. 14, 2025
Nicaraguan refugee Silvio Urbina Rojas, 60, right, is reunited in spring 2020 with his nephew Alberto Lovo Rojas, 36, after more than 14 months in ICE detention. (Spokesman-Review photo archives)
By Alexandra Duggan
and Monica Carrillo-Casas
The Spokesman-Review
As Spokane immigrant Alberto Lovo Rojas sits in Tacoma’s Northwest Immigration Detention Center, there are times when he will laugh with his friends who can only visit him through a window.
Other times, his friend Jim Larson says, he will ask, “What did I do so wrong to be punished this way?”
Rojas, 41, has told him there are times he and other immigrants won’t receive their dinner until midnight. People continued to be brought in to the center, sick and coughing, and getting other people sick, Larson said. Rojas also spoke of a time he was kept inside the detention walls for so long he was starting to become depressed.
But most recently, Rojas – a staunch Catholic – asked Larson to bring him a Bible. Larson did show up with one and was promptly told by front desk staff those were no longer allowed.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2025/aug/14/spokane-immigrant-who-fled-persecution-in-nicaragu/
