Mariachi musician stopped for speeding — and turned over to ICE

Hebert Kaleth Ibarra Castro was still wearing his mariachi uniform when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents handcuffed him and took him into custody.

The 20-year-old San Antonio musician was driving home Thursday morning after performing at a birthday party when a police officer in China Grove, a small city 12 miles east of San Antonio, stopped him for speeding.

China Grove’s police department is among local law enforcement agencies in Texas that have agreed to cooperate with ICE to carry out some immigration enforcement duties.

Hebert texted his wife from the roadside: “Baby, I’ve been pulled over.” He also called Miguel Guzman, music director of Mariachi Los Galleros de San Antonio, who was driving home from the same performance with his son and another member of the ensemble. They went to where Hebert had been pulled over, near a gas station off U.S. 87 East in China Grove.

Hebert was accused of driving 70 mph in a 50-mph zone, and the officer issued him a ticket and took the keys to his gray 2014 Toyota Camry, Guzman said. Two unmarked ICE vehicles arrived soon afterward, he said, and two agents got out: a man dressed all in black and a woman with her face covered.

Hebert is now in an ICE detention center, his fate uncertain. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, is working with Hebert’s family to secure his release. The case illustrates the precarious situation of non-citizens living in the U.S. as the Trump administration aims to remove anyone in the country without legal authorization.

Hebert was brought across the border when he was four. His mother told the San Antonio Express-News that she and her husband fled their home in Nuevo León, a Mexican state bordering Texas, after cartel members invaded a close relative’s house. They entered the U.S. on tourist visas and remained after their legal status had expired, she said.

The mother said they initially thought they would return to Mexico but decided against it when more of their relatives there were threatened, kidnapped or disappeared. Lawyers they consulted said it would cost $25,000 to pursue asylum in the U.S. and that their chances of success were minimal because they had overstayed their visas.

Hebert, however, had a path to legal status. Last year, he married Marisol Pantoja, a U.S. citizen. They met at Fox Tech High School, where they were both in the mariachi program. The couple filled out an adjustment-of-status petition, seeking legal permanent residency for Hebert as the spouse of an American citizen. They both signed the petition the night before Hebert was arrested, Marisol said. She said she put it in the mail Thursday afternoon.

Marisol, 20, said her mother explained all this over the phone to the China Grove officer who stopped Hebert. She said the officer replied: “That’s not the point. The point is that he’s not from here. He doesn’t belong here.”

The Express-News reviewed smartphone video that Guzman recorded at the scene, as well as a China Grove Police Department towed vehicle report, which Marisol retrieved from Hebert’s car. That document describes the police action as a traffic stop. A box was checked to indicate that Hebert is not a U.S. citizen. Also checked was a box indicating that ICE had been contacted.

China Grove police and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

READ ALSO: Are local police working with ICE to arrest immigrants? Here’s what to know.

Hebert was taken first to the agency’s Crosspoint processing facility in San Antonio, Marisol said. For hours, the family could not find him in ICE’s online detainee locator. On Friday afternoon, Hebert called Marisol from the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, 55 miles southwest of San Antonio. The call lasted less than five minutes.

“He’s hanging in there,” she said.

In later calls, Marisol said Hebert told her he spent hours in crowded conditions at Crosspoint before being transferred to Pearsall. He arrived around 9 or 10 p.m. and slept only about 20 minutes that night while packed into seats with other detainees, she said.

Marisol said Hebert told her workers at the Crosspoint facility taunted him about his mariachi attire, and that one of them said, “If you sing me a song, I’ll let you go.”

Hebert told her he had signed paperwork requiring him to appear in federal immigration court on July 8.

A family member contacted Rep. Castro’s office, and the congressman said he is pressing for Hebert’s release.

“He and his wife had just dropped his immigration petition in the mail,” Castro said in a statement. “His family wasn’t even told where he was. Trump’s mass deportation machine is obstructing due process and tearing apart families.”

The family has retained San Antonio immigration attorney Javier N. Maldonado, Marisol said. She said his office told her Hebert might qualify for release on bond but that it could take up to two weeks.

Hebert comes from a long line of mariachi musicians. In San Antonio, he grew up surrounded by the music. In the Fox Tech mariachi program, he played vihuela and Marisol played the violin. They were both section leaders during their senior year. They married in August 2025.

Hebert landed a paying job with Mariachi Los Galleros de San Antonio, a professional ensemble, when he was 18 and quickly became known as “El Niño,” or “the kid.”

Guzman said he has known Hebert since middle school, when he began giving him private lessons.

“His playing skills are over-the-top for a young man his age,” Guzman said. “Our average age in our group is 30-plus, and he’s the youngest, but his skills are so refined that I invited him to join our group. He’s able to hang with the big dogs.”

Guzman said Hebert, the only member of the group who is living in the U.S. undocumented, never told him he was worried about being arrested.

“But who isn’t worried with how it is with this administration?” Guzman said. “We see it in the news, and we don’t realize how close it is to home. We are devastated.”

On the morning he was detained, Hebert had talked about becoming a welder, Guzman said. The man who hired the group for the birthday serenade was a welder and had offered to help him get started in the trade.

“He’s not a bad person,” Guzman said of Hebert. “He’s a good worker, a hustler. He wants to do good things.”

Hebert’s case is one of several Texas immigration cases in which Rep. Castro has intervened this year. In March, three McAllen mariachi students and their parents were released from immigration detention after bipartisan political pressure and national attention. Earlier this month, a 15-year-old Churchill High School soccer player and his father were released from ICE detention in Dilley after Castro’s office publicly advocated for them.

READ MORE: After nationwide outcry, mariachi family from McAllen is freed from ICE detention

Now, Hebert’s family hopes the congressman will do the same for them.

On Friday evening, Marisol was with Hebert’s family when they showed a video of him at age 12, singing “Un Poco Loco” as part of an audition for a theatrical version of the Disney film “Coco.”

The people staging the show were impressed by Hebert’s singing, but after learning he was undocumented, they told the family they could not cast him, Marisol said.

Later on Friday night, Marisol and the family spoke with Hebert via video call. He told them he had been helping translate documents for other detainees. He also said there was a guitar in the center, and that he and other detainees had been singing together.