Fernando Mejia, beloved Port Washington bagel manager, details ICE detention from El Salvador

Six months after federal agents took him from his car, Fernando Mejia sat at a table at Mamatey, his family’s pupuseria in El Salvador, and looked back on the life in Port Washington he was forced to leave behind.

“The thing I miss most,” Mejia, 40, said over Zoom recently, his smile fading, “is the people.” 

Mejia, the former manager of Schmear Bagel & Cafe on Main Street, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on June 12, kicking off a nearly half-year odyssey that shuffled him among detention centers in Manhattan, Newark, Louisiana and Miami. Feeling "physically and emotionally depleted," his attorney told Newsday, Mejia agreed to be flown back to the country where he has not lived for two decades.

Since his arrest in June, Mejia, who has no criminal record, has become something of a local avatar for community resistance to ICE and President Donald Trump's mass deportation plan.

Trump has said the plan is intended to deport the "worst of the worst." But many of the individuals who are booked in ICE custody do not have criminal records or committed nonviolent offenses.

Nearly 74% of current ICE detainees lack a criminal record, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which maintains and analyzes immigration data. And in Nassau, where County Executive Bruce Blakeman has pledged to support the administration’s mass deportation plan, police have handed at least 64 people to ICE as of late November. Most of them were accused of low-level crimes, like theft, drug possession or prostitution, Newsday has reported.

A Rapid Response Network, composed of the friends who miss Mejia, formed in Port Washington to help prevent more of his neighbors from being detained. Residents share updates on Mejia's whereabouts at weekly vigils at the Port Washington train station. His 15-year-old daughter, Fernanda, evoked his story in July before the Nassau County Legislature. She pleaded with its members for help returning her father to Port Washington.

Mejia said he appreciates the support and is grateful people care enough to advocate on his behalf. He’s enjoyed reconnecting with family in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador that's surrounded by volcanoes and dotted with historic churches.

But what he wants most is to go back to Port Washington, where he knew everyone's bagel order, where he would dress up like Santa Claus on Christmas, and near where his daughter continues to grow up. 

He wants to go home.

'Just trying to survive'

The sky was still dark when Mejia arrived at Schmear on June 12 around 5 a.m. He noticed two unfamiliar cars when he pulled into the parking lot.

“They looked suspicious,” Mejia said. But because he did not have a criminal record, he said, “I didn’t expect that they were looking for me.”

When he left for a delivery run at 6:30 a.m., the cars were no longer parked outside. But as he started his car, the vehicles appeared out of nowhere and converged on him, he recalled.

Mejia was sent to an ICE processing facility in Central Islip, then to an ICE holding facility at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. For seven days, he said, he was not given access to a toothbrush or allowed to shower.

He was fed the same meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner, he said: a cookie and a protein bar.

“We live on the floor, like 50 people in each room,” Mejia said. “We were just trying to survive for seven days.”

Mejia was then transferred to an ICE detention center in Newark and began working in the kitchen to help pass the time. He was told he would be paid $4 per hour for the work, but months later, Mejia said he's still owed compensation for two out of three months he worked.

ICE acknowledged a request for comment for this story but did not respond to questions about the reason Mejia was detained, the conditions at 26 Federal Plaza, the handling of his medical condition and the circumstances that led him to leaving the country. 

Mejia, who has cirrhosis of the liver, was hospitalized at St. Francis Hospital in Flower Hill in May because his blood pressure was elevated. He was there for four days and received four blood transfusions, he said. He was then transferred to Northwell Health in Manhasset, where he stayed for seven days.

His condition deteriorated while in detention, he said. At one point, he started bleeding through his nose, and blood showed up in his urine, he recalled. He was taken to Newark's University Hospital. Eventually, after letters written by his attorney and community figures, the hospital scheduled an endoscopy — with ICE's approval, Mejia said. 

But two days before the procedure was to take place, he was woken up at 2 a.m. and transferred to a detention center in Louisiana, he recalled.

"Last minute, they told me I was going to be moving," Mejia said.

The endoscopy was off.

'Never been the same'

Back in Port Washington, Mejia's absence has loomed over the community. 

A GoFundMe launched in his name has raised nearly $45,000 for legal fees, document translations and support for his daughter. 

Jeffrey Siegel, 67, of Port Washington, said in an interview that as a patron of Schmear over the years, he got to know Mejia.

"He's been a fixture in the community, Siegel said. "If Fernando was there, you knew everything was going to be OK." 

Siegel went to visit Mejia at the Newark facility several times along with Mejia's daughter and father, Jorge. Jorge Mejia had been visiting his son to care for him after his hospitalization.

In July, Fernanda stood with Jorge, her grandfather, before the horseshoe dais that seats the Nassau County Legislature in Mineola. 

"He's my favorite person," she said of her father, fighting through tears. Supporters in the room rose from their seats as she detailed ICE's response to his family's questions about his health. "They don't want to give us the blood work, they don't want to give us anything about his medical health. I just want him to be better. I just want him to be out."

Larissa Munguia, of Port Washington, bonded with Fernando Mejia over the years during daily visits to Schmear. She considers him family, she said in an interview recently inside the bagel place. She keeps a framed photo of him, herself and her 9-year-old son wearing "2025" New Year's glasses in her living room. 

Munguia, 53, said she enjoys living in Port Washington because when "you walk into a place, they know your name." But Mejia's detainment changed things, she said.

"We stayed here because of the community environment, the warmth," Munguia said as sun shone through the Schmear window on a recent weekday morning. "To have that broken, it's very heartbreaking. It's never been the same since that happened."

Damian Poniatowski, a Schmear employee, said in an interview at the shop recently that what happened to Mejia was "really messed up."

"You can't just grab people off of the street," Poniatowski, 26, of Long Beach, said as he sorted orders of bagels into a bag.

Transfer to Miami

From Louisiana, Mejia was transferred to another detention center in Miami, where the living conditions were akin to those on a "chicken farm," he said. He slept on a metal bed with a thin mattress. There were three showers and four toilets for the nearly 50 detainees, he recalled.

Bryan Richard Pu-Folkes, an attorney with offices in Forest Hills and Hicksville, represented Mejia on a "low bono" basis, he said in an interview. Though Mejia did not have a criminal record, Pu-Folkes said he believes his client was detained because of an existing deportation order on him for unlawful presence in the country from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, from January 2006.

Pu-Folkes said he challenged the deportation order, and a judge granted a motion to reopen the proceeding. But Mejia felt too worn down to continue fighting, Pu-Folkes said. He asked for and was granted "voluntary departure" to El Salvador, according to a Nov. 10 order signed by New Jersey immigration Judge Ramin Rastegar.

"My client was completely emotionally spent and devastated and broken down from his months in detention, and all the shuffling around from facility to facility, and not receiving the requisite level of medical care and attention that he needed and deserved," Pu-Folkes said. "Fernando didn't want to spend another day inside of a jail cell." 

Back in El Salvador

Mejia landed back in El Salvador on Nov. 18 and is living with his mother, father, two sisters, his niece and his brother.

His brother, Jorge Jr., who was 10 years old when Mejia left for the United States in 2005 to provide a better life for his family, said in a Zoom interview they were racked with "stress and fear" during Mejia's detention.

"It was amazing how so many Americans joined to put out the word about his case," Jorge Jr., 30, said. "Everything that happened [opened] our eyes about who was our brother."

Mejia recently underwent an endoscopy, and with a more balanced diet, his health has improved, he said. 

He often feels wistful for Long Island, reminded of big and small parts of his former life in Port Washington.

Bagels are not part of the local cuisine, he noted. 

"I have family here, a community here," Mejia said of El Salvador, but "starting from scratch has been a confusion of emotions. I'm feeling happy to see my mother, but missing my daughter."

Mejia will get a taste of home later this month, when his daughter visits for Christmas. But then she will get on a plane and settle back into life in New York with her mother in Nanuet.

In March, when Fernanda turns 16, her father will not be there.