Illinois Woman With Green Card Has Been Detained by ICE for 12 Months. Her Daughters Plead for Her Release.

Beata Siemionkowicz spent her first night in Kentucky’s Campbell County Detention Center in a cell with black mold covering the air vents and dead bedbugs lingering in the room’s corners. There was blood smeared above the doorway.

Siemionkowicz shared that pod with 60 other women, many of whom, like herself, were immigrants in the United States detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The Poland native, a green card holder of more than two decades, was arrested days earlier in Des Plaines. Her first night in Campbell County was Aug. 4, 2025. She has remained incarcerated in northern Kentucky since, for the last 51 weeks.

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Siemionkowicz could not be reached for comment in detention. But her family says and records show that she entered the United States legally in 1995, moving to Illinois from her hometown of Bialystok, Poland. She has been a permanent resident with a green card since 2003.

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Siemionkowicz was arrested Aug. 2, 2025. She was one of just 33 Poles to be booked into a Chicago-area ICE detention center, according to a Tribune analysis of ICE data provided by the research group Deportation Data Project. However, more than half — 19 — were Polish immigrants arrested during the main, 64-day surge of Operation Midway Blitz.

Agents arrested Siemionkowicz for her criminal record of misdemeanor retail theft from Jewel in September 2005 and Kohl’s in October 2011. The agency also claims she forged documents to obtain immigration benefits in 2001, before her green card status.

Gabi and Claudia knew about their mom’s criminal history, which Siemionkowicz resolved years ago through fines and a period of supervised release, according to Lake County court records. The sisters say their mom stole kids’ clothes for them during an especially hard time after her divorce.

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