Viviana Andazola Marquez took time off from her senior year at Yale to fly home to Denver for an important interview last week. Her father, Melecio Andazola Morales, had an appointment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The family thought it was the last step of a process he’s been in for 16 years: he was finally going to get his green card.

Instead, Andazola Morales was detained at the appointment and now faces deportation.

At the interview on Oct. 12, an agent went through all of the questions their lawyer had prepared them for, Andazola Marquez said. “After that she said, ‘Your dad has been recommended for approval, but there’s just one more thing.’ And then she asked my dad to ask me to leave the room.”

Twenty minutes later, her father’s attorney and interpreter appeared and said they’d been pushed out of the room by three Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. “And my dad’s been in detention ever since,” she said.

Hans Meyer, Andazola Morales’ new immigration attorney, said he was detained due to an order of exclusion that was issued when Andazola Morales, a Mexican national, was stopped at the border in Texas in 1997. An order of exclusion is a legal term that’s no longer in use, but the effect is similar to an order of deportation. After he was deported in 1997, Andazola Morales returned to the U.S. undetected in 1998 and has lived here ever since.

Viviana is the oldest of his four children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. Her admission essay to Yale University, in which she recounts the challenges of staying on top of her studies at York International School in Thornton and helping her younger siblings during a period of homelessness, ran in The New York Times. She’s attending Yale on scholarships.

Meyer hopes authorities grant Andazola Morales, 41, a stay and reopen his immigration case.

“A lot of times these cases will happen in a perfunctory manner — especially if a person wasn’t represented, which it doesn’t appear that he was,” Meyer said. He said Andazola Morales doesn’t pose a flight risk, noting he has a family to care for and has no criminal record beyond his illegal entry.

The news of her father’s detention spurred friends and supporters at Yale to start a GoFundMe page to help the family, as well as a vigil Tuesday in New Haven, Conn. Supporters in Denver will also gather at 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., outside of Geo Group detention facility, where Andazola Morales is being held, in Aurora. The GoFundMe page had more than $66,000 in pledges Monday afternoon.

Viviana, who is 21, is set to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in ethnicity, race and migration in May. She hopes to go to law school and become an attorney.

“I’m in my senior year, I’m in the middle of midterms,” she said. “I need to graduate to be able to provide for my family as well. I’ve spent my entire time at Yale reimagining the immigration system, so it’s kind of ironic that I’m now here, taken away from my studies — trying to fix this grave problem that the U.S. is having and has failed to adequately address.”

In a statement, ICE confirmed that Andazola Morales was arrested at the USCIS office Oct. 12. “Mr. Andazola was previously deported from the United States in March 1997,” ICE spokesman Gregory Palmore said via email. “His previous removal order has been reinstated, and he remains in ICE custody pending his removal from the United States.”

Though the detention reverberated at Yale, “It isn’t unheard of for people going through the process, who are following the legal process to receive a green card, are sometimes detained and put into deportation proceedings,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an assistant professor of law at the University of Denver who specializes in immigration law.

“The tricky thing about the age we’re living in is that the Trump administration has expanded the prioritization that immigration officers used under President Obama such that these days, just about anyone who is in the U.S. who is violation of immigration law is a top priority,” García Hernández said.

Viviana said her father’s detention is creating a hardship for the family, but she worries about its larger implications.

“I think that it creates a distress, not just for my dad, but for the immigrant community who are trying to do right by the law,” she said. “For agents like ICE and USCIS to be bringing people in under the pretense that they are going to be able to do right by the law, and instead detaining them — it sends an awful message.”