Asylum seeker from Africa pins American dream on immigration hearing and help from the hi-desert

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“I would take her to Walmart. I would wait in the truck, and she would be in there looking at things for 45 minutes, and I would just be thinking, oh my God, they arrested her. They arrested her while I’m sitting here in the car. There is that fear.” 

Waiting in the car outside a store is a relatable, often idle experience. Yet resident Lori Portillo lived with this fear during her time with Rocio Boheli Mokara, an immigrant who lived with her at her home in Yucca Valley. Lori didn’t realize how soon her worries would come to fruition, and that the battle for her friend’s freedom would be during the biggest federal ICE enforcement period in the United States’ history.

Rocio Boheli Mokara, who will be referred to in this story by just her first name, Rocio, is a 46-year-old native of Equatorial Guinea, a country in central Africa whose government has been accused of human rights violations and political violence. Rocio became directly involved with the corrupt, authoritarian Mbasogo regime when her husband, Jesus Angel Ijabe, was murdered by the government in 2019.

Rocio herself was routinely threatened by police for speaking out about his death, and in 2024, she was beaten with batons and a gun, suffering severe damage to her right knee that required hospitalization. Fearing for her life, Rocio sold her home in Malabo and planned to journey 8,000 miles to the United States in search of asylum. Her son had been offered admission to Mississippi State University, and she intended to work enough to bring her family to follow, creating a life free from fear in the United States.

On May 18, 2024, Rocio departed her home country of Equatorial Guinea, a place she spent her entire life and raised a family. Her plan involved flying to Lagos, Nigeria, and then to Frankfurt, Germany. A security guard helped her purchase a Lufthansa ticket to São Paolo, Brazil, from where she continued West, flying to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia before arriving at the notorious Darién Gap.

The treacherous seventy-mile stretch of dense rainforest that separates Colombia and Panama is rife with difficult terrain, wildlife, and criminal violence, and hundreds of migrant deaths are estimated each year. Rocio crossed the region, roughly the distance between Twentynine Palms and Lucerne Valley, on foot over 12 days. During the journey, she fell down a rocky cliff and sustained further damage to her already injured knee. 

Other migrants tried to assist Rocio, helping transport her a bit further along the way before continuing on their journeys. One group of Venezuelan migrants made a TikTok video of them helping Rocio; it went viral and reached Equatorial Guinea, and the government resumed its threats via phone, saying their embassies in Venezuela would be looking for her.

By the time she arrived in Panama her knee was severely damaged, unwalkable, and Rocio spent 30 days at Hospital de Meteti in La Palma for treatment. She continued to Costa Rica on crutches and was treated at the Costa Rican Red Cross for five days for additional infections in the knee.  

After leaving the Red Cross, Rocio traveled by a migrant bus system through Central America until she reached Mexico in early July. She continued traveling north on foot, hitchhiking and taking occasional trains. On the latter, women like Rocio would be forced to lie down between the train cars to avoid being pulled off and raped by gangs. She reached Monterrey before police apprehended her and sent her back to Mexico City, after which she began north again. Rocio reached the southern United States border on November 6; she explained that she followed others across and turned herself in at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Port of Entry at Sasabe, Arizona, claiming asylum. She was detained and transported to Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana.

On December 7, Rocio had a “Credible Fear Interview,” with officials finding her fear of torture or persecution in her home country of Equatorial Guinea to be credible.

She was notified on December 14 that she would be released on parole and was ordered to return to Court in Santa Ana, California, on March 14, 2025. A co-detainee had connected her with Pat Leach, an 81-year-old resident of Rancho Mirage who has a history of working with immigrants. Pat had met Lori Portillo at a Democrats of the Morongo Basin meeting, who agreed to provide Rocio with lodging and food. Rocio was released from Richwood on December 18 and said she stayed in Louisiana for three weeks, working for room and board at a hotel before traveling to California. Lori picked Rocio up from the Palm Springs North bus station on January 6, 2025. 

Lori drove Rocio to her first Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appointment on January 8 in San Bernardino. For the next several months, Rocio resided with Lori at her home in Yucca Valley, and Lori said that Rocio began to make roots here in the Morongo Basin. She became friends with locals and regularly attended church services, first at Joshua Springs Calvary Chapel and then at the Potter’s House in Twentynine Palms. While her lack of a visa prevented her from working, Lori and her sister Denise Krebs noted that she enjoyed giving back to the community.

“Well, she was going to church. She was always available if you needed her to help with something. She was willing to do anything. So if you had anything she wanted, she was itching to work. She would have loved to have worked. She was always happy to be going somewhere.”

During what they figured would be a routine hearing on March 14 in Santa Ana, confusion arose at the court when immigration officials said there was no record of Rocio in their system. Three months later, at a July appointment in San Bernardino, Lori was waiting in the car when she was contacted by Rocio, saying she had been detained by ICE, who began the procedures to deport her. She was transferred to Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, where she has been detained since while awaiting a decision on her asylum. Lori retained an immigration attorney who represented Rocio at a bond hearing on August 5. The judge denied the request for bond due to a lack of jurisdiction.

Lori and Denise are part of a group of local women who have been  organizing around Rocio’s case, attempting to petition for her release from Eloy via Humanitarian Parole as she prepares for her Court proceedings. They have attended office hours for Representative Jay Obernolte and spoken with his field representative about the case. This has included filing numerous Freedom of Information Act Requests, as well as HIPAA release forms to attend to Rocio’s medical needs, as she sustained a fall in detention that has further compromised her injured knee, which now needs surgery. The local group has organized letter-writing campaigns for support, a GoFundMe for attorney fees, and helped source documents to verify her case details. As Joshua Tree resident Allie Irwin explained, the plight of Rocio’s case has become a community-wide effort.

“Democrats of Morongo Basin took the lead and began helping to fundraise for the lawyer. Morongo Basin Solidarity had been working with community care and showed up at some of the meetings after learning about Rocio. Through texts of that network, sharing GoFundMe, that is how we are building community support, even though, just for me as an example, I had never met her.”

Z107.7 News has contacted the office of Representative Obernolte, which responded that they are aware of the case and received the Privacy Release and HIPAA forms. A representative for Eloy Detention Center stated that an immigration judge in Santa Ana dismissed the proceedings without prejudice on March 7, 2025; while this date had no significance to Rocio, it was one week before the hearing she attended and was told there was no record of her in the system. Z107.7 News filed a Freedom of Information Act Request on September 25 for additional information on this ruling and has not yet heard back.

Since September 11, Rocio’s case information has been listed as “unavailable” on the Executive Office for Immigration Review website.

While the process has been long and muddled by a lack of clarity, Denise and Lori remain hopeful that asylum is still in Rocio’s future.

“Her last hearing is going to be on October 30th. So we’re going to know pretty soon.”

Z107.7 will continue to report on this story as more details become available.

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