Story note: This story was reported and written through a collaboration between Capitol News Illinois and Illinois Answers Project.

CARLYLE, Ill. — When Jose Jeronimo Guardian showed up at a Spanish language traffic court this week, he didn’t expect to be detained and face expulsion from a country he’d lived in for more than two decades.

Guardian, 48, was scheduled to appear Monday in a courtroom where a county-provided translator would aid communication with about a dozen Spanish-speaking defendants who face charges from traffic infractions like his — two charges of driving under the influence of alcohol — to serious felony charges.

Guardian never made it into the courtroom.

Instead, an agent who said he was from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement questioned him in a lobby of th

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