The number of ICE arrests across Minnesota are growing. In an X post Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her department has arrested 3,000 "criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists and incredibly dangerous individuals" in the past six weeks as part of Operation Metro Surge.

Among those 3,000 people is a couple who have called Minnesota home since 1999. They were pulled over and detained on their way to work.

Kelsy, Cecilia and Kimberly Silva Sosa says they are a happy family who can now only be described as sad.

"Our mom is the type of person that would write us letters, like hand-written letters, when she saw us sad," Kimberly Silva Sosa said.

Encouragement their mother is still giving from inside an El Paso ICE detention center. Kelsy Silva Sosa was the sister who got the call.

"She said that she was OK and that they're getting fed three times a day. She was like, 'Don't worry about us, I just want to make sure that you guys are OK,'" Kelsy Silva Sosa said. "She put her mother instincts first and made sure that we were OK first."

Kelsy Silva Sosa described hearing her mother's voice as "heartbreaking."

"I just told her I loved her and I like I missed her," she said.

Their father is detained, too. Cecilia Silva Sosa says he's diabetic and she doesn't know if he's getting his medication.

The couple that has been together for more than three decades are suddenly separated by prison walls.

The daughters told WCCO how their parents met.

"They were at a club thing in the 80s," Kimberly Silva Sosa said. "They started dancing and they clicked. My mom was like, 'Oh my God, he's such a nice person, I really like him.'"

They liked each other, and decided to move to the U.S.

"Mexico is very poor," Kimberly Silva Sosa said. "Every Hispanic person knows that, the American dream, they wanted to come here."

By all accounts, they achieved it, starting a thriving family — and a thriving business cleaning offices.

"They were actually on their way to work, I think they were, what, like a mile or two away from our house, so they had just left and they got pulled over," Cecilia Silva Sosa said.

ICE arrested them around 6 a.m. on Jan. 12 in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.

"Our parents are not criminals, they've never done anything," Cecilia Silva Sosa said. "Our parents were working with immigration lawyers to try to, you know, for their residency, to get their residency."

"Five days before they got detained, our dad sent us the case number saying that they got approved so they can get processed for their naturalization," Kimberly Silva Sosa said.

The sisters are now working feverishly with attorneys to try and get answers.

"I want to say this is not a political issue," Cecilia Silva Sosa said. "A lot of people we work with are one way or the other. But even though they are this or that, they don't think this is right, because it is not."

"We just want them home," the sisters said. "We want them home."

The Silva Sosas say they just got a call from their father, and there is a court date for the family in two weeks.