A dismayed mother and father spoke out after their ‘elite’ athlete twin sons were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as they returned to their Alabama college.

Wallace State Community College soccer players Luis and Carlos Orta Santoro, 19, were taken into ICE custody after a traffic stop on November 4 while on their way to campus, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The Venezuelan twins were returning from visiting their parents, Carlos Enrique Orta and Reyna Santoro de Orta, in Georgia when they were arrested by a Lincoln Police Department officer during a traffic stop in east-central Alabama.

The brothers graduated from Lawrenceville’s Archer High School after a successful varsity soccer career that included a first ever region title for the school.

‘This is the house of two elite soccer players,’ Carlos Enrique Orta, their father, told the outlet.

Luis and Carlos are asylum seekers who applied for protections after legally entering the US on a tourist visa, like their parents.

That visa expired and the twins were granted US work permits and Georgia driver’s licenses, according to the outlet.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, told the Daily Mail on Saturday that the brothers had legally entered the US with permission to stay on a temporary basis on June 21, 2022, but then ‘illegally overstayed in defiance of our laws.’

Twin brothers and soccer players Luis and Carlos Orta Santoro, both 19, were taken into ICE custody on November 5 after being arrested the previous day

Luis and Carlos were region title-winning soccer players for Archer High School in Lawrenceville, Georgia

The brothers were arrested as they returned from visiting their parents, Carlos Enrique Orta and Reyna Santoro de Orta (both left)

The DHS spokesperson told the Daily Mail: ‘All their claims will be heard by an immigration judge, and they will receive due process. This administration will not ignore the rule of law.’

‘To be clear, pending applications do NOT confer legal status,’ the statement continued.

Carlos was named the offensive player of the year and Luis the midfield player of the year by their high school this year.

They had received soccer scholarships to attend Wallace State, which they began doing this fall, but now face deportation to Venezuela.

‘It’s been hell,’ Santoro de Orta, their mother, told the outlet.

She added that she supported ICE ‘taking away the criminals’ but said her children did not fit that description.

A final decision on the brothers’ asylum case is still pending as they remain in custody.

The concerned mother claimed police said the twins’ car had failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign.

The brothers were arrested by a Lincoln Police Department officer as they were returning to Wallace State Community College, where they have soccer scholarships

The family applied for asylum protections after legally entering the country on a tourist visa. The DHS said the brothers ‘illegally overstayed in defiance of our laws’

The Lincoln Police Department signed a partnership agreement with ICE in July.

ICE said the program allows trained local officers to exercise limited immigration authority during routine police work under federal supervision, according to the Cullman Tribune.

Luis and Carlos were booked into the Talladega County Jail on November 4 and transferred to ICE custody the following day.

Their father, Orta, described how the family was grappling with guilt as they shared what happened to their children.

‘If anyone is at fault, it’s me. It’s us,’ Orta told the outlet. ‘Because I insist and I will continue to insist that Carlos and Luis came here because of a decision we made.’

He added: ‘Carlos and Luis stayed here because of a decision from mom and dad. Carlos and Luis are here because of us.’

The Santoro twins were taken to the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in southern Louisiana after their arrest, WABE reported.

The brothers have been taken to the the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in southern Louisiana

The Lincoln Police Department signed an partnership agreement with ICE in July. A department officer arrested the brothers 

A friend of the twins, Nicolas Azcarate Florez, said he had spoken to them multiple times since they were taken into custody.

‘They’ve been saying that they’ve been moved five times, so it has been difficult for them,’ Azcarate Florez told the outlet.

Azcarate Florez said the brothers were ‘players that you could just give the ball to, and you would know that they would do something good with it.’

‘If we needed them, we would know that they would be there to help us out of a sticky situation,’ he added.

The brothers were taken into custody on the same week that the Republican Party faced a historic blue wave in the midterm elections that was seen as a rebuke of the GOP’s immigration policy.

One of President Donald Trump’s first moves afterwards was to name Stephen Miller as the new White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles.

Miller, one of Trump’s most loyal and longest-serving advisers going back to his first administration, is known for his hardline views on immigration.

Critics have cited Miller as the architect of some of Trump’s most divisive policies, including separating migrant families during deportations in the President’s first term.