‘Kidnapped': families and lawyers desperate to contact LA workers arrested in Ice raids
Gabriel says he has not been able to speak to his brother Jacob, since Jacob was arrested in a raid by armed immigration officials and federal agents at the Ambiance Apparel warehouse in the Los Angeles fashion district on Friday.
Yurien Contreras doesn't know how her father, Mario Romero, is doing either.
'I witnessed how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and from his ankles,' Contreras said at a press conference in LA on Monday morning. 'My family and I haven't had communication with my dad. We don't know anything.'
Jacob and Romero were among dozens of people arrested in immigration enforcement actions in Los Angeles this weekend, raids that sparked a roaring backlash and eventually led to the deployment of the national guard in the city. They were 'kidnapped' by agents, Contreras said. 'I demand due process for my father and the dozens of other workers.'
The raids in the fashion district were followed by enforcement actions in the nearby city of Paramount, where federal agents cuffed and detained laborers at a Home Depot. Agents were also spotted outside a donut shop in nearby Compton, and around schools.
Some of the families of those detained gathered outside Ambiance on Monday, demanding the release of their loved ones. Some, like Jacob, were the sole breadwinners in their families. Others, like José Ortiz, had worked in LA's garment district for years – Ortiz had been with Ambiance for 18 years. 'He was always here. He was a loyal worker,' his daughter Saraí Ortiz said. 'He is someone who gave his life to this community and to his work.'
Carlos Gonzalez said his older brother José Paulino was taken away not only from his siblings and mother, but also from 'one of the friendliest and most loving dogs I have ever met'.
At least 14 of those detained were members of the Episcopalian Diocese of Los Angeles. 'Fourteen members of one of our Episcopal churches couldn't be in church this morning on the Day of Pentecost. Their government ripped them from the arms of their families at home and the body of Christ at church,' said Los Angeles bishop John Harvey Taylor.
Loved ones and lawyers are still scrambling to find where all of them were taken.
'As police shot flash bangs overhead, I begged officers to let me meet with those who were detained,' said Elaina Jung Hee Vermeulen, a legal fellow at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. 'Instead of upholding the constitutional rights of those detained, they prepared to repress those rising up against these atrocities.'
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that 118 immigrants were arrested this week, and released the names of some of those in its custody, alleging criminal violations. But the administration's border czar, Tom Homan, also admitted that the agency was arresting people without criminal records.
The raids at workplaces – pushed by Homan and by White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller – come amid a broader push to speed up arrests and deportations. Homan said the LA area is likely to see more enforcement this week, even as thousands of national guard deployed to the city prepared to quell protests against the raids.
Lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), found that immigrants apprehended in LA were initially detained in the basement of a federal immigration building. 'As attorneys, we are disgusted by DHS's blatant betrayal of basic human dignity as we witness hundreds of people held in deplorable conditions without food, water, or beds for 12-plus hours,' said Lindsay Toczylowski, president of ImmDef. 'This is an urgent moment for our country to wake up to the terror Ice is inflicting on communities and take action.'
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held a rally in downtown Los Angeles demanding the 'humane treatment and access to lawyers for all detainees'.
At least one of the people arrested over the weekend was almost immediately put on a bus and deported to Mexico, said Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, a deportation defense attorney supporting the impacted families. 'And when they were removed, they weren't given any paperwork, which is highly unusual and irregular,' he said.
Others were taken to the immigration detention centers Adelanto, California – more than a two-hour drive from downtown LA – or El Paso, Texas. 'All of this smacks of lawlessness – there have been violations of many, many rights.'
The workplace raids were especially brazen, lawyers said, after a federal judge in April issued a preliminary injunction forbidding warrantless immigration stops. The injunction applied to a wide swath of California, and came after CBP conducted similar raids in California's agricultural Kern county in January.
'You can't just racially and ethnically profile people and arrest them and ask questions later,' said Reyes Savalza, noting that many of those arrested had no criminal history and could apply for various forms of immigration relief if they were allowed to contact attorneys.
'If the federal government can come and kidnap people without disclosing any information as to the reason for those arrests, every person in this country should be appalled and terrified,' he added.
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Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
'A good day': Detained U.S. citizen said agents bragged after arresting dozens at Home Depot
A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested. 'How many bodies did you guys grab today?' he said one agent asked. 'Oh, we grabbed 31,' the other replied. "That was a good day today," the first agent responded. The two high-fived, as he sat on the asphalt under the sun, Job Garcia said. Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officials say some have illegally interfered with agents' jobs. In response to questions about why Garcia was arrested and if he'd been charged, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. recommended a reporter contact the Department of Homeland Security. DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment. Garcia said he was shaken by what he heard while he was detained. 'They call them 'bodies,' they reduce them to bodies,' he said. "My blood was boiling." Garcia, a photographer and doctoral student Claremont Graduate University, had been picking up a delivery at Home Depot when someone approached the customer desk and said something was unfolding outside. "La migra, La migra," he heard as he walked out. He quickly grabbed his phone and followed agents around the parking lot, telling them they were "f— useless" until he came to a group of them forming a half-circle around a box truck. A Border Patrol agent radioed someone and then slammed his baton against the passenger window, his video shows. Glass shattered. He unlocked the door as people shouted. In the video, a stunned man can be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door. It's unclear from the footage what happened next, but Garcia said an agent lunged toward him and pushed him. "My first reaction was to like push his hand off," he recalled. Then, he said, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his back and threw his phone. The agent brought him to the ground and three other agents jumped in, Garcia said "Get the f— down sir" and "give me your f— hand. You want it, you got it, sir, you f— got it. You want to go to jail, fine. You got it," an agent can be heard saying in the video. "You wanted it, you got it," the man yelled. An agent handcuffed him so hard "that there was no circulation running to my fingers," Garcia said. Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing. "That moment, I thought I could probably die here," he said. The agent put Garcia's phone back in his pocket. The recording kept running. As Garcia was put into a vehicle, his video captured an agent twice saying: "I've got one back here." "You got one what?" Garcia shot back. "You got one what?" He said an agent told him in broken Spanish to "wait here,' though it could not be heard on the video. "I f— speak English, you f— dumbass," he clearly shouts back. No agent asked if he was an American citizen, he said. Nobody asked for identification. 'They assumed that I was undocumented," he said later in an interview. The video ends after about four minutes, while he is waiting in the van. Read more: Raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood shatters an immigrant refuge Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed. They were so tight, his hands began to swell. The agents switched him to handcuffs that looked like shoelaces. They took off around a corner, stopped to shuffle him into another van and sped off down the 101 Freeway. "I smeared my blood in their seat," he said. And he thought, "They're going to remember me." With him in the van was a Mexican man, face downcast, who said his wife was six months pregnant. "My wife told me not to go to work today," the man said. "Something doesn't feel right," he said she told him. "It broke my heart," Garcia said. "I wish he was the one who got away when they were trying to grab me." On what he described as a ramp going into Dodger stadium near Lot K, Garcia was taken out of the car and told to sit on the asphalt as agents shuffled detainees into different vans and processed them for about an hour. A woman ran his background for criminal offenses. It felt surreal and enraging. 'They were trying to build some sort of case," Garcia said. He told The Times he was arrested at 17 for driving without a license. After they transported him, agents later fingerprinted him and tried to interrogate him. The agent said they wanted to "take your side of the story." Garcia declined. He said he overheard an agent tell someone, 'Trump is really working us." While held at a downtown detention facility, he met Adrian Martinez. Martinez, a 20-year-old Walmart worker and also a U.S. citizen, had been arrested on Tuesday while he tried to stop the arrest of a man who cleaned a shopping center in Pico Rivera. The two spoke for about 10 minutes, as Martinez waited to go to court. "You're the Walmart kid, right?" he asked him. Garcia told him what had unfolded outside the Home Depot. "That's exactly what happened to me," he said Martinez told him. "They were bullying this older guy. I didn't like that so I went and confronted them and they put their hands on me and I pushed their hands off.' U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted a photo of Martinez on X and said he "was arrested for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent in the face after he attempted to impede their immigration enforcement operation." Martinez was charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to impede a federal officer. The complaint makes no reference to a punch, but alleges that Martinez blocked agents' vehicles with his car and then later a trash can. 'A complaint generally contains one charge and does not include the full scope of a defendant's conduct, or the evidence that will be presented at trial," said Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. "Considering this is an active case, we will not be providing further comments outside of court proceedings.' Martinez was released Friday on a $5,000 bond. 'U.S. Attorney Essayli and U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino outrageously alleged that Adrian assaulted a federal agent," Martinez's attorneys said in a statement. "However he has not been charged with an assault charge because he didn't assault anyone, and the evidence of that is clear." Garcia said his cellmate was worried about these protests. He asked, "Don't you think the protesters who are out there destroying property, rioters, is a bad look?" 'Rioting is the language of the unheard," he said, riffing on a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Yahoo
"A good day:" Detained U.S. citizen said agents bragged after arresting dozens at Home Depot
A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour at Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested. 'How many bodies did you guys grab today,' he said one agent asked. 'Oh, we grabbed 31,' the other replied. "That was a good day today," the first agent responded. The two high-fived, as Garcia sat on the asphalt under the sun. Job Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officials say some have illegally interfered with agents job. In response to questions about why Garcia was arrested and if he'd been charged, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. recommended a reporter contact the Department of Homeland Security. DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment Garcia said he was shaken by what he heard while he was detained. 'They call them 'bodies,' they reduce them to bodies,' he said. "My blood was boiling." Garcia, a photographer and doctoral student Claremont Graduate University had been picking up a delivery at Home Depot, when someone approached the customer desk and said something was unfolding outside. "La migra, La migra," he heard as he walked out. He quickly grabbed his phone and followed agents around the parking lot, telling them they were "f— useless" until he came to a group of them forming a half circle around a box truck. A Border Patrol agent radioed someone and then slammed his baton against the passenger window, his video shows. Glass shattered. He unlocked the door as people shouted. In the video, a stunned man can be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door. It's unclear from the footage what happened next, but Garcia said an agent lunged toward him and pushed him. "My first reaction was to like push his hand off," he recalled. Then, he said, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his back and threw his phone. The agent brought him to the ground and three other agents jumped in, Garcia said "Get the f— down sir" and "give me your f— hand. You want it, you got it, sir, you f— got it. You want to go to jail, fine. You got it," an agent can be heard saying in the video. "You wanted it, you got it," the man yelled. An agent handcuffed him so hard "that there was no circulation running to my fingers," Garcia said. Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing. "That moment, I thought I could probably die here," he said. The agent put Garcia's phone back in his pocket. The recording kept running. As Garcia was put into a vehicle, his video captured an agent twice saying: "I've got one back here." "You got one what?" Garcia shot back. "You got one what?" He said an agent told him in broken Spanish to "wait here,' though it could not be heard on the video. "I f— speak English, you f— dumbass," he clearly shouts back. No agent asked if he was an American citizen, he said. Nobody asked for identification. 'They assumed that I was undocumented," he said later in an interview. The video ends after about four minutes, while he is waiting in the van. Read more: Raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood shatters an immigrant refuge Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed. They were so tight, his hands began to swell. The agents switched him to handcuffs that looked like shoe laces. They took off around a corner, stopped to shuffle him into another van and sped off down the 101 freeway. "I smeared my blood in their seat," he said. And he thought 'they're going to remember me." With him in the van was a Mexican man, face downcast, who said his wife was six months pregnant. "My wife told me not to go to work today," the man said. "Something doesn't feel right," he said she told him. "It broke my heart," Garcia said. "I wish he was the one who got away when they were trying to grab me." On what he described as a ramp going into Dodger stadium near Lot K, Garcia was taken out of the car and told to sit on the asphalt as agents shuffled detainees into different vans and processed them for about an hour. A woman ran his background for criminal offenses. It felt surreal and enraging. 'They were trying to build some sort of case," Garcia said. He told the Times he was arrested at 17 for driving without a license. After they transported him, agents later fingerprinted him and tried to interrogate him. The agent said, we want to "take your side of the story." Garcia declined. He said he overheard an agent tell someone, 'Trump is really working us." While held at a downtown detention facility, he met Adrian Martinez. Martinez, a 20 year old Walmart worker and also a U.S. citizen, had been arrested on Tuesday while he tried to stop the arrest of a man who cleaned a shopping center in Pico Rivera. The two spoke for about 10 minutes, as Martinez waited to go to court. "You're the Walmart kid, right," he asked him. Garcia told him what had unfolded outside the Home Depot; "That's exactly what happened to me," he said Martinez told him. "They were bullying this older guy. I didn't like that so I went and confronted them and they put their hands on me and I pushed their hands off.' U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted a photo of Martinez on X and said he "was arrested for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent in the face after he attempted to impede their immigration enforcement operation." Martinez was charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to impede a federal officer. The complaint makes no reference to a punch, but alleges that Martinez blocked agents' vehicles with his car and then later a trash can. 'A complaint generally contains one charge and does not include the full scope of a defendant's conduct, or the evidence that will be presented at trial," said Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. "Considering this is an active case, we will not be providing further comments outside of court proceedings.' Martinez was released Friday on a $5,000 bond. 'U.S. Attorney Essayli and U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino outrageously alleged that Adrian assaulted a federal agent," Martinez's attorneys said in a statement. "However he has not been charged with an assault charge because he didn't assault anyone, and the evidence of that is clear." Garcia said his cell mate was worried about these protests. He asked "don't you think the protesters who are out there destroying property, rioters, is a bad look?" 'Rioting is the language of the unheard," he said, riffing on a quote from Martin Luther King. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
An ICE raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood shatters an immigrant refuge
Emma De Paz woke up at 2 every morning for 25 years to make soup, roasted chicken and tamales to sell to work crews picking up their day's supplies at the Home Depot. She joined other immigrant vendors lining the side streets under tents and over grills in a makeshift community that was something of a refuge for Latino immigrants in the Hollywood area. Abelino Perez Alvarez and his wife sold orange juice, soda and water. Day laborers scrolled through their phones as they waited outside the parking lot in hopes of getting work. Around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, the refuge was shattered. Dozens of armed agents, many in masks, converged on the parking lot, blocking gates and surrounding the lots normally lined by day laborers and street vendors. 'Migración! Migración!' people shouted — and scattered. They jumped in cars, ran down streets. They hid in stores and construction sites and behind bags of soil in the Home Depot gardening section. Alvarez's wife opened the door of a passing car and jumped in. 'They came in on all sides,' said Diego Rueda Hernandez. Fearful, even as a resident with legal status, he ran behind bags of dirt in the parking lot with others. 'Agarraron los indios,' he said. They took the dark-skinned people. The immigration raids in Los Angeles over the last two weeks have captured the world's attention — for the protests, the sporadic violence, the peacetime deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marines. But each roundup has inflicted very personal trauma to the people dragged into them, tearing families apart, inciting fear, taking away means to feed children and pay rent. In a flash, all of this happened Thursday morning in Hollywood — at the neighborhood Home Depot, the lifeblood of economic stability for many working-class immigrants nationwide, which the Trump administration is zeroing in on. Witnesses and organizers who helped gather information from family members after the sweep said agents picked up more than a dozen vendors, day laborers and customers — including a U.S. citizen. In a statement Thursday afternoon, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Customs and Border Protection 'arrested 30 illegal aliens in Hollywood, California, and 9 illegal aliens in San Fernando and Pacoima.' She said that during the day's operations, someone rammed his vehicle into a law enforcement vehicle. 'CBP Agents were also assaulted during the operation and verbally harassed,' McLaughlin said. Witnesses in Hollywood described the agents fanning out in the lot, apprehending people quickly and leaving within roughly half an hour. There was no clear target. But there were unconfirmed reports of agents breaking a car window to grab someone. 'Here, we are a united community, all the workers that come to this corner,' said Carlos Barrera De Paz, whose sister was taken. 'They took us and they took our community.' In the aftermath, tearful family members gathered with broken glass littering the parking lot. The usually bustling stands where they sell tamales, juice and coffee for workers starting their day were abandoned. Eggshells lay cracked, orange peels strewn, tortillas left on grills. Knowing Home Depots have been prime targets, Silvia Menendez had come to the area early to give out 'know your rights' cards. When the agents showed up, she began filming as people ran. She saw six agents tackle one person to the ground. Officers with assault rifles and faces covered pulled those arrested into vans and trucks. One of the masked agents began filming her. 'It was really unsettling and scary,' she said. In one video, an armed Border Patrol agent screamed at people who were recording to 'get back on the sidewalk!' Another agent told spectators they could record, but to 'just let 'em work.' A person shouted at them to 'die.' Job Garcia, a 33-year-old doctoral student at Claremont College, was picking up an order at Home Depot for a customer. He texted his brother Elias Garcia around 7:59 a.m.: 'Hey Elias me agarro ICE,' it read. ICE got me. Elias said he has not been able to talk to his brother to find out why he was arrested and booked into a federal detention facility downtown. 'Is it racial profiling that occurred or was he trying to help out a fellow undocumented person? I don't know what it could be,' he said. Veronica Perez stood sobbing along St. Andrews Place, on the sidewalk outside the Home Depot where her dad, Abelino Perez Alvarez, 58, has sold orange juice for seven years. Her mother, who is in her 50s and did not want to be named, also worked on this street. The family usually has two stands, but with all the raids they decided to pare it down to one. When immigration agents swarmed the area, Perez's mother ran toward the street after she heard shouts of 'Migracion!' A driver pulled over when they spotted everyone running. 'Ayudanos, ayudanos,' someone pleaded with the driver, a stranger. Help us. Perez's mother didn't wait. She opened the car door and got in. Another female vendor wasn't able to jump in fast enough and was grabbed by agents, Perez said. The couple had run in opposite directions. Perez's mother got away, but her father was arrested. For many, their hearts still pounded as they tried to sort out what happened and where their family members were. Maegan Ortiz, the executive director of the nonprofit group Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, known as IDEPSCA, hugged Perez tight as she cried. She had gathered Perez's father's name and date of birth and wrote it into a notebook in which she was compiling the names of all those taken. 'Lo siento. We're going to do our best to find him,' Ortiz reassured Perez. Perez pulled up her phone log, which showed that her first call to her mother — listed as 'madresita' — went out at 7:35 a.m. Perez said she doesn't have siblings, only a daughter and her parents. 'They're all I have. It's the three of us,' Perez said. The family had been applying for a U visa — a type granted to certain crime victims — after her mom became the victim of a violent attack. 'We have that hope,' Perez said. Many of the workers were registered with IDEPSCA's day laborer program. Their families trickled in after the sweep looking for them, picking up cars and talking to others who already felt a void. 'Lourdes also got taken,' one person told another. Emma De Paz, 58, was nowhere to be found when her brother arrived at her stand. Barrera De Paz, who wore paint-splattered blue jeans, works as a handyman and had rushed over from Long Beach after seeing a live video on TikTok of arrests unfolding. 'If anything happens to her, it will be the responsibility of the authorities that took my sister,' he said. Emma, who lost her husband after his heart transplant last year, has suffered from depression ever since and faces several medical issues. 'My sister needs her medicine. She has diabetes. She needs medicine for her blood pressure and her heart,' he said. By Thursday afternoon, they were able to drop off her medication. 'I think of Germany, Hitler and the persecutions there, I thought that was just history,' he said. Now, it felt like history repeating. With the stands empty, many were enraged. 'Despicable doesn't even begin to describe what this is,' said Hugo Soto-Martinez, a Los Angeles City Council member who represents the area. 'You hear about this happening in military dictatorships and totalitarian governments. To happen here in the second-largest city in America is — I don't have words, just outrage. ' Organizers are working to find legal representation for some, but Soto-Martinez said the response should be nonviolent protest. 'Nonviolent, direct action broke Jim Crow. It brought down apartheid. We are experiencing that at a national level. We know what works, we have to commit ourselves to that type of movement,' he said. Federal officials insist they are focusing mainly on criminals. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino posted a video this week on his Instagram page featuring Assistant Chief Patrol Agent David Kim. 'Roving patrols in an urban environment like Los Angeles County presents a lot of challenges for us. It's not as easy as people think it is,' Kim said. 'But there is that narrative out there where people think that just because you're at a Home Depot that you're a hard worker and that's all you've ever done.' He pointed out that they'd picked up a Mexican national at a Cerritos Home Depot on Tuesday who'd been convicted of sex with a minor younger than 16. 'We have a lot of people hiding in the country that should not be here. It takes us getting out on the ground, looking for these folks and it's just a lot of hard work that goes into it. We'll continue doing it.' In May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly directed top Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to go beyond target lists and have agents make arrests at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores as they sought to crank up their daily arrest numbers to 3,000. Federal agents raided another Home Depot on Thursday in San Fernando. The city's vice mayor, Maria Elena Solorio, said on an Instagram post that she was looking for answers and had only the first names of those taken. She pleaded for help, alongside Los Angeles City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. 'We need to protect one another in these very scary times,' Rodriguez said. She urged people to report immigration agent sightings to a rapid response line and cautioned those to remain peaceful and not interfere. 'This is a systematic attack against the most vulnerable members of the migrant community,' said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. 'It is the working poor. That's who they are going after. These are the spaces where they feel they can do this. They don't even have legal parameters.' Edwin Guevara says the people taken are those building Los Angeles. He runs a construction crew and got a call from one of his workers around 7:20 a.m. The man was buying lumber for a hotel job when immigration arrived. He told the man to hide inside Home Depot. 'Us here at the Home Depot, we build this community, we build society to what it is. We're the ones who build the economy to where it's at,' Guevara said. 'Without us building buildings, without us building homes, without us building restaurants for people to go eat, shops to shop at, Target, there would be no money in those places. '
