ICE reports that at least 118 immigrants were detained during the weekend’s raids in Los Angeles, Paramount, and elsewhere. An unknown number of those have already been taken to a privately run detention center outside LA in the high-desert town of Adelanto.
Yliana Johansen-Méndez, chief program officer at Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), says that when her organization heard about the raids, they sent attorneys out to check warrants, uncover who was detained so they could meet with them and give information about their rights, and ensure people were not being unlawfully and quickly deported.
On Friday, a guard at the LA Federal Building told Yliana Johansen-Méndez that almost 200 people were in custody there, then at the end of the night, “they shut us down,” she describes. “They said the protests were getting out of hand, and therefore all the attorneys had to get out, and no more family visitation was allowed. But they said they still had 70 to 80 people pending processing. So this was a huge amount of people to be swept up in a very short amount of time, even just on Friday and then continuing over the weekend.”
ImmDef returned to the Federal Building at 8 a.m. on Saturday — to be told that visitation was canceled completely for the weekend, Johansen-Méndez reports.
What’s most concerning, she says, is that people are “going into a black hole.” That means family members are telling ImmDef that a certain person was detained, but they can’t find them in the official immigration detainee locator.
“We weren't allowed in if we didn't have their A number, which is their identifier, their case number. And they wouldn't give it to us on the spot. And we were finding, even that same day, that some of the people that were detained early in the morning, at least one person by the end of the day called their family from Tijuana, saying they had already been deported. So our concern is that people were being fast-tracked and their rights were being trampled on in this process,” she says.
On Sunday, ImmDef went to Adelanto to try to meet with detainees. She notes that Congress members were also turned away when they tried to inspect there. “ICE has really been illegally shutting out both attorneys and members of Congress from doing their oversight duties and providing access to counsel to people who are detained.”
Later on Sunday, ImmDef finally got access to a few people in Adelanto who spoke about the conditions they were in, Johansen-Méndez says.
“We are piecing together information and hoping that we get to them in time, so that they have an opportunity to fight this deportation, because most of the people that we've spoken to have lived in the U.S. for decades. … They have U.S. citizen family members, U.S. citizen children. This is really tearing at the root of what is Los Angeles.”
She continues, “One of the young men that we met with his family, and I think we haven't yet been able to meet with him … he has an approved DACA case. And I think in their haste to arrest as many people as possible, ICE didn't put it together. Because when they processed him, they gave him a new … case number, when they should have kept the number from his DACA case.”
She says that currently, ImmDef knows the locations of about half the people they’re looking for. Forty are at Adelanto, others are at smaller detention facilities such as in Santa Ana, and some family members are already in Texas.
People are justified in being scared right now, given reports of ICE all over LA and Orange County, Johansen-Méndez says, and it’s important for others to stand up.
“This is psychological warfare, and we have to stand and say, ‘We're not going to stand for this.’ And if it is an effort to sweep up as many people as possible, we need to make sure that that is being reported. … If someone has been detained, they can reach out to ImmDef, to our rapid response lines (213-833-8283) and our rapid response email. … I know there are also organizations right now. … Cluejustice.org has a bond fund that community members can contribute to — to try to help get members of the community out.”