‘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 on 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 of the people arrested over the weekend were 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.