As federal agents rushed to arrestimmigrantsacross Los Angeles, they confined detainees – including families with small children – in a stuffy office basement for days without sufficient food and water, according to immigration lawyers.
One family with three children were held inside aLos Angeles-area administrative building for 48 hours after being arrested on Thursday immediately after an immigration court hearing, according to lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), which is providing non-profit legal services in the region.
The children, the youngest of whom is three years old, were provided a bag of chips, a box of animal crackers and a mini carton of milk as their sole rations for a day. Agents told the family they did not have any water to provide during the family’s first day in detention; on the second day, all five were given a single bottle to share. The one fan in the room was pointed directly towards a guard, rather than towards the families in confinement, they told lawyers.
“Because it was primarily men held in these facilities, they didn’t have separate quarters for families or for women,” said Yliana Johansen-Méndez, chief program officer at ImmDef. Clients explained that “eventually they set up a makeshift tent in an outside area to house the women and children. But clearly, there were no beds, no showers.”
They have since been transferred to a“family detention” centerin Dilley, Texas, a large-scale holding facility retrofitted to hold children with their parents that was reopened under theTrump administration. Lawyers, who had been largely blocked from communicating with immigrants arrested amid theramped-up raids in LA,said family members were able to recount the ordeal only after they were moved out of state.
The harrowing details are the first to emerge about the conditions that people are being held in following the immigration raids targeting LA-area businesses and neighborhoods.
To quell the widespread protests that followed,Donald Trumpsent in military troops despiteopposition from California leaders.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that it arrested 118 immigrants on Friday and over the weekend. Others were arrested at immigration offices and courthouses in the days prior. ImmDef and other local advocacy groups had compiled a separate list of more than 80 people who were apprehended – though many of them still do not appear in the agency’s online databases of detainees.
Many of the people arrested were jailed ad hoc, in LA-area courthouses and administrative offices. Over the past several days, attorneys have taken shifts waiting outside federal immigration offices, attempting to speak to the immigrants, but federal agents and national guard troops have largely blocked lawyers and family members from visiting with those who were arrested, citing safety concerns amid widespread protests in the city. On Tuesday, the immigration court in downtown Los Angles had been shut down – and blocked off.
DHS did not immediately respond to multiple Guardian queries about where it was holding people arrested in LA, and whether local offices had been given instruction to prepare supplies and facilities to hold immigrants prior to the large-scale raids in the region.
Legal aid groups were also largely denied access to immigrants who were transferred to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) processing center and detention center in Adelanto, in the high desert east of LA. “Ice’s excuse was, they’re still processing all the new people,” said Johansen-Méndez. Over the weekend and on Monday, her colleagues were only permitted to visit with a handful of clients at the Adelanto detention center, even though they had called ahead to confirm that at least 40 people referred to the organization had been sent there.
Several people have already been deported. Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, a deportation defense attorney supporting the affected families in LA, said at least one person who was bused to Mexico almost immediately after his arrest was not provided any paperwork or opportunity to contest his deportation. At least two others who were arrested at LA-area carwashes were deported to Tijuana, according to Flor Melendrez, executive director of the Clean Carwash Worker Center.
Another person was told by agents to sign a paper if he wanted to visit an attorney, Johansen-Méndez said – but believes he was tricked into signing some sort of voluntary departure paperwork. “Within hours, he was across the border to Mexico,” she said.
Meanwhile, the family members of workers arrested at a clothing factory in downtown LA, in the parking lot at a Home Depot in the suburb of Paramount, and at a carwash in Culver City were desperately seeking answers about their loved ones’ whereabouts.
Landi, whose husband was arrested on Friday while he worked a shift at the Ambiance Apparel warehouse, said he had reported to work that day as normal. “We never imagined he will be kidnapped by immigration,” she said at a news conference on Monday, outside the business’s gates. The Guardian is not using her surname to protect her family’s privacy and safety.
“The day he was kidnapped, my family went to request information about his abduction, but Ice told us he wasn’t at the center,” she said. “However, after much effort and struggle from our lawyer, Ice simply confirmed that he was there.”
Families were not allowed to bring their loved ones jackets or medications, lawyers said.
Those who were able to confer with attorneys reported that as holding facilities in the city became crowded with immigrants, families were rushed out to detention centers in California’s high desert or in Texas. Agents confiscated belongings and provided little food or water, explaining to immigrants that the facilities had not prepared for the influx of detainees.
Conditions in Adelanto were deteriorating as well, lawyers said. One of ImmDef’s clients reported that meals were provided late, blankets and clothing were scarce, and some people were sleeping on the floor of a day-use recreational room as beds filled up. One client said he witnessed an older man’s health dramatically decline after being denied medication for three days.
On Sunday, Democratic US representatives Gilbert R Cisneros Jr, Judy Chu and Derek Tran said they wereblockedfrom entering Adelanto.
DHS did not respond to a query asking why lawyers and lawmakers have been denied access.
With limited access to immigrants in detention, attorneys are also scrambling to understand the scope of the raids, and the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security has violated immigrants’ rights.
One of the more unusual aspects of the large-scale militarized raids that began last week was that agents from Ice were joined by Customs and Border Protection officers, who are empowered to conduct warrantless stops – but only within 100 miles (160km) of the US border.
Johansen-Méndez believes that the government has justified their presence inLos Angeles– which is more than 100 miles from the US-Mexico border –because the city touches the Pacific Ocean, which the administration could be considering as a “border”.
“They’re counting the entire coastline as a port of entry,” said Johansen-Méndez. “It felt almost like an urban legend that it could be done. But at this point, it’s just they’re everywhere, literally.”
Lawyers from ImmDef and other legal aid and advocacy groups have also been trying to piece together testimonies to better understand how and why immigration agents chose to sweep certain businesses and neighborhoods, and what justifications officers provided when stopping and apprehending people.
“How do they decide who they’re going to ask for their papers and arrest, other than racially profiling?” Johansen-Méndez said. “Did they just ask everyone in the room for their papers or just some people? Did they skip certain people that didn’t fit the profile? We can’t get that information because we can’t talk to everyone.”