“Dios te bendiga y te guarde cada día de tu vida. Necesito que me ayudes…ya no quiero estar más aquí,” read a message I received last week from a detainee inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
(“God bless you and keep you safe every day of your life I need you to help me... I don't want to be here anymore.”)
“Tengo aquí un año y 5 meses secuestrado, sin cometer ni un delito, buscando mi libertad; me encuentro secuestrado por un sistema más corrupto que el de mi país,” he continued.
("I have been kidnapped here for a year and 5 months without committing a single crime seeking my freedom, I find myself kidnapped by a system more corrupt than in my country.")
My source had fled from Venezuela, and over the past months, I’ve been corresponding with him. He has repeatedly expressed his frustration with the U.S. Immigration system. He told me he had an asylum case and a work permit that was valid through 2029, and that he doesn’t understand why he was detained by federal immigration agents a year ago. He told me his wife was deported, but that their children remain in the U.S. in different states.
“La raíz de todo esto disfrazado de migración es la trata de personas como antes que vendían los esclavos pero ahora venden los migrantes,” he tells me in another message.
(The root of all this disguised as [the immigration system] is human trafficking; before, slaves were sold, but now migrants are being sold.”)
Private prison operators GEO Group and CoreCivic, which also operate immigration detention centers across the nation, made a combined quarterly revenue of $1.4 billion last spring, according to reporting by NPR. Immigration detention inside a facility can cost up to $125 per person per day.
“I am so sorry that you are going through this, and I really wish the best for you and your family” never feels like an adequate thing to say back.
I often find myself talking on the phone with sources in detention on the weekend or in the evenings after my workday is supposed to be done. I always do my best to answer or call back as soon as possible.
Being a reporter, you are supposed to have work/life boundaries. For example, “I am off work now. I won’t scroll on my journalism Instagram, or I’ll give my source a call back tomorrow.” In the past year and a half, despite multiple attempts, I have failed at this.
There’s a certain anxious adrenaline I feel when I see a detention center number light up my screen, the fear of a horrible thing having happened, a pit in my stomach that doesn’t go away if I let the call go to voicemail.
There is no clocking off as an immigration reporter under this presidential administration. The conversations I’ve had with detainees linger in my thoughts long after I’m off work. At times I have felt helpless, wishing there was more I could do – feeling stifled by my role as a reporter.
A source repeatedly asks me for commissary support, and I have to keep saying I can’t because of the ethical implications of giving him money. It’s hard to communicate the ethics of journalism in my pocha Spanish and across the poor quality of the call.
A lot of the time, my sources just want to talk and keep me up to date on what’s happening with their cases or the general conditions. It’s not all doom-and-gloom; I find myself talking about other things, like fostering a dog for a deported detainee (that was going to get euthanized and is still up for adoption because I cannot keep her) or catching a cold. I catch them up on the latest news.
“In my country, we don’t really use medicine like here. But, to prevent colds and if we do get sick, we mix honey, turmeric powder, lime, and garlic cloves and have a spoonful,” I recall one of my sources sharing with me.
Despite the midterm elections and the feeling of hope that has spread across the nation, thousands of people remain trapped inside detention centers, and deportations continue. More than 70% of those detained have no criminal record, according to Trac Reports.
The deadliest immigration crackdown in the U.S. continues, and it’s not certain when it will be stopped or when accountability will begin. And, even when the harm stops, it will be a long path to healing that has been caused, which is felt cross-generationally in immigrant communities.
Despite Trump conceding in a 60 Minutes interview that one of the contributing factors to the decimation of the GOP in the midterms was that he was “too tough on immigration,” he has promoted Stephen Miller, the puppeteer behind the Trump administration's racist immigration policy, to Chief of Staff.
So please, continue showing up for your neighbors and don’t look away from immigration detention centers. This fight is far from over. Two years remain under this cruel administration, and the work must continue.
Last week, detainees inside an ICE facility located around an hour and a half from L.A. launched a hunger strike. Read the full report here.
On Friday evening, ICE agents pepper-sprayed and arrested two U.S. citizens who were protesting outside of White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights, first reported by independent reporter Izzy Ramirez. Legal observers and community members gathered outside of the hospital after federal immigration agents transported a man in their custody to the facility.
Elsewhere, a government attorney signed a stipulated joint motion to dismiss an appeal in the criminal case of Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a citizen journalist who has been detained inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center for over a year, Carlos Jurado told L.A. TACO.
The next step is for the federal judge to stamp the dismissal of the appeal, which would drop the criminal charges against Parias for alleged assault on a federal agent. The government attorney appealed the judge's earlier decision to dismiss the charges against Parias with prejudice, arguing that the federal government committed constitutional violations.
Yesterday, a VC Defensa member was temporarily detained by federal immigration agents while legally observing enforcement activity in Santa Paula. A full report on the incident will be published later this week.
ICE WATCH
Following the midterm elections, federal immigration agents continued to be present across Southern California, according to independent reporter Izzy Ramirez. Click HERE for the full list of confirmed sightings.
- On November 4, day 517 of the ICE siege on Southern California, Ramirez reported two landscapers taken near an elementary school and detentions outside at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Application Support Centers and local jails. Federal immigration agency presence was documented from Moreno Valley to San Diego to Simi Valley to Los Angeles.
- On November 5, day 518 of the ICE siege on Southern California, Ramirez reported apparent roving raids in the Coachella Valley and detentions at an asylum center. Sightings from Cathedral City to Pomona to Los Angeles to Ventura.
ICYMI ON L.A. TACO:
- Second Hunger Strike at Adelanto ICE Facility This Year Sees Participants Up to 65 Years Old Demanding Their Freedom From ‘Kidnapping’
- We Mapped All the Random Spots In California That DHS Operates From, Revealed By the Latest Hack
IN OTHER ICE-RELATED NEWS
- ICE Agents Seen Parked at Marriott Hotel in Monterey Park
- ICE deportations and arrests hit record high as Trump faces reckoning over immigration crackdown
- Day 520 - ICE Invades Boyle Heights Hospital, Community Pressures Them Out
- Can LA hospital workers use their union contract to keep ICE in check?
- Exclusive: ICE investigated how dozens of detainees died. The findings are ‘damning’
- DHS Has Used This Controversial Investigative Tool 185,000 Times Since Trump Took Office
- Why Immigration Agents Don’t Quit in Protest
- ‘Nuclear Option’ Move Overrules Judges, Keeps Immigrants Jailed
- ICE Officer Involved in Maine Shooting Expressed Hatred of Immigrants
- Justice Department prosecutors in Washington can’t keep up with all the cases of immigrants suing for their release
- ICE officer indicted on allegations he ran over undocumented Mexican immigrant released on bond
- US citizen shot by ICE officer near children’s bus stop sues government for $25m
- DOJ now using Dilley detention center to hold hearings for non-detained families, raising concerns
- Houston mayor limits police cooperation with ICE after Democratic wins
- Supreme Court clears the way for border wall construction in Texas’s Big Bend to resume
