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A new bill seeks to require the agency to notify detainee’s family of their transfers between detention facilities

Congresswoman Luz Rivas, who represents the Eastern San Fernando Valley, made two trips to the Adelanto Immigration Detention Center in the high desert this week. She was checking on the whereabouts of Benjamin Guerrero Cruz, a senior at Reseda High school who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on August 8 as he walked his family dog early in the morning.

The Chile-born young man – whom his family describes as a “devoted son, caring brother, a loyal friend, and a valued member of the community–“overstayed his visa by more than two years, abusing the visa waiver program under which he entered the United States, which required him to depart the United States on March 15, 2023,” ICE said in a statement.

Since his detention, the 18-year-old  was held at the Los Angeles Detention Center and the Adelanto Detention Center, but this week – without his family knowing – he was transferred to a holding facility in Arizona, put on a plane to another ICE detention facility en route to Louisiana before being returned again to Adelanto.

On Thursday, August 28, Congressman Rivas stood outside the Adelanto Detention Center, and in a video posted to her Facebook page, said that she had confirmed the young man was there.

She added that she was there to “demand answers from ICE as to how they are making these decisions. These are chaotic decisions that they’re making on how to transfer detainees, who is making the decision? And why are they transferring them back and forth from detention center to detention center across state lines?”

The Democratic lawmaker adds that in refusing her entry into the immigration center, the facility is breaking the law. “I am a member of Congress that has oversight over these detention centers, over their budgets, and I should be let in,” she notes.

INFORM ACT

Guerrero Cruz is not the only detained immigrant to be shuttled through several immigration detention centers, often crisscrossing across the country.

Milagro Solis Portillo, an immigrant woman who was detained by ICE in July and was under constant surveillance for several weeks while she was hospitalized in Glendale—raising concerns among patients and activists over the presence of federal agents inside the hospital—was eventually moved to another hospital in Orange County, then to the Adelanto Detention Center and is now at another facility in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

Congresswoman Rivas is critical of these transfers, which she says are done “intentionally to separate detainees from legal resources and their families.

“They (families) should not be surprised in the middle of the night and without any resources or any way to stop it. We can’t let Trump and ICE do this to our communities”.

That’s why she has introduced what the Immigration Notification for Facility Oversight and Relocation Management (INFORM) Act “to help families so they will be notified by ICE when these transfers between detention centers are made of their family members.”

“It does not matter if ICE is transferring individuals across the city or across the country, their families deserve to know and should be immediately notified by ICE of any transfer,” Congresswoman Rivas stated in announcing the measure. “My bill respects the dignity of immigrant families and promotes government transparency.”

5,000 Immigrants Arrested in Los Angeles

The measure comes as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conducted yet another raid –the fourth one since June 6 – at a Home Depot store near MacArthur Park on Thursday, where they reportedly detained eight day laborers and street vendors.

Witnesses said a van with ICE agents arrived at the store parking lot on Wilshire Blvd. just before 7 a.m. and rounded up the detainees.

Those arrests add to the more than 5,000 that ICE has made in Los Angeles since June.

“Today, DHS law enforcement made its 5,000th arrest in Los Angeles. That’s 5,000 criminal illegal aliens, gang members, child predators, and murderers taken off our streets. Precious lives saved. Families protected. American taxpayers spared the cost of their crimes AND the burden of their benefits. THANK YOU to our brave law enforcement officers. Make no mistake: if you are here illegally, we will find you, arrest you, and send you back. This is just the beginning,” announced Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday, August 26.

In a press release, DHS identified the 5,000th detainee arrested in Los Angeles as Gustavo Garcia-Miranda from Mexico whom they described as a convicted drug trafficker and aggravated felon who first entered the U.S. in 2008.

After the City of Los Angeles sued the federal government over ICE raids, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting immigration agents from targeting people solely based on their raice, language, vocation or location.

On August 1, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a Trump Administration request to lift the restraining order on raids.

Pro-immigrant groups and civil rights defenders hailed those decisions and there was a sharp decline in ICE raids soon after, but the raids have returned in force in the past weeks, with Home Depot parking lots as primary targets. Agents have returned again and again to some stores, such as the one near MacArthur Park, and they could be coming back.

Trump Border Czar Tom Homan said this week that federal authorities plan to increase immigration raids in Los Angeles and other “sanctuary cities.”

“You’re going to see a ramp up of operations in New York; you’re going to see a ramp up of operations continue in L.A., Portland, Seattle, all these sanctuary cities that refuse to work with ICE,,” Homan said.