A Honduran man who lived and worked in the U.S. for 26 years died after being held at a California immigration detention facility for more than a month, and his family is calling for an investigation, saying he complained of deteriorating health conditions before his death.
Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, 68, died on Jan. 6 at 1:18 a.m. at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio after suffering from heart-related health issues, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. He was being held at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico before he was transferred to the hospital.
Federal officials said Yanez-Cruz was “encountered” during a Nov. 16 enforcement operation in Newark, N.J., but he was not the target of the operation, his daughter said. He was put into removal proceedings, which were pending at the time of his death.
A photo of Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, 68, is displayed during his memorial. Yanez-Cruz died this month in ICE custody.
His daughter, Josselyn Yanez, blames ICE for not taking his health concerns seriously and not providing medical attention as his health deteriorated. In a statement, ICE said Yanez-Cruz was put in the detention facility’s medical unit for chest pains before being sent to El Centro Regional Medical Center. He was then transported by helicopter to Indio.
“There needs to be an investigation because this is not normal,” Yanez said. “He started having symptoms weeks ago; they could have done something.”
In response to the family’s claims, a Homeland Security official said in a statement, “ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens. All detainees are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, and toiletries, and have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers.”
Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz was being held at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico before being hospitalized in Indio.
(Google Maps)
Last September another detainee at the facility died after experiencing a seizure at the facility, ICE officials said.
As for Yanez-Cruz, officials said he illegally entered the U.S. and was arrested near Eagle Pass, Texas, in June 1993 and removed from the U.S. Between 1999 and 2012, the agency said, he submitted applications for temporary protected status but was denied.
Yanez said claims that her father was deported and never granted TPS are false. She said her father had been granted TPS when he entered the U.S. in 1999, and it allowed him to visit Honduras on at least two occasions. His status lapsed because he was unable to renew it, she said.
On Nov. 16 her father, who worked in construction, had gotten breakfast around 10 a.m. at a McDonald’s in Newark when he stopped to chat with friends in an area known for day laborers to gather and pick up work, she told The Times. Suddenly, ICE agents pulled up and began arresting people, including her father.
Yanez, who lives in Houston, said she learned of it about an hour later. Her father was in detention in New Jersey before being moved to Calexico. He spent Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s in detention.
Members of Todec Legal Center attend a memorial for Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, who was from New Jersey and died far from home without any family by his side. “Although we did not know el señor Luis, his death being in our backyard, it’s so close to us,” a member of the immigrant rights group said. “It’s one pain after another. We did not know him, but his family’s pain is our pain.”
Yanez-Cruz spent 26 years in the U.S., working construction and paint jobs to help his family get ahead, Yanez said.
“He was an extraordinary father,” she said. “He was always looking out for us, even as we got older and became adults. He looked out for his grandchildren … He always worried about them and called to ask how they were doing.”
He called regularly, even while he was detained, Yanez said. But his health appeared to worsen the longer he was in detention, she said, even though he had been healthy before his arrest.
Inside the facility he was suffering from stomach and chest pains and sometimes felt like vomiting when he ate, she said. He suffered from shortness of breath walking around the facility and when he reported it to the staff, they only gave him pills to ease the pain, she said.
Yanez said the last time she spoke to her father was Jan. 3, a usual check-in when he asked about her children as she walked home from work. At the end of the call he said “Cuidate, te amo mucho.” Take care, I love you a lot.
Her brother spoke to him the next day and he seemed fine, she said. But as she waited for his call the following day she received one from a former detainee who told her he heard her father had been transferred to the medical unit after he had difficulty breathing. Yanez said she tried to call the facility but couldn’t get information until the next day when they called to tell her he died during the early morning hours.
Parish staff and members of Todec Legal Center lead a procession after the memorial service.
Yanez-Cruz’s passing hit family members hard because they were not there in his final moments, his daughter said. They have been sharing stories of his life and the sacrifices he made for them.
Her father, she said, departed Honduras in 1999 after Hurricane Mitch devastated the country and left him, like millions of others, struggling in the aftermath. He traveled north to the U.S. to help his family, Yanez said, and continued to work hard. He made friends easily, she said, and when he died she received calls from people who met him and shared kind words.
Luz Gallegos, executive director of Todec Legal Center, an immigrant rights group based in the Coachella Valley, said her group learned about Yanez-Cruz’s story after he died at the hospital in nearby Indio. On Friday the legal center helped organize a memorial mass in honor of Yanez-Cruz at the Our Lady of Soledad Catholic Church, to honor Yanez-Cruz and others who died in custody, Gallegos said.
“Although we did not know el señor Luis, his death being in our backyard, it’s so close to us,” she said. “It’s one pain after another. We did not know him, but his family’s pain is our pain.”
WASHINGTON — No one seems to know what happened to Vicente Ventura Aguilar.
A witness told his brother and attorneys that the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant, who doesn’t have lawful immigration status, was taken into custody by immigration authorities on Oct. 7 in SouthLos Angeles and suffered a medical emergency.
But it’s been more than six weeks since then, and Ventura Aguilar’s family still hasn’t heard from him.
The Department of Homeland Security said 73 people from Mexico were arrested in the Los Angeles area between Oct. 7 and 8.
“None of them were Ventura Aguilar,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary.
“For the record, illegal aliens in detention have access to phones to contact family members and attorneys,” she added.
McLaughlin did not answer questions about what the agency did to determine whether Ventura Aguilar had ever been in its custody, such as checking for anyone with the same date of birth, variations of his name, or identifying detainees who received medical attention near the California border around Oct. 8.
Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing Ventura Aguilar’s family, said DHS never responded to her inquiries about him.
The family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar, 44, says he has been missing since Oct. 7 when a friend saw him arrested by federal immigration agents in Los Angeles. Homeland Security officials say he was never in their custody.
(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)
“There’s only one agency that has answers,” she said. “Their refusal to provide this family with answers, their refusal to provide his attorneys with answers, says something about the lack of care and the cruelty of the moment right now for DHS.”
His family and lawyers checked with local hospitals and the Mexican consulate without success. They enlisted help from the office of Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), whose staff called the Los Angeles and San Diego county medical examiner’s offices. Neither had someone matching his name or description.
The Los Angeles Police Department also told Kamlager-Dove’s office that he isn’t in their system. His brother, Felipe Aguilar, said the family filed a missing person’s report with LAPD on Nov. 7.
“We’re sad and worried,” Felipe Aguilar said. “He’s my brother and we miss him here at home. He’s a very good person. We only hope to God that he’s alive.”
Felipe Aguilar said his brother, who has lived in the U.S. for around 17 years, left home around 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 7 to catch the bus for an interview for a sanitation job when he ran into friends on the corner near a local liquor store. He had his phone but had left his wallet at home.
One of those friends told Felipe Aguilar and his lawyers that he and Ventura Aguilar were detained by immigration agents and then held at B-18, a temporary holding facility at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles.
The friend was deported the next day to Tijuana. He spoke to the family in a phone call from Mexico.
According to Felipe Aguilar and Toczylowski, the friend said Ventura Aguilar began to shake, went unconscious and fell to the ground while shackled on Oct. 8 at a facility near the border. The impact caused his face to bleed.
The friend said that facility staff called for an ambulance and moved the other detainees to a different room. Toczylowski said that was the last time anyone saw Ventura Aguilar.
She said the rapid timeline between when Ventura Aguilar was arrested to when he disappeared is emblematic of what she views as a broad lack of due process for people in government custody under the Trump administration and shows that “we don’t know who’s being deported from the United States.”
Felipe Aguilar said he called his brother’s cell phone after hearing about the arrests but it went straight to voicemail.
Felipe Aguilar said that while his brother is generally healthy, he saw a cardiologist a couple years ago about chest pain. He was on prescribed medication and his condition had improved.
His family and lawyers said Ventura Aguilar might have given immigration agents a fake name when he was arrested. Some detained people offer up a wrong name or alias, and that would explain why he never showed up in Homeland Security records. Toczylowski said federal agents sometimes misspell the name of the person they are booking into custody.
Vicente Ventura Aguilar, who has been missing since Oct. 7, had lived in the United States for 17 years, his family said.
(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)
But she said the agency should make a significant attempt to search for him, such as by using biometric data or his photo.
“To me, that’s another symptom of the chaos of the immigration enforcement system as it’s happening right now,” she said of the issues with accurately identifying detainees. “And it’s what happens when you are indiscriminately, racially profiling people and picking them up off the street and holding them in conditions that are substandard, and then deporting people without due process. Mistakes get made. Right now, what we want to know is what mistakes were made here, and where is Vicente now?”
Surveillance footage from a nearby business reviewed by MS NOW shows Ventura Aguilar on the sidewalk five minutes before masked agents begin making arrests in South Los Angeles. The footage doesn’t show him being arrested, but two witnesses told the outlet that they saw agents handcuff Ventura Aguilar and place him in a van.
In a letter sent to DHS leaders Friday, Kamlager-Dove asked what steps DHS has taken to determine whether anyone matching Ventura Aguilar’s identifiers was detained last month and whether the agency has documented any medical events or hospital transports involving people taken into custody around Oct. 7-8.
“Given the length of time since Mr. Ventura Aguilar’s disappearance and the credible concern that he may have been misidentified, injured, or otherwise unaccounted for during the enforcement action, I urgently request that DHS and ICE conduct an immediate and comprehensive review” by Nov. 29, Kamlager-Dove wrote in her letter.
Kamlager-Dove said her most common immigration requests from constituents are for help with visas and passports.
“Never in all the years did I expect to get a call about someone who has completely disappeared off the face of the earth, and also never did I think that I would find myself not just calling ICE and Border Patrol but checking hospitals, checking with LAPD and checking morgues to find a constituent,” she said. “It’s horrifying and it’s completely dystopian.”
She said families across Los Angeles deserve answers and need to know whether something similar could happen to them.
Fernando Gomez Ruiz had been eating at a lunch truck outside Home Depot when agents arrested him and 10 others in early October.
The diabetic father of two, who has lived in the Los Angeles area for 22 years, was detained and then quickly transferred to California’s biggest detention facility, where he’s been unable to get insulin regularly and now nurses a worsening hole in his foot.
He fears now not only being deported, but losing a foot.
Ruiz is one of seven immigrants detained who filed a federal class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California against the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday for “inhumane” and “punitive” conditions at California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert.
“Conditions in California City are horrific,” said Tess Borden, a lawyer with the Prison Law Office. “The conditions are punishing and they are meant to punish.”
An image used in a class action lawsuit filed by the ACLU of the interior of the California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert.
(ACLU)
“Defendants are failing to provide constitutionally adequate care for the people in the facility,” Borden said. “Mr. Gomez Ruiz is just tragically one such example.”
The complaint details alleged “decrepit” conditions inside California’s newest detention facility, where sewage bubbles up shower drains, insects crawl up and down the walls of cold concrete group cells the size of parking lots, calls for medical help go unanswered for weeks and people are excessively punished.
Ryan Gustin, a spokesman for CoreCivic, which operates the facility, referred questions to DHS and ICE, but said in a statement “the safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority.
“We take seriously our responsibility to adhere to all applicable federal detention standards in our ICE-contracted facilities, including the [California City facility.] Our immigration facilities are monitored very closely by our government partners at ICE, and they are required to undergo regular review and audit processes to ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for all detainees.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But last month when asked about the center, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, defended the conditions.
“ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens,” she said. “All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.”
The lawsuit alleges just the opposite: inadequate food and water, frigid conditions, forced isolation and lack of access to lawyers. It also details instances where life-threatening conditions allegedly weren’t attended to.
An image used in a class action lawsuit filed by the ACLU of the interior of the California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert.
(ACLU)
One of the plaintiffs, Yuri Alexander Roque Campos, didn’t get his needed heart medications. Since arriving there he has had two emergency hospitalizations for severe chest pain. The last time he was there, the doctor told him “he could die if this were to happen again,” according to the lawsuit.
“It is exemplary of the trauma and the heartbreak that people are experiencing inside,” Borden said.
The former prison opened without proper permitting in August as the Trump administration pushed to expand detention capacity nationwide. By the next month, immigrants inside the 2,500 capacity facility launched a hunger strike protesting conditions.
The lawsuit was brought by the Prison Law Office, the American Civil Liberties Union, the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and Keker, Van Nest & Peters.
WASHINGTON — For more than a year, detainees at a California immigrant detention center said, they were summoned from their dorms to a lieutenant’s office late at night. Hours frequently passed, they said, before they were sent back to their dorms.
What they allege happened in the office became the subject of federal complaints, which accuse Lt. Quin, then an administrative manager, of harassing, threatening and coercing immigrants into sexual acts at the Golden State Annex in McFarland. A person with that name worked in a higher-ranking post, as chief of security, at the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana until August — the same month The Times sent questions to the company that operates the facilities.
The Department of Homeland Security said it could not substantiate the allegations. According to an attorney for one of the detainees, the California attorney general’s office opened an investigation into the matter.
Immigrant advocates point to the case as one of many allegations of abuse in U.S. immigration facilities, within a system which they say fails to properly investigate.
In three complaints reviewed by The Times that were filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), to a watchdog agency and with DHS, detainees accused Quin of sexual assault, harassment and other misconduct. The complainants initially knew the lieutenant only as “Lt. Quinn,” and he is referred to as such in the federal complaints, though the correct spelling is “Quin.”
The complaints also allege other facility staff knew about and facilitated abuse, perpetuating a culture of impunity.
The Golden State Annex, a U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement detention facility, in McFarland last year.
The California and Louisiana facilities are both operated by the Florida-based private prison giant, the GEO Group.
A Dec. 10, 2024, post on Instagram Threads appears to allude to issues Quin faced in California. The post pictures him standing in front of a GEO Group flag and states: “Permit me to reintroduce myself … You will respect my authority. They tried to hinder me, but God intervened.”
Asked about the accusations, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary, said in a statement that allegations of misconduct by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees or contractors are treated seriously and investigated thoroughly.
“These complaints were filed in 2024 — well before current DHS leadership and the necessary reforms they implemented,” McLaughlin wrote. “The investigation into this matter has concluded, and ICE — through its own investigation reviewed by [the DHS office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] — could not substantiate any complaint of sexual assault or rape.”
The GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Advocates for the detainees say they are undeterred and will continue to seek justice for people they say have been wronged.
Advocates also say the potential for abuse at detention facilities will grow as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown brings such facilities to record population levels. The population of detained immigrants surpassed a high of 61,000 in August, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan research organization.
The allegations against Quin by a 28-year-old detainee are detailed in his FTCA complaint, a precursor to a lawsuit, filed in January with DHS. The complaint seeks $10 million for physical and emotional damages.
The Times generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse and is referring to him by his middle initial, E.
McLaughlin’s response did not address the FTCA complaint that details E’s sexual assault allegations.
Reached by phone, Quin told The Times, “I don’t speak with the media,” and referred a reporter to the Golden State Annex. After being read the allegations against him and asked to respond, he hung up.
E alleged abuse in interviews with The Times, and in a recorded interview with an attorney, which formed the basis for the FTCA complaint.
In the complaint, he said that beginning in May 2023, Quin would call him into a room, where no cameras or staff were present, to say he had been given a citation or that guards had complained about him.
One day, the complaint alleges, Quin rubbed his own genitals over his pants and began making sexual comments. E told Quin he felt uncomfortable and wanted to go back to his dorm. But Quin smirked, dragged his chair closer and grabbed E in the crotch, the complaint says.
After E pushed Quin away and threatened to defend himself physically, the complaint alleges, Quin made his own threat: to call a “code black” — an emergency — that would summon guards and leave E facing charges of assaulting a federal officer.
Instead, E said, Quin called for an escort to take him back to his dorm.
After that, the late-night summons — sometimes at midnight or 2 a.m. — increased, E said in his complaint. Each time, Quin continued to rub his genitals over his clothes, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges Quin repeatedly offered to help with E’s immigration case in exchange for sexual favors. Then Quin found out E is bisexual and E alleged Quin threatened to tell his family during a visit. Afraid of his family finding out about his sexuality, E said in the complaint, he finally acquiesced to letting Quin touch his genitals and perform oral sex on him.
“I just, I ended up doing it,” E said in a recorded interview with his attorney.
Afterward, the complaint says, Quin told E that he would make sure to help him, and that no one would find out.
The complaint alleges that Quin brought E contraband gifts, including a phone, and, around Christmas, a water bottle full of alcohol.
“I feel dirty,” E said in the recorded interview. “I feel ashamed of myself, you know? I feel like my dignity was just nowhere.”
E said in his complaint that a staff member told him in December 2023 that a guard had reported Quin to the warden after noticing E had been out of his dorm for a long time; the guard had reviewed security cameras showing Quin giving E the bottle of alcohol.
E said the staffer told him that Quin was temporarily suspended from interacting with detainees, and the late-night summons stopped for a while.
Lee Ann Felder-Heim, staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, which filed a complaint with the federal government alleging mistreatment of detainees at the Golden State Annex in McFarland.
(Maria del Rio / For The Times)
A second, earlier complaint alleging mistreatment at the McFarland facility was filed on E’s behalf in August 2024 by the Asian Law Caucus with the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL).
That complaint alleges that other GEO Group staff targeted him with sexually harassing and degrading comments. It does not address E’s sexual assault allegations, because E said he was initially too afraid to talk about them.
Once, when E was lying on his stomach in his cell, a guard commented loudly to other staff that he was waiting for a visit from Quin; the guard made a motion of putting her finger through a hole, insinuating that E sought to engage in sexual intercourse, the complaint states.
The broader issue isn’t one person, “but rather a system of impunity and abuse,” said Lee Ann Felder-Heim, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus. “The reports make it clear that other staff were aware of what was going on and actually were assisting in making it happen.”
In addition to detailing E’s own experiences, the complaint also details abuse and harassment of five other detainees. One detainee is transgender, a fact that would play a role in how federal officials investigated the complaint.
In February and March, CRCL sent Felder-Heim letters saying it had closed the investigations into all but one case of alleged sexual abuse and harassment — including those regarding Quin — citing, as justification, Trump’s First-Day executive order concerning “gender ideology extremism.” The order prohibits using federal funds to “promote gender ideology,” so Felder-Heim said it appears the investigations were shut down because one of the complainants is transgender. The other case was closed earlier on the merits.
She called the investigation process flawed and “wholly inadequate.”
E filed a third complaint with another oversight body, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. To his knowledge, no investigation was initiated.
In March, the Trump administration shut down three internal oversight bodies: CRCL, OIDO and the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Ombudsman. Civil rights groups sued the following month, prompting the agency to resurrect the offices.
But staffing at the offices was decimated, according to sworn court declarations by DHS officials. CRCL has gone from having 147 positions to 22; OIDO from about 118 to about 10; and the CIS Ombudsman from 46 to about 10.
“All legally required functions of CRCL continue to be performed, but in an efficient and cost-effective manner and without hindering the Department’s mission of securing the homeland,” said McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman.
Michelle Brané, who was the immigrant detention ombudsman under the Biden administration, said the civil rights office generally had first dibs on complaints about sexual assault. She recalled the complaint about Quin but said her office didn’t investigate it because the civil rights office already was.
Brané said the decrease in oversight amid increased detention will inevitably exacerbate issues such as allegations of sexual assault. Worse conditions also make it harder to hire quality staff, she said.
Around the same time that E was held at Golden State Annex, a gay couple from Colombia reported in April 2024 to the OIDO that Quin had sexually harassed them.
D.T., 26, and C.B., 25, were separated upon arrival at Golden State Annex. D.T. began to experience severe anxiety attacks, they said in the Asian Law Caucus complaint and in an interview with The Times. The couple asked to be placed in the same dormitory.
Before granting their request, Quin asked what they would give him in return, the couple recounted in the complaint. Afterward, the complaint alleges, he frequently invited them to his office, saying they owed him.
“We never accepted going to his office, because we knew what it was for,” C.B. told the Times.
In their complaint, they allege that Quin asked D.T. if he wanted to have sex and told C.B., “You belong to me.”
The couple became aware that Quin had also harassed other detainees and gave preferential treatment to those who they believed accepted his requests for sexual favors, according to the complaint; one detainee told them that he had grabbed Quin’s hand and placed it on his penis to avoid being taken to solitary confinement for starting a fight.
D.T. said in an interview with The Times that he believes “below him are many people who never said anything.”
In a Dec. 2, 2024, internal facility grievance from Golden State Annex reviewed by The Times, another detainee alleges that Quin retaliated against him for speaking out against misconduct.
In the grievance and in an interview with The Times, the detainee said he spoke up after, on several occasions, watching another man walk to Quin’s office late at night and come back to the dorm hours later. He also said in the grievance that Quin brought in marijuana, cellphones and other contraband.
Another witness, Gustavo Flores, 33, said Quin recognized him as a former Golden State Annex detainee when he was briefly transferred to the Alexandria facility, just before his deportation to El Salvador in May.
Quin pulled Flores aside and offered to uncuff him and get him lunch in exchange for cleaning the lobby; after he finished, Quin brought him into his office, where he peppered Flores with questions about Golden State Annex, Flores said.
Flores said he asked about certain staffers and detainees. He told Flores people wanted to sue him, calling them “crybabies.”
“He’s telling me everything, like, ‘Oh yeah, I know what goes on over there,’” Flores said.
When E tried to end the sexual encounters, his complaint says, Quin threatened to have him sent to a detention facility in Texas or have his deportation expedited.
In October 2024, E was transferred to the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield.
Heliodoro Moreno, E’s attorney, said the California Attorney General’s Office confirmed to him in February that it was investigating. An investigator interviewed E in April and again in May, he said, and the investigation remains open.
California Department of Justice spokesperson Nina Sheridan declined to comment on a potential investigation. But in a statement she said the office remains vigilant of “ongoing, troubling conditions” at detention facilities throughout California.
“We are especially concerned that conditions at these facilities are only set to worsen as the Trump Administration continues to ramp up its inhumane campaign of mass deportation,” she wrote.
E, who had a pending claim for a special status known as withholding of removal, dropped his case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Moreno said his client wished to no longer be detained.
“It’s very unfortunate that he’s in these circumstances,” Moreno said. His client was forced to forgo his appellate rights and leave “without really getting a conclusion to receiving justice for what happened to him.”
The lights never dimmed and Angel Minguela Palacios couldn’t sleep. He pulled what felt like a large sheet of aluminum foil over his head, but couldn’t adjust to lying on a concrete floor and using his tennis shoes as a pillow.
He could smell unwashed bodies in the cramped room he shared with 40 detainees. He listened as men, many of them arrested at car washes or outside Home Depots, cried in the night for their loved ones.
Minguela, 48, lay in the chilly downtown Los Angeles ICE facility known as B 18 and thought about his partner of eight years and their three children. In his 10 years in the United States, he had built a secure life he had only dreamed of in Mexico, ensconced in their humble one-bedroom rented home, framed photos of the family at Christmas, his “#1 Dad” figurine. Now it was all falling apart.
The morning of Aug. 14, Minguela had been on his last delivery of the day, dropping off strawberries to a tearoom in Little Tokyo. He didn’t know that Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference there to inveigh against President Trump’s efforts to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives through redistricting in Texas. U.S. Border Patrol agents were massing nearby, creating a show of force outside the event.
As they moved in, one agent narrowed in on Minguela’s delivery van. Soon, he was in handcuffs, arrested for overstaying a tourist visa. As his lawyer put it, Minguela became “political, collateral damage.”
Over the six days he spent in B 18, a temporary immigration processing center, Minguela watched as several detainees chose to self-deport rather than remain in detention.
A building marking is painted on a wall at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility known as “B 18.”
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
”No aguanto aqui,” the men would say. “I can’t take it here.”
The harsh conditions, Minguela said, felt intentional. He knew he needed to stay for his family. But he wondered if he’d make it.
::
Minguela fled Mexico in 2015, driven in part by violence he faced there.
In his time servicing ATMs in Ciudad Juárez, he said he was kidnapped twice and at one point stabbed by people intent on stealing the cash. After his employers cut staff, he lost his job, helping drive his decision to leave.
Minguela came to Texas on a tourist visa and left the same day to L.A. drawn by the job opportunities and its many Spanish speakers. He had little money, rented a room as he searched for employment and soon found a job at the downtown produce market.
He met the woman he calls his esposa, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, at the second job he worked in the Piñata District. They are not married but Minguela helped raise her two children and later their son, who is autistic. The children — 15, 12 and 6 — all call him Dad.
With Minguela there, his esposa said she never felt alone. He helped with the laundry and cleaning. He played Roblox with his middle son and helped his 15-year-old daughter with her homework, especially math.
“He would always make sure that we would stay on track,” his daughter said. “He would always want the best for us.”
Photos captured the life they had built in L.A. The family in San Pedro for a boat ride. Celebrating Father’s Day and birthdays with cake and balloons. At a Day of the Dead celebration on Olvera Street downtown.
Angel Minguela Palacios with his partner of eight years and their 6-year-old son.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
When immigration raids began in June, their lives suddenly narrowed. Minguela rarely went out, leaving the house only for work and errands. His daughter would warn him if she heard rumors of immigration officers near her high school, so he wouldn’t risk picking her up.
Minguela planned ahead, made copies of his keys and left money for his family in case he was grabbed by immigration agents. But he never expected it would happen to him.
On Aug. 14, his alarm went off at 1:15 a.m., as it did almost every day. He drank the coffee his wife had brought him as he headed to the produce market, where he’d worked for the same company for eight years.
Minguela helped take orders of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, before heading out to make deliveries around 8 a.m. He had around half a dozen places to hit before he would call it a day.
His partner called to warn him that she’d seen on social media that ICE officers were near one of his delivery spots. He had just been there and luckily missed them, he said.
He was relieved that the Little Tokyo tearoom was his last stop. It didn’t open until 11 a.m. He arrived 10 minutes after. He found a parking spot out front and began unloading the boxes of strawberries and one box of apples.
Minguela was adjusting wooden pallets in the van when he heard a knock. He turned to see a Border Patrol agent, who began asking him about his legal status. Rather than answer, Minguela said he pulled a red “know your rights” card out of his wallet and handed it to the agent.
Angel Minguela Palacios took this image of a federal agent looking at his identification outside of the Japanese American National Museum on Aug. 14.
(Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios)
The agent told him it was “of no use” and handed it back. As he held his wallet, Minguela said the agent demanded his license. After running his information, Minguela said, the agent placed him in handcuffs.
::
Inside B 18, the lights never turned off. No matter the hour, officers would call detainees out of the room for interviews, making it difficult to get uninterrupted sleep, Minguela recounted. The temperature was so cold, family members dropped off sweaters and jackets for loved ones.
The detainees were given thin, shiny emergency blankets to sleep with. He described them as “aluminum sheets.” As the days passed, he said, even those ran out for new detainees. The bathrooms were open-air, providing no privacy. Detainees went days without showering.
The conditions, he said, felt intentional. A form of “pressure to get people to sign to leave.”
Department of Homeland Security officials have previously told The Times that “any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.”
When Minguela closed his eyes, he saw the faces of his family. He wondered how his esposa would keep them afloat all alone. He wanted to believe this was just a nightmare from which he would soon awaken.
He replayed the morning events over and over in his head. What if he had gotten to Little Tokyo five minutes earlier? Five minutes later?
“Those days were the hardest,” Minguela said. “My first day there on the floor, I cried. It doesn’t matter that you’re men, it doesn’t matter your age. There, men cried.”
The men talked among themselves, most worrying about their wives and children. They shared where they’d been taken from. Minguela estimated that around 80% of people he was held with had been detained at car washes and Home Depot. Others had been arrested while leaving court hearings.
Minguela said he’d only been asked once, on his second day, if he wanted to self-deport. He said no. But he watched as several others gave up and signed to leave. Minguela hoped he’d be sent to Adelanto, a nearby detention center. He’d heard it might be harder to get bond in Texas or Arizona.
On the sixth day, around 4 a.m., Minguela and more than 20 others had been pulled out of the room and shackled. He only learned he was going to Arizona after overhearing a conversation between two guards.
It felt, Minguela said, “like the world came crashing down on me.”
The 25 detainees were loaded onto a white bus and spent around 10 hours on the road, before arriving at a detention center near Casa Grande. When Minguela saw it for the first time, in the desert where the temperature was hitting 110 degrees, he felt afraid. It looked like a prison.
“Ay caray, adonde nos trajeron,” he thought. Wow, where did they bring us?
::
There were around 50 people in Minguela’s wing. His cell mate, an African immigrant, had been fighting his asylum case for five months, hoping to get to his family in Seattle.
For the first time since his youth, Minguela had time to read books, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “No One Writes to the Colonel.” He read the Bible, taking comfort in Psalm 91, a prayer of trust and protection. He took online courses on CPR, computer skills and how to process his emotions.
But all the distractions, he said, didn’t change the fact that detainees were imprisoned.
“Lo que mata es el encierro,” Minguela said. “What kills you is the confinement.”
Angel Minguela Palacios spent more than a month in immigration detention.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Almost everyone there, Minguela said, had arrived with the intention of fighting their case. There were detainees who had been there for a year fighting to get asylum, others for eight months. Some had been arrested despite having work permits. Others had been scammed out of thousands of dollars by immigration lawyers who never showed up for their court hearings. Many decided to self-deport.
If he wasn’t granted bond, Minguela told his partner he feared he might do that in a moment of desperation.
Minguela lay in his darkened cell, reflecting on moments when he had arrived home, tired from work and traffic, and scolded his children about minor messes. About times he’d argued with his wife and given her the silent treatment. He made promises to God to be an even better husband and father. He asked that God help his lawyer on his case and to give him a fair judge.
Minguela had his bond hearing Sept 9. He was aided by the fact that he had entered the country lawfully, providing the judge the ability to either grant or deny him bond.
Alex Galvez, Minguela’s lawyer, told the judge about his client’s children. He pointed out that Minguela didn’t have a criminal record and was gainfully employed, the primary breadwinner for his family. Galvez submitted 16 letters of recommendation for his client.
Angel Minguela Palacios beams at his 6-year-old son.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
When the government lawyer referred to Minguela as a flight risk, Galvez said, the judge appeared skeptical, pointing out that he’d been paying tens of thousands of dollars in taxes for the last 10 years.
The judge granted a $1,500 bond. Minguela’s employers at the produce company paid it. When Minguela was pulled out of his cell on the night of Sept. 17, the other detainees applauded.
“Bravo,” they shouted. “Echale ganas.” Give it your all.
::
A crowd of people waited to greet Minguela as soon as he stepped off a Greyhound bus at Union Station in downtown L.A. on Thursday night. His partner and their three children all wore black shirts that read “Welcome Home.”
Minguela’s employer, Martha Franco, her son, Carlos Franco, and her nephew held “Welcome Back” balloons and flowers.
“He’s coming,” the children cried, when the bus groaned to a halt at 9:35 p.m. When Minguela spotted the waiting crowd, he beamed. His youngest son jumped up and down with anticipation as he stepped off the bus.
“Estas contento,” Minguela asked the boy. “Are you happy?”
Share via
He held his esposa tight, kissing her on the cheeks, the forehead and the lips.
Minguela knows his release is just a step in the journey. His lawyer plans to file for cancellation of his removal and hopes to secure him a work permit. Minguela said he wants other immigrants to know that “there’s hope and not to despair.”
“Have faith,” Minguela said.
When Minguela arrived home after 10 p.m., he clasped his face in surprise as he was greeted by more than a hundred red, gold and black balloons. Signs strung up around the living room read “God loves you” and “Welcome home we missed you so much.”
His partner had decorated and bought everything to make ceviche and albondigas to celebrate his return. But she hadn’t had time that day to cook. Instead, she bought him one of his favorites in his adopted home.
When a door slammed shut in the childhood home of Andry Hernández Romero, he wasn’t just startled. He winced, recoiling from the noise.
Nearly a month had passed since Hernández Romero, a 32-year-old makeup artist, and 251 other Venezuelans were released from a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison.
In a Zoom interview in August from Venezuela, Hernández Romero listed the ways in which the trauma of the ordeal still manifests itself.
“When doors are slammed — did you notice [my reaction] when the door made noise just now?” he said. “I can’t stand keys. Being touched when I’m asleep. If I see an officer with cuffs in their hand, I get scared and nervous.”
Trump administration officials accused the Venezuelan men of being members of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua and a national security threat, though many, including Hernández Romero, had no criminal histories in the U.S. or Venezuela.
While he was confined, with no access to his attorneys or the news, Hernández Romero had no idea he had become a poster child for the movement to free the prisoners.
“Before I was Andry the makeup artist, Andry the stylist, Andry the designer,” he said. “I was somewhat recognized, but not as directly. Right now, if you type my name into Google, TikTok, YouTube — any platform — my entire life shows up.”
Days after he was sent to El Salvador on March 15, CBS News published a leaked deportation manifest with his name on it. His lawyer Lindsay Toczylowski, who co-founded the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center, denounced his removal on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and a “60 Minutes” expose.
In the “60 Minutes” episode, Time photojournalist Philip Holsinger recounted hearing a man at the prison cry for his mother, saying, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a stylist,” while prison guards slapped him and shaved his head.
Outrage grew. On social media, users declared him disappeared, asking, “Is Andry Hernández Romero alive?”
Congressional Democrats traveled to El Salvador to push for information about the detainees and came back empty-handed.
“Let’s get real for a moment,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York) said in an April 9 video on X. The video cut to a glamour shot of Hernández Romero peering from behind three smoldering makeup brushes.
“When was the last time you saw a gay makeup artist in a transnational gang?” Torres said.
Hernández Romero walks through a market in his hometown of Capacho Nuevo.
Hernández Romero shows the crown tattoos that U.S. authorities claimed linked him to the Tren de Aragua gang.
Hernández Romero fled Venezuela after facing persecution for his sexuality and political views, according to his lawyers.
He entered the U.S. legally at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Aug. 29, 2024, after obtaining an appointment through CBP One, the asylum application process used in the Biden administration. The elation of getting through lasted just a few minutes, he said.
Hernández Romero spent six months at the Otay Mesa Detention Center. He had passed a “credible fear” interview — the first step in the asylum process — but immigration officials had lasered in on two of his nine tattoos: a crown on each wrist with “Mom” and “Dad” in English.
Immigrant detainees are given blue, orange or red uniforms, depending on their classification level. A guard once explained that detainees wearing orange, like him, could be criminals. Hernández Romero said he replied, “Is being a gay a crime? Or is doing makeup a crime?”
When his deportation flight landed in El Salvador, he saw tanks and officials dressed in all black, carrying big guns.
A Salvadoran man got off first — Kilmar Abrego García, whose case became a flash point of controversy after federal officials acknowledged he had been wrongly deported.
Eight Venezuelan women got off next, but Salvadoran officials rejected them and they were led back onto the plane. Hernández Romero said the remaining Venezuelans felt relieved, thinking they too would be rejected.
Instead, they ended up in prison.
Hernández Romero does the makeup for Gabriela Mora, the fiancee of his fellow prisoner Carlos Uzcátegui, hours before their civil wedding in the town of Lobatera.
“I saw myself hit, I saw myself carried by two officials with my head toward the ground, receiving blows and kicks,” Hernández Romero said. “After that reality kind of strikes me: I was in a cell in El Salvador, in a maximum-security prison with nine other people and asking myself, ‘What am I doing here?’”
As a stylist, he said, having his hair shaved off was particularly devastating. Even worse were the accompanying blows and homophobic insults.
He remembers the photographer snapping shots of him and feeling the sting of his privacy being violated. Now, he understands their significance: “It’s thanks to those photos that we are now back in our homes.”
At the prison, guards taunted them, Hernández Romero said, telling them, “You all are going to die here.”
Hernández Romero befriended Carlos Uzcátegui, 32, who was held in the cell across the hall. Prisoners weren’t allowed to talk with people outside their cells, but the pair quietly got to know each other whenever the guards were distracted.
Uzcátegui said he was also detained for having a crown tattoo and for another depicting three stars, one for each of his younger sisters.
A prisoner is moved by a guard at the Terrorist Confinement Center, a high-security prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26. (Alex Brandon, Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
As prisoners looks on, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center on March 26. (Alex Brandon, Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Hernández Romero said he noticed that some of the guards would stare at him when he showered. He told reporters that guards took him to a small, windowless room known as “La Isla,” or “The Island,” after noticing him bathing with a bucket outside of designated hours. There, he said, he was beaten by three guards wearing masks and forced to perform oral sex on one of them, according to NPR and other outlets.
Hernández Romero no longer wishes to talk about the details of the alleged abuse. His lawyers are looking into available legal options.
“Perhaps those people will escape earthly justice, the justice of man, but when it comes to the justice of our Father God, no one escapes,” he said. “Life is a restaurant — no one leaves without paying.”
Uzcátegui said guards once pulled out his toenails and denied him medication despite a high fever. He had already showered, but as his fever worsened he took a second shower, which wasn’t allowed.
He said guards pushed him down, kicked him repeatedly in the stomach, then left him in “La Isla” for three days.
In July, rumors began circulating in the prison that the Venezuelans might be released, but the detainees didn’t believe the talk until the pastor who gave their daily sermon appeared uncharacteristically emotional. He told them: “The miracle is done. Tomorrow is a new day for you all.”
Uzcátegui remained unconvinced. That night, he couldn’t sleep because of the noise of people moving around the prison. He said usually that meant that guards would enter their cell block early in the morning to beat them.
Hernández Romero noticed his friend was restless. “We’re leaving today,” he said.
“I don’t believe it,” Uzcátegui replied. “It’s always the same.”
Hernández Romero knew they had spent 125 days imprisoned because when any detainee went for a medical consult, they would unobtrusively note the calendar in the room and report back to the group. The detainees would then mark the day on their metal bed frames using soap.
On July 18, buses arrived at the prison at 3 a.m. to take the Venezuelans to the airport. Officials called out Hernández Romero and Arturo Suárez-Trejo, a singer whose case had also drawn public attention, for individual photos. Hernández Romero said they were puzzled but obliged.
Migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown arrive at Simon Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, on July 18.
(Ariana Cubillos / Associated Press)
When their flight touched down, an official told them: “Welcome to Venezuela.” Walking down the plane steps, Hernández Romero felt the Caribbean breeze on his face and thanked God.
A few days later, he was back in his hometown, Capacho Nuevo, hugging his parents and brother in the center of a swarm of journalists and supporters chanting his name.
“I left home with a suitcase full of dreams, with dreams of helping my people, of helping my family, but unfortunately, that suitcase of dreams turned into a suitcase of nightmares,” he told reporters there.
Hernández Romero said he wants to see his name cleared. For him, justice would mean “that the people who kidnapped us and unfairly blamed us should pay.”
President Trump had invoked an 18th-century wartime law to quickly remove many of the Venezuelans to El Salvador in March. In a 2-1 decision on Sept. 2, a panel of judges from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the administration acted unlawfully, saying there has been “no invasion or predatory incursion.”
Trump administration officials have told a federal judge that they would facilitate the return of Venezuelans to the U.S. if they wish to continue the asylum proceedings that were dismissed after they were sent to El Salvador. If there’s another chance to fulfill his dreams, Hernández Romero said he’s “not closed off to anything.”
Uzcátegui sees it differently. After everything he went through, he said, he probably would not go back.
Now he suffers from nightmares that it’s happening again. “Despite everything, you end up feeling like it’s not true that we’re out of there,” he said. “You wake up thinking you’re still there.”
Carlos Uzcátegui exchanges vows with Gabriela Mora during their wedding in August as Hernández Romero, right, in cap, looks on.
As he restarts his career, Hernández Romero is redeveloping a client list as a makeup artist. Last month, he worked a particularly special wedding: Uzcátegui’s. He did makeup for his friend’s now-wife, Gabriela Mora.
“He lived the same things I did in there,” Uzcátegui said. “It was like knowing that we are finally free — that despite all the things we talked about that we never thought would happen, that friendship remains. We’re like family.”
WASHINGTON — Mattresses on the floor, next to bunk beds, in meeting rooms and gymnasiums. No access to a bathroom or drinking water. Hourlong lines to buy food at the commissary or to make a phone call.
These are some of the conditions described by lawyers and the people held at immigrant detention facilities around the country over the last few months. The number of detained immigrants surpassed a record 60,000 this month. A Los Angeles Times analysis of public data shows that more than a third of ICE detainees have spent time in an overcapacity dedicated detention center this year.
In the first half of the year, at least 19 out of 49 dedicated detention facilities exceeded their rated bed capacity and many more holding facilities and local jails exceeded their agreed-upon immigrant detainee capacity. During the height of arrest activity in June, facilities that were used to operating with plenty of available beds suddenly found themselves responsible for the meals, medical attention, safety and sleeping space for four times as many detainees as they had the previous year.
“There are so many things we’ve seen before — poor food quality, abuse by guards, not having clean clothes or underwear, not getting hygiene products,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, a coalition that aims to abolish immigrant detention. “But the scale at which it’s happening feels greater, because it’s happening everywhere and people are sleeping on floors.”
Shah said there’s no semblance of dignity now. “I’ve been doing this for many years; I don’t think I even had the imagination of it getting this bad,” she added.
Shah said conditions have deteriorated in part because of how quickly this administration scaled up arrests. It took the first Trump administration more than two years to reach its peak of about 55,0000 detainees in 2019.
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the allegations about inhumane detention conditions false and a “hoax.” She said the agency has significantly expanded detention space in places such as Indiana and Nebraska and is working to rapidly remove detainees from those facilities to their countries of origin.
McLaughlin emphasized that the department provides comprehensive medical care, but did not respond to questions about other conditions.
Detainees do stretches outdoors as a helicopter flies overhead at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Krome detention center in Miami on July 4, 2025.
(Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press)
At the Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, the maximum number of detainees in a day in 2024 was 615, four more than the rated bed capacity of 611. In late June of this year, the detainee population reached 1,961, more than three times the capacity. The facility, which is near the Everglades, spent 161 days in the beginning of the year with more people to house than beds.
Miami attorney Katie Blankenship of the legal aid organization Sanctuary of the South represents people detained at Krome. Last month, she saw nine Black men piled into a visitation room, surrounded with glass windows, that holds a small table and four chairs. They had pushed the table against the wall and spread a cardboard box flat across the floor, where they were taking turns sleeping.
The men had no access to a bathroom or drinking water. They stood because there was no room to sit.
Blankenship said three of the men put their documents up to the window so she could better understand their cases. All had overstayed their visas and were detained as part of an immigration enforcement action, not criminal proceedings.
Another time, Blankenship said, she saw an elderly man cramped up in pain, unable to move, on the floor of a bigger room. Other men put chairs together and lifted him so he could rest more comfortably while guards looked on, she said.
Blankenship visits often enough that people held in the visitation and holding rooms recognize her as a lawyer whenever she walks by. They bang on the glass, yell out their identification numbers and plead for help, she said.
“These are images that won’t leave me,” Blankenship said. “It’s dystopian.”
Krome is unique in the dramatic fluctuation of its detainee population. On Feb. 18, the facility saw its biggest single-day increase. A total of 521 individuals were booked in, most transferred from hold rooms across the state, including Orlando and Tampa. Hold rooms are temporary spaces for detainees to await further processing for transfers, medical treatment or other movement into or out of a facility. They are to be used to hold individuals for no more than 12 hours.
On the day after its huge influx, Krome received a waiver exempting the facility from the requirement to log hold room activity. But it never resumed the logs. Homeland Security did not respond to a request for an explanation of the exception.
After reaching their first peak of 1,764 on March 16, the trend reversed.
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) visited Krome on April 24. In the weeks before the visit, hundreds of detainees were transferred out. Most were moved to other facilities in Florida, some to Texas and Louisiana.
“When those lawmakers came around, they got rid of a whole bunch of detainees,” said Blankenship’s client Mopvens Louisdor.
The 30-year-old man from Haiti said conditions started to deteriorate around March as hundreds of extra people were packed into the facility.
Staffers are so overwhelmed that for detainees who can’t leave their cells for meals, he said, “by the time food gets to us, it’s cold.”
Also during this time, from April 29 through May 1, the facility underwent a compliance inspection conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Detention Oversight. Despite the dramatic reduction in the population, the inspection found several issues with crowding and meals. Some rooms exceeded the 25-person capacity for each and some hold times were nearly double the 12-hour limit. Inspectors observed detainees sleeping on the hold room floors without pillows or blankets. Staffers had not recorded offering a meal to the detainees in the hold rooms for more than six hours.
Hold rooms are not designed for long waits
ICE detention standards require just 7 square feet of unencumbered space for each detainee. Seating must provide 18 inches of space per detainee.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Sanitary and medical attention were also areas of concern noted in the inspection. In most units, there were too many detainees for the number of toilets, showers and sinks. Some medical records showed that staffers failed to complete required mental and medical health screenings for new arrivals, and failed to complete tuberculosis screenings.
Detainees have tested positive for tuberculosis at facilities such as the Anchorage Correctional Complex in Alaska and the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California. McLaughlin, the Homeland Security assistant secretary, said that detainees are screened for tuberculosis within 12 hours of arrival and that anyone who refuses a test is isolated as a precaution.
“It is a long-standing practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody,” she said. “This includes medical, dental, and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”
Facility administrators built a tented area outside the main building to process arriving detainees, but it wasn’t enough to alleviate the overcrowding, Louisdor said. Earlier this month, areas with space for around 65 detainees were holding more than 100, with cots spread across the floor between bunk beds.
Over-capacity facilities can feel extremely cramped
Bed capacity ratings are based on facility design. Guidelines require 50 square feet of space for each individual. When buildings designed to those specifications go over their rated capacity, there is not enough room to house additional detainees safely and comfortably.
American Correctional Association and Immigration and Customs Enforcement
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Louisdor said a young man who uses a wheelchair had resorted to relieving himself in a water bottle because staffers weren’t available to escort him to the restroom.
During the daily hour that detainees are allowed outside for recreation, 300 people stood shoulder to shoulder, he said, making it difficult to get enough exercise. When fights occasionally broke out, guards could do little to stop them, he said.
The line to buy food or hygiene products at the commissary was so long that sometimes detainees left empty-handed.
Louisdor said he has bipolar disorder, for which he takes medication. The day he had a court hearing, the staff mistakenly gave him double the dosage, leaving him unable to stand.
Since then, Louisdor said, conditions have slightly improved, though dormitories are still substantially overcrowded.
In California, detainees and lawyers similarly reported that medical care has deteriorated.
Tracy Crowley, a staff attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said clients with serious conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and cancer don’t receive their medication some days.
Cells that house up to eight people are packed with 11. With air conditioning blasting all night, detainees have told her the floor is cold and they have gotten sick. Another common complaint, she said, is that clothes and bedding are so dirty that some clients are getting rashes all over their bodies, making it difficult to sleep.
Luis at Chicano Park in San Diego on Aug. 23, 2025.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
One such client is Luis, a 40-year-old from Colombia who was arrested in May at the immigration court in San Diego after a hearing over his pending asylum petition. Luis asked to be identified by his middle name out of concern over his legal case.
When he first arrived at Otay Mesa Detention Center, Luis said, the facility was already filled to the maximum capacity. By the time he left June 30, it was overcrowded. Rooms that slept six suddenly had 10 people. Mattresses were placed in a mixed-use room and in the gym.
Luis developed a rash, but at the medical clinic he was given allergy medication and sleeping pills. The infection continued until finally he showed it over a video call to his mother, who had worked in public health, and she told him to request an anti-fungal cream.
Luis was held at Otay Mesa Detention Center after his May arrest. It was at capacity when he arrived but by the time he left in June, it was overcrowded, he said.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
Other detainees often complained to Luis that their medication doses were incomplete or missing, including two men in his dorm who took anti-psychotic medication.
“They would get stressed out, start to fight — everything irritated them,” he said. “That affected all of us.”
Crowley said the facility doesn’t have the infrastructure or staff to hold as many people as are there now. The legal system also can’t process them in a timely manner, she said, forcing people to wait months for a hearing.
The administration’s push to detain more people is only compounding existing issues, Crowley said.
“They’re self-imposing the limit, and most of the people involved in that decision-making are financially incentivized to house more and more people,” she said. “Where is the limit with this administration?”
Members of the California National Guard load a truck outside the ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, Calif., on July 11, 2025.
(Patrick T. Fallon / AFP/Getty Images)
Other facilities in California faced similar challenges. At the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, the number of detainees soared to 1,000 from 300 over a week in June, prompting an outcry over deteriorated conditions.
As of July 29, Adelanto held 1,640 detainees. The Desert View Annex, an adjacent facility also operated by the GEO Group, held 451.
Disability Rights California toured the facility and interviewed staffers and 18 people held there. The advocacy organization released a report last month detailing its findings, including substantial delays in meal distribution, a shortage of drinking water, and laundry washing delays, leading many detainees to remain in soiled clothing for long periods.
In a letter released last month, 85 Adelanto detainees wrote, “They always serve the food cold … sometimes we don’t have water for 2 to 7 hours and they said to us to drink from the sink.”
At the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., Rodney Taylor, a double amputee, was rendered nearly immobile.
Taylor, who was born in Liberia, uses electronic prosthetic legs that must be charged and can’t get wet. The outlets in his dormitory were inoperable, and because of the overcrowding and short-staffing, guards couldn’t take him to another area to plug them in, said his fiancee, Mildred Pierre.
“When they’re not charged they’re super heavy, like dead weight,” she said. It becomes difficult to balance without falling.
Pierre said the air conditioning in his unit didn’t work for two months, causing water to puddle on the floor. Taylor feared he would slip while walking and fall — which happened once in May — and damage the expensive prosthetics.
Last month, Taylor refused to participate in the daily detainee count, telling guards he wouldn’t leave his cell unless they agreed to leave the cell doors open to let the air circulate.
“They didn’t take him to charge his legs and now they wanted him to walk through water and go in a hot room,” Pierre recalled. “He said no — he stood his ground.”
Several guards surrounded him, yelling, Pierre said. They placed him in solitary confinement for three days as punishment, she said.
Benjamin Guerrero-Cruz’s family was stunned and heartbroken when the 18-year-old was grabbed by immigration agents while walking his dog in Van Nuys just days before he was set to start his senior year at Reseda Charter High School.
This week, his family was caught off-guard once again when they learned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had transferred him to Arizona without notifying any relatives, according to the office of U.S. Rep. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood), which spoke to his family and reviewed ICE detention records.
Guerrero-Cruz was moved out of the Adelanto Detention Facility in San Bernardino County late Monday night and taken to a holding facility in Arizona in the middle of the desert, according to the congresswoman’s office.
On Tuesday night, he was scheduled to be transferred to Louisiana, a major hub for deportation flights, but at the last minute he was taken off the plane and sent back to Adelanto, where he is currently being held.
“Benjamin and his family deserve answers behind ICE’s inconsistent and chaotic decision-making process, including why Benjamin was initially transferred to Arizona, why he was slated to be transferred to Louisiana afterward, and why his family wasn’t notified of his whereabouts by ICE throughout this process,” Rivas said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Rivas introduced a bill that would require ICE to notify an immediate family member of a detainee within 24 hours of a detainee’s transfer. Currently, ICE is required to notify a family member only in the case of a detainee’s death.
“Benjamin’s story of being detained and sent across state lines without warning or notification is like many other detainees in Los Angeles and across the country,” Rivas said. “Many immigrant families in my district do not know the whereabouts of their loved ones after they are detained by ICE.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency previously stated that Guerrero-Cruz was awaiting deportation to Chile after overstaying his visa, which required him to depart the United States on March 15, 2023.
Benjamin Guerrero-Cruz, shown at school, is an avid soccer player and loving older brother, according to his family.
(Rita Silva)
Guerrero-Cruz was arrested Aug. 8 and held in downtown L.A. for a week, during which time he was briefly taken on an unexplained trip to a detention center in Santa Ana before being transferred to Adelanto on Aug. 15, according to a former teacher who visited him in custody.
His experience of being pingponged around different facilities is common among those being detained in what the Trump administration is billing as the largest deportation effort in American history.
This trend is also reflected in ICE’s flight data. The agency conducted 2,022 domestic transfer flights from May through July — representing a 90% increase from the same period last year, according to a widely cited database of flights created by immigrant rights advocate Tom Cartwright.
Cartwright posited in his July report that this uptick could be related to a “need to optimize bed space as detention numbers have ballooned from 39,152 on 29 December to 56,945 on 26 July.”
Jorge-Mario Cabrera, spokesperson for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights L.A., called the Trump administration’s detention policies cruel, saying it appears that they are detaining people for as long as possible and “moving them from place to place for no reason other than because they can.”
“The fact that these dumbfounding transfers in the middle of the night cause chaos, confusion, and minimizes access to legal representation does not seem to bother them one bit,” he said in a statement.
Susham M. Modi, an immigration attorney based in Houston, said he had witnessed an uptick in the frequency of transfers among those recently detained by ICE.
“[Detainees are] also being often transferred to where there’s less lawyers,” he said. “I’ve seen consults where they’ve been transferred to Oklahoma, where it is very hard to find an attorney that might do, for example, federal court litigation.”
Although families can use ICE’s Online Detainee Locator to search for loved ones, it isn’t always up to date, and some families do not know how to use it, Modi said. When detainees are transferred, they often can’t make outgoing calls from the detention facility until someone has deposited money into their account — another hurdle for keeping family members updated on their whereabouts, he added.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement used solitary confinement at its detention facilities more than 14,000 times between 2018 and 2023, including one California immigrant detainee who was held for 759 days, according to a report published Tuesday.
The report found that solitary placements at ICE facilities lasted on average about a month. Nearly half exceeded 15 days.
Solitary confinement is used in ICE detention facilities as a form of punishment as well as to protect certain at-risk immigrants.
Human rights groups say the practice is harmful and should be scaled back dramatically at all U.S. prisons and detention facilities. The United Nations has called solitary confinement longer than 15 consecutive days a form of torture.
ICE in recent years has come under fire from state officials and human rights groups for its reliance on the practice, and a lack of proper oversight and monitoring.
The 71-page report — one of the most expansive looks to date into ICE’s use of solitary confinement — was conducted by Physicians for Human Rights, Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School. It was based on internal ICE records at 125 detention facilities obtained through litigation under the Freedom of Information Act.
Researchers said ICE’s use of solitary confinement and the time periods involved were both on track to grow in 2023, though its data was only collected through Sept. 13.
“The harms are just so well established — they’re incontrovertible,” said Sabrineh Ardalan, director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic. “That’s why the failure to make any significant change is shocking.”
ICE spokesperson Mike Alvarez said the agency places detainees in isolation only after careful consideration of alternatives.
“Administrative segregation placements for a special vulnerability should be used only as a last resort,” Alvarez said. “Segregation is never used as a method of retaliation.”
About 700 solitary placements lasted at least 90 days, and 42 lasted more than a year, according to the report.
The longest completed instance of solitary confinement was that of a Mexican woman held at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego for 759 consecutive days until Dec. 2, 2019. Her placement was coded as “detainee requested” and the reasoning was listed as “other,” though the record also showed a disciplinary infraction for fighting, said Arevik Avedian, director of empirical research services at Harvard Law School.
Two other cases were longer, but they were not included in the report because they were still ongoing at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash., as of Sept. 13 — for 817 and 811 days, respectively.
ICE standards generally limit disciplinary isolation to 30 days per violation. But administrative segregation, regarded as non-punitive and intended for the detainee’s safety, can be indefinite.
ICE didn’t list the isolated immigrants’ mental health status in every record. But in the nearly 8,800 records that did include mental health information, about 40% documented mental health conditions.
For people identified as transgender, the average length of solitary confinement was two months, researchers said.
Alvarez said ICE doesn’t place detainees in solitary confinement solely because of mental illness unless directed or recommended to do so by medical staff. Detainees are often placed there because they request protective custody, as a result of a disciplinary hearing or to quarantine if no medical housing is available.
Detainees with mental health issues are under the care of medical professionals, he said, and are removed from solitary confinement if they determine it has resulted in a deterioration of their health and an appropriate alternative is available.
About 38,500 immigrants were being held by ICE as of Jan. 28, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan research organization at Syracuse University. Two-thirds of those detained have no criminal record and many others have only minor offenses, such as traffic violations.
ICE has said it is moving to reduce its use of solitary confinement over the past decade.
The agency issued a 2013 directive limiting its use, particularly for people with vulnerabilities, such as disabilities or mental illness.
A 2015 memo emphasized protections for transgender people, specifying that solitary confinement “should be used only as a last resort.”
A 2022 directive strengthened protections and reporting requirements for people with mental health conditions in solitary confinement.
Detainees held in solitary confinement are isolated in small cells away from the general population for up to 24 hours a day and have minimal contact with other people. Prolonged solitary confinement is known to cause adverse health effects, including risk of suicide and brain damage.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a 2022 bill that would have regulated and significantly reduced solitary confinement in jails, prisons and ICE facilities.
Watchdog reports have repeatedly identified failures in ICE’s approach to and oversight of solitary confinement.
In 2021, the California Department of Justice issued a review of ICE detention in the state, with comprehensive looks at three privately operated facilities. Cal DOJ found little distinction between the conditions for detainees in administrative isolation as for those held for disciplinary reasons. The agency also found that detainees with mental illnesses were held in solitary confinement despite the isolation worsening their conditions.
“Most detainees in segregation are in their cells for 22 hours a day and when they are allowed outside they are generally recreating in individual cages,” the California report stated.
The same year, a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that ICE failed to consistently comply with reporting requirements for solitary confinement. Investigators analyzed records from fiscal years 2015 to 2019 and found ICE hadn’t maintained evidence showing it considered alternatives to isolation in 72% of solitary confinement placements.
Citing that report, Democratic senators, including the late Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Alex Padilla of California, pressed ICE leaders about the agency’s “excessive and seemingly indiscriminate use of solitary confinement,” calling it a long-standing problem.
A 2022 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that information about detainee vulnerabilities and explanations of what led to their placement in solitary confinement were inconsistent. The GAO analyzed solitary confinement placements from 2017 through 2021 and found that about 40% were for disciplinary reasons and 60% were for administrative reasons, such as protective custody.
ICE says facility staff are required to offer people in administrative segregation the same privileges as those in general housing, including recreation, visitation, access to the law library and phones. They could also spend additional time out of isolation socializing or doing voluntary work assignments such as cleaning. Privileges for those in disciplinary segregation vary based on the amount of supervision required.
But two dozen formerly detained people interviewed by the report authors described having limited or no access to phone calls, recreation, medical care and medications.
Karim Golding, 39, of Jamaica was detained by ICE from 2016 to 2021. At the Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama, which ICE stopped using in 2022 because of its “long history of serious deficiencies,” Golding said he spent nearly two months in solitary confinement after testing positive for COVID-19. He now lives in New York.
Golding said that during the height of the pandemic, as the facility allowed busloads of new detainees in without following proper distancing or isolation guidelines, he urged the staff to provide tests. He and other detainees submitted dozens of sick calls requesting tests.
When the staff finally complied, he and several others were placed in solitary after testing positive for the coronavirus. He said he believes the move was retaliatory.
Golding remembers sometimes spending 40 hours at a time in his dingy 8×10-foot cell with holes in the concrete walls and no access to a shower. The isolation was lonely, he recalled.
“I went to sleep one night and woke up suffocating in the cell,” he said. “I started to cry because there was no panic button inside these cells. There was no officer, anything for help.”
Two other detainees reached by The Times said they were held in solitary confinement at facilities in Texas and Louisiana for several days while on a hunger strike.
As a candidate, President Biden pledged to end the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons. He signed an executive order in 2022 promising to ensure incarcerated people are “free from prolonged segregation.”
Authors of Tuesday’s report called on Biden to phase out the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention.
“There is still time,” Ardalan said. “This is one legacy he could leave from his administration.”
Workers at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, one of California’s largest immigrant detention facilities, are urging the federal government not to shut it down next year following discussions over its potential closure, according to the union that represents many of them.
Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said a contract extension by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement gives the agency until Feb. 19 to decide the facility’s future.
“This is a major employer in that area,” Erwin said. “If you close a facility like that, it would be absolutely devastating to the local economy and devastating to these workers.”
A former state prison that began operating as an ICE detention center in 2011, Adelanto currently holds few detainees though it has a capacity of 1,940. Its population dropped dramatically in 2020 after an outbreak of COVID-19 cases tore through the facility, prompting a federal judge to order the release of detainees, and to prohibit new intakes and transfers.
Adelanto has also faced scrutiny from federal and state watchdogs over health and safety violations.
In 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a warning to the GEO Group, the Florida-based private prison corporation that operates the facility, after finding that misuse of a chemical disinfectant spray caused detainees nosebleeds and nausea. A few years earlier, federal inspectors found nooses in cells and overuse of disciplinary segregation. Detainees reported waiting months to see a doctor.
ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A GEO Group spokesman declined to comment, referring questions to ICE.
Advocates said closing Adelanto would be a victory for immigrants and the local community. A coalition of groups called Shut Down Adelanto has urged the facility’s closure for years.
Erwin voiced his concerns about a possible closure in a Nov. 29 letter to President Biden, noting he learned that the “dramatic underutilization” of the facility could prompt its closure on Dec. 19, when the facility contract was up, which would lead to the termination of 350 union members just days before Christmas.
“This Administration considering the closure of the Adelanto ICE Processing Center at a time when capacity is so desperately needed in this area is genuinely perplexing and seemingly counter-intuitive,” he wrote, pointing to the Biden administration’s supplemental budget request in October to fund 12,500 more ICE beds.
Erwin argued that the request was inconsistent with a closure of the Adelanto facility, which is already paid for under existing appropriations.
Workers were happy to learn they would not immediately lose their jobs, Erwin said Tuesday, but they worry about what will happen long-term.
A GEO Group economic impact analysis provided to The Times by Erwin shows the company spent more than $46 million in the city of Adelanto this year, including nearly $40 million in wages.
Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) wrote to ICE leadership on Oct. 3 urging them to seek relief from the 2020 court order so that intakes could resume. Though the population of detainees at Adelanto has dwindled, the facility has remained fully staffed and operational, he said.
“This striking example of exorbitant government waste and resource mismanagement is completely unacceptable,” he wrote, noting that Adelanto is the only detention facility in the country with an absolute intake prohibition related to COVID-19.
Carlos Castillo Mejia, 52, of El Salvador is one of the six people who remain detained at the Adelanto facility. Castillo Mejia, who has been detained there for nearly five years and is currently appealing his deportation at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, said Friday that the facility was operating as normal, with no indication from staff that it would close.
“I can’t understand how the government has thought to keep this facility open with such a minimal number of people, paying millions and millions,” Castillo Mejia said.
