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 it 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.
A Department of Homeland Security official said in a statement that Guerrero-Cruz was being staged for removal this week but was then transferred back to Adelanto for immigration proceedings. The unnamed official noted that Guerrero-Cruz, a Chilean national, was arrested on Aug. 8 for overstaying his visa, which required him to leave the United States on March 15, 2023.
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.”
In a statement, the Homeland Security official condemned the “messaging bill” as a “clear attempt to demonize our brave ICE law enforcement — who are already facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them — for clicks and fundraising emails.”
“Claims that transfers of detainees are being ‘weaponized’ or ‘hidden’ are also categorically false,” the official added. The official said detainees and attorneys are notified about a transfer and can contact their family at any time. Families can also use ICE’s Online Detainee Locator, the official said.
Susham M. Modi, an immigration attorney based in Houston, said that in practice it is not so simple for family members to learn about a transfer.
In his experience, there is a significant lag in Homeland Security uploading forms to immigration court to notify attorneys of a detainee transfer. In one instance, he didn’t receive the form until after his client had prevailed in an immigration case and been released from detention, he said.
Although families can use ICE’s online 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 — which family members can’t do if they aren’t aware of the transfer, he added.
Benjamin Guerrero-Cruz, shown at school, is an avid soccer player and loving older brother, according to his family.
(Rita Silva)
Guerrero-Cruz was held in downtown L.A. for a week after his arrest, during which 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 officials 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,” he said in a statement, “does not seem to bother them one bit.”
Modi said he has increasingly seen transfers to remote detention facilities, which can make it harder for detainees to win their cases.
“This creates further obstacles, like finding a qualified attorney nearby to visit the detainee in person to sign forms, to meet with the detainee and prepare for trial,” he said in a statement, “and the additional hurdle that the witnesses for any trial will be telephonic as opposed to in person in front of the judge.”
Source link
