ICE agents continue to specifically target and apprehend Latinos based on how they look, the jobs they work and the language they speak.
The San Fernando Valley has been regular territory for ICE agents to racially profile and apprehend people. Regardless of having no criminal history, those dropping their kids off at school, simply walking down a street or in a park have been detained. It has been open season on Latino workers who have been taken while at their jobs and even from their homes.
Those taken to detention centers in various stages of the immigration process can still find themselves facing removal proceedings and without the benefit of having available legal counsel, they often feel pressured to choose self deportation rather than prolong their case in the court system.
Detainees report they contend with inadequate medical care, poor food and mistreatment from the guards. They are told they will be charged with high fines and won’t be able to return to the United States unless they self-deport.
This was the difficult decision that Vicente Guerra Aldana, who was taken right outside the Home Depot in the City of San Fernando by ICE, was forced to make.
His employer, a contractor who spoke to the San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the 28-year-old self-deported to Guatemala at least two weeks ago. Federal immigration authorities detained him on Oct. 21.
Guerra Aldana was one of three people detained by ICE that Tuesday morning. The contractor said that he was finishing up a construction job and drove with Guerra Aldana to the shopping center to pick up a few things.
The contractor went to Target and Home Depot, while Guerra Aldana waited in his truck. After spending only an estimated five minutes at Home Depot, the contractor returned only to see ICE agents pulling his employee out of his truck. He captured the incident on video.
Despite the contractor’s protests, ICE agents wearing “military-style” equipment and masks took Guerra Aldana away.
Initially, no one knew which facility Guerra Aldana had been transferred to, and any efforts to obtain answers from the Enforcement and Removal Office (ERO) – which manages all aspects of the immigration detention process – proved fruitless.
“I called all the [ERO locations] in the area, [but] they’re so, so rude,” the contractor said. “They’re just so bothered that you’re even calling. They’re so annoyed that you’re trying to locate someone, even though that’s what the ERO phone number is for.”
He added that at one point during a call, he overheard a woman in the background telling the person he was speaking with to hang up on him.
After a few days, the contractor said that Guerra Aldana had managed to contact him. During a phone call in which he was only allowed a minute to speak with him, Guerra Aldana revealed he was being kept under an alias – Jesus Alberto Ortiz Gomez – which Guerra Aldana said was given to him by immigration authorities according to the contractor.
“It made it super difficult to find him because every time we would look up his real name and date of birth, nothing would show up,” the contractor said. It wasn’t until they received that crucial piece of information that the contractor and his family learned he was detained at Desert View Annex in Adelanto.
“I still don’t know to this day why they gave him an alias,” he said. “I can only think that it was just to throw anyone off who was trying to look for him.”
Initially, Guerra Aldana and his family sought to fight his case, but the contractor said he later changed his mind. He didn’t want to stay in detention any longer and didn’t think “it’s going to be worth fighting for either way.”
The family and the contractor were in constant contact with Guerra Aldana until Oct. 28, when he suddenly went radio silent. Nobody heard from him or knew what had happened until he arrived back in Guatemala. He said he had been transferred to another four facilities before he was deported.
A GoFundMe was created the day that Guerra Aldana was detained and raised $3,200. The funds have been sent to him while he determines what to do next.
Editor Diana Martinez contributed to this article.
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