The family of Benjamin Guerrero-Cruz was stunned and inconsolate when the immigration agents grabbed him 18 while walking his dog in Van Nuys a few days before his last year began at Reeda Charter High School.
This week, his family was caught off the outside on guard once again when they learned that the immigration and customs application had transferred it to Arizona without notifying any relative, according to the office of the US representative Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood), who spoke with his family and reviewed the ICE detention records.
Guerrero-Cruz was transferred outside the Advance Detention Center in San Bernardino County on Monday night and taken to a possession installation 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, an important center for deportation flights, but at the last minute they took him out of the plane and sent him back to advance, where he is currently being detained.
“Benjamin and his family deserve responses behind the inconsistent and chaotic decision -making process, including why Benjamin was initially transferred to Arizona, why he was scheduled to be transferred to Louisiana, and why his family was not notified of his whereabouts by ICE throughout this process,” Rivas said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Rivas presented a bill that would require ICE to notify a member of the immediate family of a detainee within 24 hours after the transfer of a detainee. Currently, ICE is required to notify a family member only in the case of the death of a detainee.
“Benjamin's story of being arrested and sent through state lines without prior notification or notification is like many other detainees in Los Angeles and throughout the country,” Rivas said. “Many immigrant families in my district do not know the whereabouts of their loved ones after they are arrested for ICE.”
The National Security Department did not immediately respond to a request for comments. The agency previously stated that Guerrero-Cruz was waiting for deportation to Chile after overcoming its visa, which required it to leave the United States on March 15, 2023.
Benjamin Guerrero-Cruz, who is shown at school, is an avid soccer player and a beloved older brother, according to his family.
(Rita Silva)
Guerrero-Cruz was arrested on August 8 and held in downtown Los Angeles for a week, during which time he was briefly taken to an inexplicable trip to a detention center in Santa Ana before being transferred to advance on August 15, according to a former teacher who visited him in custody.
His experience of being in Pingponged around different facilities is common among detainees in what the Trump administration is invoicing as the greatest deportation effort in the history of the United States.
This trend is also reflected in ICE flight data. The agency made 2,022 national transfer flights from May to July, which represents a 90% increase from the same period last year, according to a widely cited database of flights created by the defender of the rights of immigrants Tom Cartwright.
Cartwright postulated in its July report that this increase could be related to a “need to optimize space in bed, since detention numbers have shot 39,152 on December 29 to 56,945 on July 26”.
Jorge-Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the Coalition for the Rights of Human Immigrants, described the detention policies of the cruel Trump administration, saying that it seems that they are stopping people as long as possible and “moving them from one place to place without another reason other than because they can.”
“The fact that these target transfers in the middle of the night cause chaos, confusion and minimize access to legal representation does not seem to bother them a little,” he said in a statement.
Susham M. Modi, an immigration lawyer based in Houston, said he had witnessed an increase in the frequency of transfers between those recently detained by ICE.
“[Detainees are] It is also often transferred to where there are fewer lawyers, “he said.” I have seen inquiries where they have been transferred to Oklahoma, where it is very difficult to find a lawyer who can do, for example, litigation of the Federal Court. “
Although families can use the ICE online arrested locator to look for their loved ones, it is not always updated, and some families do not know how to use it, Modi said. When the detainees are transferred, they often cannot make outgoing calls from the detention center until someone has deposited money in their account, another obstacle to keeping family members updated on their whereabouts, he added.
