An L.A. man was detained in an immigration raid. No one knows where he is

WASHINGTON— No one seems to know what happened to Vicente Ventura Aguilar.

A witness told his brother and their attorney that the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant, who did not have legal immigration status, was detained by immigration authorities in South Los Angeles on Oct. 7 and was experiencing a medical emergency.

But more than six weeks have passed 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, assistant secretary of Homeland Security public affairs.

“For the record, detained illegal aliens have access to phones to contact family members and lawyers,” he added.

McLaughlin did not answer questions about what the agency was doing to determine whether Ventura Aguilar was in its custody, checking to see if anyone had the same birth date, checking to see if his name was different, or identifying detainees who received medical attention near the California border around Oct. 8.

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which represents Ventura Aguilar’s family, said DHS never responded to her questions about him.

“There is only one agency that has the answers,” he said. “Their refusal to respond to this family, their refusal to respond to their attorneys, says something about the current recklessness and cruelty of DHS.”

His family and lawyers appealed to local hospitals and the Mexican consulate, but to no avail. They sought help from the office of Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles); staff from that office called the Los Angeles and San Diego county medical examiner offices. There was no one matching either of their names or descriptions.

The Los Angeles Police Department also told Kamlager-Dove’s office that he was not in their system. His brother, Felipe Aguilar, said the family reported him missing to the LAPD on Nov. 7.

“We are sad and worried,” Felipe Aguilar said. “He’s my brother and we miss him here at home. He’s such a good person. We just hope to God he’s alive.”

Felipe Aguilar said his brother, who has lived in the United States for about 17 years, left home to catch the bus for a cleaning job around 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 7 and ran into friends on the corner next to a local liquor store. He had his phone but left his wallet at home.

One of those friends told Felipe Aguilar and his lawyers that he and Ventura Aguilar were detained by immigration officials and later held in B-18, a temporary facility at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles.

The friend was deported to Tijuana the next day. He spoke to the family in a phone call from Mexico.

Detainees in B-18 have limited access to phones and lawyers. Migrants usually do not show up Immigration and Customs Enforcement online locator system until they reach a long-term detention facility.

According to Felipe Aguilar and Toczylowski, his friends said that when Ventura Aguilar was chained up at a facility near the border on Oct. 8, he started shaking, lost consciousness and fell to the ground. The impact caused his face to bleed.

The friend said facility staff called an ambulance and moved other detainees to a different room. Toczylowski said that was the last time he saw Ventura Aguilar.

He said the rapid timeline from the time Ventura Aguilar was arrested to the time he disappeared was emblematic of what he sees as a lack of due process for people in government custody under the Trump administration and shows that “we don’t know who is being deported from the United States.”

Felipe Aguilar said he called his brother’s cellphone after hearing about the arrests, but the phone went straight to voicemail.

Felipe Aguilar said that his brother was generally healthy, but he consulted a cardiologist a few years ago due to chest pain. He was taking prescription medication and his condition improved.

His family and lawyers said Ventura Aguilar may have given a false name to immigration officials when he was arrested. Some detainees give false names or aliases, which explains why he never shows up in Homeland Security records. Toczylowski said federal agents sometimes misspelled the name of the person they detained.

His family said that Vicente Ventura Aguilar, who has been missing since October 7, has been living in the USA for 17 years.

(family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)

But he said the agency needed to make a significant effort to search for him using biometric data or his photo.

“To me, this is just another symptom of the chaos in the immigration enforcement system that’s happening right now,” he said of problems with properly identifying detainees. “And that’s what happens when you racially profile people indiscriminately, pick them up off the street, hold them in substandard conditions, and then deport people without due process. Mistakes are made. What we want to know right now is what mistakes were made here and where is Vicente now?”

Security footage of a nearby business Reviewed by MS NOW It shows Ventura Aguilar on the sidewalk five minutes before masked agents began making arrests in South Los Angeles. The footage does not show him being arrested, but two witnesses told the press they saw agents handcuff Ventura Aguilar and put him in a van.

In a letter Sent to DHS leaders on FridayKamlager-Dove asked what steps DHS had taken to determine whether anyone matching Ventura Aguilar’s credentials had been taken into custody in the past month and whether the agency had documented any medical events or hospital transports for people taken into custody around Oct. 7-8.

“Given the time that has passed since Mr. Ventura Aguilar’s disappearance and the credible concern that he may have been misidentified, injured, or otherwise unaccounted for during the enforcement process, I urgently request that DHS and ICE conduct an immediate and comprehensive investigation,” Kamlager-Dove wrote in her letter. Kamlager-Dove wrote in her letter.

Kamlager-Dove said the most common immigration requests from voters are for help with visas and passports.

“I never expected to get a call about someone who had completely disappeared from the face of the earth for years, and I also never thought I would find myself not only calling ICE and Border Patrol, but checking hospitals, checking LAPD, and checking morgues to find a voter,” he said. “Horrible and completely dystopian.”

He said families in Los Angeles deserve answers and need to know if something similar could happen to them.

“Who else is missing?” he said.