But few details have emerged about what happens to those who are taken. CalMatters spoke with a number of men who were detained on the streets of Los Angeles during the first weekend of the raids. These are the stories three of them told about how they were arrested, how they were treated in government detention and, ultimately, how they were pressured to voluntarily leave the country.<\/p>\n
At 3:10 p.m. on Sunday, June 8, Mauricio Oropeza was waiting for the 33 bus on the corner of Lincoln and Venice boulevards, in Venice. He was headed back from his job cleaning apartment buildings for a maintenance company. It was a two-bus commute, and he was halfway home.<\/p>\n
There were a few other people \u2013 three men, a woman and her daughter \u2013 waiting for the same bus. No one seemed to know what to make of the truck that suddenly pulled up in front of them, or of the men in jeans and baseball caps that stepped out of the vehicle. One of them was holding a photo of a Latino man with the word \u201cBUSCA\u201d \u2013 Spanish for \u201cWANTED\u201d \u2013 printed across the top.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you seen this person?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
When two of the commuters began to run, Oropeza did the same. That\u2019s when several Border Patrol vehicles stopped in front of them, he said, and armed men in tactical gear jumped out. One of the agents tripped Oropeza and pinned him to the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t resist,\u201d he told him.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/scpr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/2db5a99\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2000x1333+0+0\/resize\/792x528!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fscpr-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fe5%2F54%2Fb25b11c244939ee0078048545f03%2F062525-mauricio-oropeza-crb-cm-18.jpeg\")
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Mauricio Oropeza in Santa Maria Ajoloapan in Mexico State in Mexico, on June 25, 2025.<\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Cristopher Rogel Blanquet<\/p>\n
\/<\/p>\n
CalMatters<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
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A room in Mauricio Oropeza\u2019s home in Santa Maria Ajoloapan. <\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Cristopher Rogel Blanquet<\/p>\n
\/<\/p>\n
CalMatters<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/scpr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/dfcd937\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2000x1333+0+0\/resize\/792x528!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fscpr-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Faf%2F10%2F256fa9454bb5aa6605617b1f7cbd%2F062525-mauricio-oropeza-crb-cm-13.jpeg\")
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A horse grazes on grass outside of Mauricio Oropeza\u2019s home in Santa Maria Ajoloapan in Mexico, on June 25, 2025. <\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Cristopher Rogel Blanquet<\/p>\n
\/<\/p>\n
CalMatters<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
Mauricio Oropeza in Santa Maria Ajoloapan in Mexico State in Mexico, on June 25, 2025. Photo by Cristopher Rogel Blanquet for CalMatters First: A room in Mauricio Oropeza’s home in Santa Maria Ajoloapan. Last: A horse grazes on grass outside of Mauricio Oropeza’s home in Santa Maria Ajoloapan in Mexico, on June 25, 2025. Photos by Cristopher Rogel Blanquet for CalMatters The agents took his cell phone and Mexican passport. He was loaded onto one of the vehicles along with the other men from the bus stop, all of them struggling to adjust to their new reality. They would not be going home that night. They would not get to call their families to explain.<\/p>\n
As they drove away, the agents spotted two Latino men walking on the sidewalk. Oropeza said they got on their radio, said \u201ctwo more,\u201d and then another vehicle peeled off to pursue them.<\/p>\n
Less than two hours later and exactly a mile away, Omar Sanchez Lopez left his apartment on Rose Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard, in Venice, with his apron draped over his shoulder. He was on his way to work bussing tables at a nearby Italian restaurant when a Honda Civic pulled into the apartment complex parking lot. Lopez thought the driver, who was in jeans, t-shirt and baseball cap, was there to visit one of his neighbors. But then the man stepped out of the car and approached him. He was holding a piece of paper with photos of four Latino men, and he asked Lopez, in Spanish, \u201cDo you know these people?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez, 27, didn\u2019t answer. But the man continued: \u201cDo you speak English? Where do you work? How old are you? Are you a citizen? Do you have papers?\u201d<\/p>\n
When Lopez asked, \u201cwhy are you asking me these questions,\u201d the man pulled out his badge and said, \u201cICE.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez thought about turning around to go back inside, but a masked Border Patrol agent got out of the vehicle and told him to put his hands behind his back. Within minutes he was handcuffed and sitting in the back of the car.<\/p>\n
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Omar Sanchez Lopez is detained by federal immigration agents on June 8, 2025. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing in the United States?\u201d he said the agent asked him as they drove away. \u201cIt\u2019s not your country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez didn\u2019t answer. He looked out the window at the traffic as the sedan pulled him farther and farther away from his home, his family, his life.<\/p>\n
By the time Lopez and Oropeza were taken, Juan Flores Morales had been under arrest for more than 24 hours. He had been taking a lunch break on Saturday with three other men on his construction crew, eating a pizza outside the restaurant they were renovating in Inglewood, when masked Border Patrol agents rolled by in a truck.<\/p>\n
Morales felt, for an instant, as though he was paralyzed. \u201cThe fear is crazy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Then two agents got out of the vehicle, and Morales, 27, ran into the restaurant. He searched frantically for an escape, but a Border Patrol agent burst through the door and pinned him down.<\/p>\n
\u201cTranquilo,\u201d the agent told him. \u201cDon\u2019t move.\u201d<\/p>\n
They handcuffed him and asked whether he had participated in the immigration protests that had started the night before, following the first raids.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t get involved in that,\u201d he told them. \u201cYou got us at work. You got us while working.\u201d<\/p>\n
They took his cell phone, he said, and plugged it into a device that unlocked it, which allowed them to look through his contacts and communications.<\/p>\n
Morales thought his lack of a criminal record would help him. But it didn\u2019t. \u201cI don\u2019t know why they don\u2019t want us in Los Angeles,\u201d he thought.<\/p>\n
The agents drove him away, leaving his tools at the restaurant.<\/p>\n
Lopez, Oropeza and Morales are now in Chiapas, Mexico City and Puebla, respectively, and we spoke to them by phone. Their accounts of their arrests, detention, and rapid removal suggest federal agents are working from a new playbook, one that dispenses with the longstanding practice of targeted arrests and relies on only the thinnest pretext, like a wanted poster, for approaching people who appear Latino.<\/p>\n
In April, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction barring the Border Patrol from conducting warrantless raids<\/a> in the Central Valley. \u201cYou just can\u2019t walk up to people with brown skin and say, \u2018Give me your papers,\u2019\u201d U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston said, finding the warrantless stops likely violated the Constitution\u2019s protection against unreasonable searches.<\/p>\n The man who led that operation, El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, is now in charge<\/a> of the operations across Los Angeles.<\/p>\n U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino attends a press conference in Los Angeles on June 12, 2025. <\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Aude Guerrucci<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n Reuters<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n The men\u2019s stories also suggest that agents are pushing people to sign removal forms before they can call home or speak with an attorney. Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, said those tactics would be \u201cblatantly illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t condition phone access on anything,\u201d Arulanantham said. \u201cThey have a right to call their family. They have a right to call a lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n He also raised concerns about the treatment the men described in government facilities. \u201cIt\u2019s not permissible to manipulate the conditions of detention to encourage people to give up their rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Migrants can challenge the legality of their arrest and detention, he said, but they usually have to be in the country and be able to call a lawyer.<\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Immigration detention centers are well above capacity<\/a>, and the men we spoke with were almost immediately moved to an ICE tent camp in Texas and, within days, across the border to an immigration facility in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n Before the Trump administration began its mass deportation campaign, many immigrants arrested away from the border were released on bond with a notice to appear in immigration court. Those with criminal histories were typically held in detention facilities.<\/p>\n Now, Bovino has made clear<\/a>, he considers anyone who crossed the border without documents \u2013 the farm worker, the day laborer, the paletero \u2013 a criminal.<\/p>\n \u201cBad people,\u201d he called them during a press conference with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem earlier this month.<\/p>\n New Immigration and Customs Enforcement data from June 1 to June 10, analyzed by the Los Angeles Times<\/a>, shows that 69 percent of the people detained in the LA area had never been convicted of a crime.<\/p>\n A criminal records search in Los Angeles and the California state prison system for Oropeza, Lopez and Morales returned no results. Oropeza and Lopez said they had been caught at the border and deported years before.<\/p>\n From the bus stop on Venice Boulevard, Oropeza was taken to a parking lot in Santa Ana where the agents put him in shackles. He had chains on his wrists, his ankles, and around his waist. Then they loaded him onto another vehicle and drove him to a place he described as a kind of jail. There were no beds, he said, and everyone slept on the floor. Lopez and Morales were there as well.<\/p>\n At 5 am the following day, all three were taken to an airfield near the Mojave Desert, where they boarded a plane to Texas with around 35 other men from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.<\/p>\n Juan Flores Morales outside of this home in Tehuacan, Puebla in Mexico, on June 25, 2025.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Cristopher Rogel Blanquet<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n CalMatters<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n Juan Flores Morales shows a document he signed prior to his deportation in Tehuacan, Puebla in Mexico, on June 25, 2025.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Cristopher Rogel Blanquet<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n CalMatters<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n For the next few days, they were detained in an ICE tent camp in El Paso. Lopez said he was given a small bottle of water, potato chips and an apple. The cells were kept uncomfortably cold, he said, and the detainees were given only mylar blankets. When he asked to make a phone call, he was told he would need to share detailed information about the person he was calling \u2013 their name, address, place of work. He decided against it.<\/p>\n He said the agents told him that if he tried to talk to an attorney, he would be stuck there, under the same conditions, for eight months to a year. On Wednesday, just two days after he arrived in El Paso, he agreed to sign the voluntary deportation papers.<\/p>\n \u201cHow they treated you there, I would rather leave,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Oropeza signed the voluntary removal forms that day as well. Thirty minutes later, he was allowed to make his first call.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a family, I have to provide for them,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be stuck there.\u201d<\/p>\n The next day, Lopez, Oropeza and Morales were driven across the border to Ju\u00e1rez, they said, along with dozens of other men from their cells who agreed to sign the forms. There, at a shelter set up by the Mexican government, they were able to shower, eat a hot meal and call their families.<\/p>\n They were also given 2,500 pesos \u2013 the equivalent of around $130 dollars \u2013 to make their way to somewhere else.<\/p>\n This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n ![\"A](\"https:\/\/scpr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/0aec585\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2000x1333+0+0\/resize\/792x528!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fscpr-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fa6%2Feb%2F833df63249d8b3f3f77b9c661105%2F061325-gregory-bovino-reuters-cm-01.jpeg\")
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