WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0No one seems to know what happened to Vicente Ventura Aguilar. <\/p>\n
A witness told his brother and attorneys that the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant, who doesn\u2019t have lawful immigration status, was taken into custody by immigration authorities on Oct. 7 in SouthLos Angeles and suffered a medical emergency. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s been more than six weeks since then, and Ventura Aguilar\u2019s family still hasn\u2019t heard from him. <\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security said 73 people from Mexico were arrested in the Los Angeles area between Oct. 7 and 8. <\/p>\n
\u201cNone of them were Ventura Aguilar,\u201d said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor the record, illegal aliens in detention have access to phones to contact family members and attorneys,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
McLaughlin did not answer questions about what the agency did to determine whether Ventura Aguilar had ever been in its custody, such as checking for anyone with the same date of birth, variations of his name, or identifying detainees who received medical attention near the California border around Oct. 8.<\/p>\n
Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing Ventura Aguilar\u2019s family, said DHS never responded to her inquiries about him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar, 44, says he has been missing since Oct. 7 when a friend saw him arrested by federal immigration agents in Los Angeles. Homeland Security officials say he was never in their custody.<\/p>\n
(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s only one agency that has answers,\u201d she said. \u201cTheir refusal to provide this family with answers, their refusal to provide his attorneys with answers, says something about the lack of care and the cruelty of the moment right now for DHS.\u201d <\/p>\n
His family and lawyers checked with local hospitals and the Mexican consulate without success. They enlisted help from the office of Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), whose staff called the Los Angeles and San Diego county medical examiner\u2019s offices. Neither had someone matching his name or description. <\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Police Department also told Kamlager-Dove\u2019s office that he isn\u2019t in their system. His brother, Felipe Aguilar, said the family filed a missing person\u2019s report with LAPD on Nov. 7. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re sad and worried,\u201d Felipe Aguilar said. \u201cHe\u2019s my brother and we miss him here at home. He\u2019s a very good person. We only hope to God that he\u2019s alive.\u201d <\/p>\n
Felipe Aguilar said his brother, who has lived in the U.S. for around 17 years, left home around 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 7 to catch the bus for an interview for a sanitation job when he ran into friends on the corner near a local liquor store. He had his phone but had left his wallet at home.<\/p>\n
One of those friends told Felipe Aguilar and his lawyers that he and Ventura Aguilar were detained by immigration agents and then held at B-18, a temporary holding facility at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles. <\/p>\n
The friend was deported the next day to Tijuana. He spoke to the family in a phone call from Mexico. <\/p>\n
Detainees at B-18 have limited access to phones and lawyers. Immigrants don\u2019t usually turn up in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement online locator system<\/a> until they\u2019ve arrived at a long-term detention facility. <\/p>\n According to Felipe Aguilar and Toczylowski, the friend said Ventura Aguilar began to shake, went unconscious and fell to the ground while shackled on Oct. 8 at a facility near the border. The impact caused his face to bleed. <\/p>\n The friend said that facility staff called for an ambulance and moved the other detainees to a different room. Toczylowski said that was the last time anyone saw Ventura Aguilar. <\/p>\n She said the rapid timeline between when Ventura Aguilar was arrested to when he disappeared is emblematic of what she views as a broad lack of due process for people in government custody under the Trump administration and shows that \u201cwe don\u2019t know who\u2019s being deported from the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n Felipe Aguilar said he called his brother\u2019s cell phone after hearing about the arrests but it went straight to voicemail. <\/p>\n Felipe Aguilar said that while his brother is generally healthy, he saw a cardiologist a couple years ago about chest pain. He was on prescribed medication and his condition had improved. <\/p>\n His family and lawyers said Ventura Aguilar might have given immigration agents a fake name when he was arrested. Some detained people offer up a wrong name or alias, and that would explain why he never showed up in Homeland Security records. Toczylowski said federal agents sometimes misspell the name of the person they are booking into custody. <\/p>\n Vicente Ventura Aguilar, who has been missing since Oct. 7, had lived in the United States for 17 years, his family said. <\/p>\n (Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)<\/p>\n But she said the agency should make a significant attempt to search for him, such as by using biometric data or his photo. <\/p>\n \u201cTo me, that\u2019s another symptom of the chaos of the immigration enforcement system as it\u2019s happening right now,\u201d she said of the issues with accurately identifying detainees. \u201cAnd it\u2019s what happens when you are indiscriminately, racially profiling people and picking them up off the street and holding them in conditions that are substandard, and then deporting people without due process. Mistakes get made. Right now, what we want to know is what mistakes were made here, and where is Vicente now?\u201d <\/p>\n Surveillance footage from a nearby business reviewed by MS NOW<\/a> shows Ventura Aguilar on the sidewalk five minutes before masked agents begin making arrests in South Los Angeles. The footage doesn\u2019t show him being arrested, but two witnesses told the outlet that they saw agents handcuff Ventura Aguilar and place him in a van.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n