Oakland Sisters Lead Fight to Free LA Relatives From ICE Detention

Jennifer Alejo was taking a midmorning stroll through the serene San Francisco Botanical Garden when she got a panicked call from her mother in Los Angeles. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the garment warehouse where more than a dozen of Alejo’s cousins and uncles worked.

The men were handcuffed, loaded into white vans and driven away as federal agents in military gear clashed with protesters outside the warehouse’s gates.

At first, Alejo didn’t know how many relatives were arrested or where they were taken. Over the next frantic 24 hours of phone calls and online searches, a clearer picture emerged: ICE had detained 14 of her family members in a single swoop at Ambiance Apparel on June 6.

“I am freaking out because I’ve been in the Bay organizing for 10 years, but I have never gone up to the immigration machine in this way,” said Alejo, who leads the Oakland-based nonprofit Trabajadores Unidos Workers United. “So I was nervous.”

The Alejos’ story captures the new reality of immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump: mass workplace raids returning on a scale not seen in years, sweeping up longtime residents with no criminal records and leaving families to navigate a system stacked against them.

Across California and the U.S., ICE arrests and detentions have climbed sharply in recent years, as the administration renews its focus on high-profile raids and deportations — forcing communities to organize legal and financial lifelines on the fly.

The Bay Area has braced for aggressive immigration arrests like those seen in Los Angeles and Chicago in recent months. Last week, dozens of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents arrived at a Coast Guard base in Alameda, prompting a confrontation with protesters. Tensions eased after President Donald Trump called off a planned surge of federal agents targeting San Francisco on Oct. 23, and Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said the next day that scheduled ICE and Border Patrol operations were canceled. Still, immigrant advocates, school leaders and elected officials urged residents to stay prepared.

Alejo and his younger sister, Citlali, also a staffer at the organization, knew their relatives would have a better chance at release if the family worked together. They tapped their Bay Area networks for legal aid and fundraising, and rallied relatives and close friends in L.A. to launch Lucha Zapoteca, a public campaign named for their Indigenous Zapoteca roots from Southern Mexico.

Nearly five months later, public awareness about the family’s plight helped raise more than $370,000 from thousands of donors — enough to pay immigration bonds, which can range from $1,500 to more than $25,000 each, and cover rent and groceries for relatives left without breadwinners.

Immigration attorneys in the Bay Area and Southern California worked to free 11 of the men from the Adelanto ICE detention center and secured long-term representation.

“We wanted people to know that they could fight back. We didn’t know what it was going to look like, but we also knew that our community does have rights,” said Alejo, 33. “But it is hard to organize your own family into action, especially when there’s just so much at stake.”

The family joined protests, including outside of the Adelanto facility, and packed court hearings to show support — a factor immigration judges often consider when deciding whether to release a detainee on bond.

One of Alejo’s relatives is still locked up at the Adelanto facility, about 90 miles from L.A. Two were deported, including a 22-year-old who, the sisters said, didn’t realize the papers he signed sealed his removal to Tijuana. The other relative, unable to endure detention conditions, voluntarily agreed to deportation.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment on why Ambiance Apparel, which employs about 150 employees at its warehouse and showroom, was targeted in June or about the operation’s outcome. It’s unclear whether the 2021 sentencing of the company’s owner to one year in federal prison for failing to pay more than $35 million in taxes and customs duties was connected to the raid. Ambiance has denied any wrongdoing.

“Ambiance is committed to following the law and to supporting its workers, many of whom have worked for the company for decades,” said Benjamin Gluck, an attorney representing the company, in a statement.

White House “border czar” Tom Homan said federal agents executed a search warrant at the business, which has locations in L.A.’s Fashion District and Vernon, as part of a criminal investigation that also swept up undocumented workers. But U.S. Attorney Bill Assaily said the judicial warrant that gained agents’ entry to the gated worksite was only for immigration enforcement.

California law prohibits employers from allowing ICE into their facilities unless agents present a valid judicial warrant.

The roughly 10,300 ICE arrests in California from January through July represent nearly double the total for all of 2024 and more than five times the arrests in 2023, according to a KQED analysis of data from the UC Berkeley Deportation Data Project. About 62% of this year’s arrests occurred in ICE’s Los Angeles area of responsibility, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

The Trump administration said its immigration crackdown prioritizes expelling dangerous criminals, but undocumented immigrants with no criminal records are being detained as well.

“I’ve said a thousand times that aperture will open,” Homan told NBC News in  June. “And I said, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”

Deciding to push back

After Alejo and Citlali drove to L.A. on the evening of June 6, they met with dozens of worried relatives and friends who gathered at a Quinceañera party hall someone had secured. They tallied which family members hadn’t returned home from their shifts and spoke with two Bay Area immigration attorneys Alejo had already contacted. Her first question: Could the family help by speaking up and organizing?

The hall had a projector. Alejo brought in Lisa Knox of the California Center for Immigrant Justice and Luis Angel Reyes Savalza of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office via Zoom. Both attorneys, active in local immigration rapid response networks, confirmed that public pressure could boost a legal process to get the fathers and husbands out of detention. Alejo reminded her family that it would take work and courage.

“I was transparent, that, hey, this is going to be a big fight. I do think we can fight back, but we need to be vocal,” Alejo, an Oakland resident who organizes low-wage cooks, builders and other workers to combat labor violations such as wage theft.

Her sister Citlali, 27, who works in communications, organized Lucha Zapoteca’s first press conference that weekend. Many relatives felt anxious, Citlali said, but Yurien Contreras was the first to volunteer to talk to reporters about her father’s arrest and what it meant for her and three younger brothers.

On June 9, supporters held cardboard signs with photos of their 14 detained relatives outside of Ambiance’s warehouse. When it was her turn to speak, Contreras stepped onto a wooden box near a podium and faced a wall of reporters for the first time. The 20-year-old American citizen had rushed to the warehouse in time to see federal agents lead her father and roughly 40 others away the previous Friday. She demanded that immigration authorities respect the workers’ due process rights and release them.

“I witnessed how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and from his ankles,” said Yurien, speaking into a bouquet of microphones. “We suffered and still suffer from this traumatizing experience emotionally, mentally, and physically…We need our father back.”

Contreras said her father’s absence was particularly hard on her 4-year-old brother, who has special needs and stopped eating and talking for about a week. For the three months her father was detained, Contreras found it difficult to sleep. She ultimately deferred her college enrollment to stay home and support her family full-time.

Their stories struck a nerve in a city reeling from aggressive immigration sweeps and the arrival of National Guard soldiers, sometimes fully armed, sent by Trump to help federal agents. TV stations and newspapers carried the Alejo family’s story — even into the ICE Processing Center in Adelanto.

One of Contreras’ uncles, uncertain about what would happen to his four U.S.-born children, said another detainee peeked into his cell to tell him his family was on TV. Disbelieving, he hurried to the recreation room but missed the newscast. He waited for the next one at 6 p.m. When he finally saw his eldest daughter on screen, he wondered how his shy 23-year-old had found the strength to speak fearlessly. KQED agreed to grant the man anonymity because of his pending immigration case.

“It helped me a lot because I saw the support both from my family members and everyone who was there,” the man, who was released from detention in late August, said in Spanish. “It gives you more courage to cope with the case because it can be very exhausting. The psychological anguish eats at you, wears you out.”

He worked for 15 years in L.A.’s construction and janitorial industries before handling shipping at Ambiance for the last five years. He said it’s been hard to adjust to life after detention, as he’s unable to work while fighting his immigration case. Not knowing whether he will be deported still weighs heavily on him, but he’s grateful to Lucha Zapoteca for legal representation and financial help that keep his children and wife fed and housed.

Community and strangers step in to help

One vocal supporter has been the Rev. Jaime Edwards-Acton, rector at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Hollywood, where the family attends services. He got involved early to raise funds and coordinate donations. His parishioners, led by two sisters in their 20s, have delivered weekly boxes of groceries, diapers and household supplies to Alejo’s relatives. The church is expanding efforts to help more Angelenos affected by ICE arrests.

“It’s been an amazing kind of outpouring of generosity and a desire to really want to do something, to make a positive contribution to this mess that we find ourselves in right now,” said Edwards-Acton, who also wrote letters supporting the detained Ambiance workers to the immigration court.

He said the Alejo family’s campaign and the broader community response have inspired him. Edwards-Acton recalled an interfaith vigil at downtown L.A.’s Grand Park, attended by about 1,000 people, where speakers included Mayor Karen Bass and Contreras. He said Contreras’ powerful testimony countered fear.

“That’s what kind of really moves people to action. Her courage was really contagious,” he said. “It wasn’t just a testimony of despair. It was a testimony about this tragic moment, but also how we’re fighting for justice.”

Contreras, who had a baby in March, spent her time attending court hearings for her father and the other detained relatives while caring for her brothers, mother and her child. Her 17-year-old brother remained withdrawn but kept his grades up. One day, he said he had a new goal — to graduate with honors to make his parents proud.

Their efforts paid off: Contreras’ father returned home in early September.

“It was a lot of hard work, a lot of times where it felt impossible for my dad to be liberated,” Contreras, who hopes to one day become an ultrasound technician, said. “We are super excited that he’s back home. We are thankful for this second opportunity with my dad.”

Attorneys for the Alejo family, who believe their clients were unlawfully targeted, said they face a difficult path to remain in the U.S. The Trump administration recently changed its policies to make detainees who crossed the border illegally ineligible for bond. Dozens of immigration judges, employed by the Department of Justice, have been fired and temporarily replaced with military lawyers who are not trained to oversee deportation hearings.

As the Bay Area and other regions remain on high alert for more ICE enforcement, Alejo said her family’s story — and the support it inspired from strangers — offers hope.

“I feel really proud of our family for doing this,” Alejo said. “It’s also been an amazing time to prove to our community that we can organize when we come together and push back.”