The Central Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park is in shock following a July 21 raid by Immigration & Customs Enforcement in which a local woman was arrested, over the protests of local residents who demanded to see a warrant. Footage of the brief confrontation has gone viral online.<\/p>\n
The incident began when neighbors responded as ICE agents attempted to hustle a local woman into an unmarked car. The video<\/a>\u00a0shows neighbor Alicia Rivera repeatedly demanding that the agents show her a \u201csigned order\u201d from a judge. The agents apparently flashed some paperwork, but Rivera is repeatedly heard saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not signed by a judge, you shouldn\u2019t be arresting this woman.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey closed their folder, and they asked me not to intervene and I said, \u2018I\u2019m a neighbor and I want to see if you have an order from a judge, you can\u2019t arrest this woman without it,’\u201d Rivera recounted to\u00a0CBS Los Angeles<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rivera, a community organizer familiar with the law, claims both that the paperwork the agents had was not signed and was not on Los Angeles Superior Court letterhead.<\/p>\n Rivera\u2019s son, Victor Bowman-Rivera, was also on the scene. He told CBS Los Angeles: \u201cYou\u2019re like \u2018Whoa\u2019\u2026 \u00a0Just like that in five minutes\u2026 they took her\u2026 Boom. Just like that, in unmarked cars and they tell you, \u2018We don\u2019t have to show you anything.\u2019 They just leave a note, a number to call.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The name of the detained woman was not revealed, but neighbors said she came to California from Guatemala when she was 3 years old and had finally applied for citizenship six months ago.\u00a0CBS Los Angeles attempted to talk to her husband, but said that he was too scared to speak on camera. He reportedly told Rivera that his wife and the mother of his two young children had a cannabis possession charge from when she was in her 20s. The family believes this is why the citizenship application was held up, and \u2014 worse still \u2014 that the application itself prompted the raid.<\/p>\n Reports did not indicate if she had been in the country as a legal resident for at least five years (the usual condition for citizenship application), although this could be denied on the basis of the cannabis conviction, making her vulnerable to deportation.<\/p>\n The woman is now apparently being held for deportation to Guatemala.<\/p>\n The fact that the arrest was evidently carried out without a warrant has in particular sparked outrage. ICE agents do need a judicial warrant to search or even enter a home. This is emphasized in a\u00a0video statement<\/a>\u00a0issued by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and LAPD Chief Michel Moore ahead of President Donald Trump\u2019s announced immigration raids last week. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to open your door to an ICE agent that doesn\u2019t have a warrant signed by a judge,\u201d Garcetti says.<\/p>\n However, the Echo Park woman was taken into custody outside her home \u2014 she had reportedly gone outside to move her car. In a statement quoted by\u00a0Los Angeles Magazine<\/a>, ICE asserted that federal law does not mandate that agents have a judge-signed warrant in order just to make an arrest.<\/p>\n \u201cCongress has established no process, requirement, or expectation directing ICE to seek a judicial warrant from already overburdened federal courts before taking custody of an alien on civil immigration violations,\u201d read the statement provided by ICE public affairs officer Lori Haley. \u201cThis idea is simply a figment created by those who wish to undermine immigration enforcement and excuse the ill-conceived practices of sanctuary jurisdictions that put politics before public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n Echo Park neighbors have launched a social media campaign to raise money for the family\u2019s legal fees and childcare. One\u00a0post on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0indicates that the detained mom is pregnant with her third child.<\/p>\n This would certainly not be the first time that an old cannabis bust came back to haunt a longtime United States resident and result in deportation to a strange country \u2014 and an uncertain future.<\/p>\n Last year, several Vietnamese immigrants who had been living legally for many years in the U.S. were detained by ICE for deportation back to Vietnam, where they may face persecution. Yet Vietnam rarely accepts deportees from the U.S., which meant the arrested immigrants potentially faced indefinite detention. They\u00a0launched a lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0against the government over their detention and state of \u201clegal limbo.\u201d<\/p>\n The government said they violated terms of their status by committing crimes, including growing small quantities of cannabis. A federal judge in Southern California ruled last September that\u00a0the case may proceed<\/a>, and it remains pending.<\/p>\n And in December, some 50 Cambodian immigrants and refugees detained in the same sweeps and facing the same dilemma were\u00a0put on an ICE-chartered flight to Phnom Penh<\/a>\u00a0from El Paso, Texas, where they had been detained. The mass deportation came after the Trump administration struck a new deal with the Cambodian government under which it would begin accepting deportees again. These immigrants and refugees had all come to the U.S. legally, but were ordered deported for having committed a crime.<\/p>\n Last year,\u00a0Public Radio International<\/a>\u00a0reported on the case of Sothy Kum, 39, who left Cambodia when he was 2 years old before arriving in the U.S. at age 6. He married an American woman, with whom he has a young daughter, and was living in Wisconsin. He was deported back to his birth country in April on the basis of a cannabis bust. His wife Lisa, who is not of Cambodian descent, is now saving money to join him in exile.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you think a cannabis charge should be grounds for deportation?<\/p>\n The post Cannabis Charge Weaponized in Los Angeles ICE Raid<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Central Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park is in shock following a July 21 raid by Immigration & Customs Enforcement in which a local woman was arrested, over the protests of local residents who demanded to see a warrant. Footage of the brief confrontation has gone viral online. TheContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,11658,11659,1871,230,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37195,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37194\/revisions\/37195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cNo Process, Requirement or Expectation\u201d of Justice<\/h4>\n
Old Cannabis Busts Lead to Deportation<\/h4>\n
\n
\nRead More: Cannabis Charge Weaponized in Los Angeles ICE Raid<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"