LOS ANGELES — In a scene that an immigrants-rights group spokesman described as “barbaric,” some two dozen children with their hands chained were videotaped shuffling single file in the parking garage of the 300 North Los Angeles Federal Building late Friday, July 11, apparently in federal custody.
Jorge-Mario Cabrera, communications director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles, said in an interview Saturday that its attorneys had confirmed details posted with the video describing when and where it was recorded.
The attorneys contacted the children and planned to represent them, Cabrera said, adding the children were not accompanied by their parents and were from Ventura County.
Attorneys for the Rapid Response Network, which CHIRLA created, described the children as “safe,” Cabrera said — though that was of little consolation to him.
“It looks barbaric,” Cabrera said, reacting to the video posted on the social media website Reddit. “These are children, for God’s sake. These are not hardened criminals and I think the Trump administration should be ashamed. We’re in unusual times and under the current circumstances, nothing surprises me anymore, yet it enrages me.”
A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond Saturday to an email with detailed questions on the children’s detention. President Donald Trump’s administration has vowed to run the largest deportation effort in American history, with extensive efforts to locate and remove immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
It wasn’t immediately known who shot the video.
It was unclear on Saturday whether the children were part of a group of 10 minors that Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said in a social media post that federal immigration authorities found on a cannabis farm in Camarillo on Thursday. Scott said all 10 were illegally in the United States and that eight were at the farm without their parents.
Authorities raided two farms in Ventura County on Thursday, seizing some 200 people.
LA Taco, in an Instagram post showing the video from the federal building, said women were also in the group and that they were being led into the building.
Protesters could be heard screaming “…Nazis,” “Shame on you” and “We can hear you, kids.”
The basement of the facility is known as B-18, which was designed as a holding area for small groups of detainees being processed. But immigrant detainees have been packed into the room without sufficient food and water, and their attorneys have not had sufficient access to them, immigrant-rights groups say.
A U.S. district judge in California addressed those issues Friday in a preliminary ruling that ordered the Department of Homeland Security to allow attorneys or those seeking to represent detainees access to B-18 for eight hours daily, Monday through Friday, and four hours each day on weekends.
Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, also said federal immigration authorities must cease what she called “indiscriminate raids.”
Frimpong said authorities cannot use race or ethnicity, the location (such as car washes or Home Depot parking lots where immigrants work or gather) or the language they speak “to form a reasonable suspicion” in order to detain and question a person.
“We will make sure they (they attorneys) look into what happened and ensure they (the government) follow the judge’s order,” Cabrera said.
The White House said the administration would appeal Frimpong’s ruling.