A late-August ICE operation removed seven people from a house on 79th Avenue in a working-class East Oakland neighborhood. The household of 10 included extended family members and housemates, all originally from Honduras with varying immigration statuses. Several young residents worked morning shifts at an East Bay fast-food restaurant, and one had recently been promoted to kitchen manager. Detainees were taken in ICE vans to detention centers around the country, with some held in Tacoma and a 17-year-old with Down syndrome temporarily kept in San Francisco before transfer to New York. An attorney and a federal records search found no criminal records for the detainees, and family members described brusque, unexplained treatment by ICE agents.
OAKLAND With its cathedral ceiling and a tall, red chimney, the house on 79th Avenue hardly stands out in a quiet, working-class East Oakland neighborhood where residents tend to look out for one another. Each morning, four of the young men who lived there would shuffle into an SUV parked out front, headed to their jobs at an East Bay fast-food joint. One of them had recently been promoted to kitchen manager, his mother said.
So they were left shaken when, late on the afternoon on Aug. 12, seven people were taken from the house on 79th Avenue near Hillside Street, swept into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vans and driven away to be held in detention facilities around the country. The 10 people who lived there, a mix of extended family members and a pair of housemates, are all originally from Honduras and hold varying immigration statuses.
Norma Torres, whose son Kenneth Mena Torres was among those arrested, described a jarring moment when ICE agents brusquely entered their home to scan the face of each person living there. She asked where the detainees would be taken, but the agents offered no explanations. They were very rude, she said in Spanish, and treated us all very badly.
Collection
[
|
...
]