ICE Took Their Family Members. The Holidays Aren’t the Same
This article was first published by the nonprofit newsroom LA Public Press on December 18, 2025 and is republished here with permission.
Editor’s Note: Due to safety concerns for mixed-status families affected by ongoing ICE raids, we are not publishing the full names of sources for this piece.
Matilde grew up in a family that loved being together — they never needed a holiday as an excuse to do so. Sometimes, she said, one of her siblings or her mother would cook a meal and invite everyone over to their home. During the holidays, Matilde recalls her sisters teasing their brother, Gonzalo, to sit down and help prepare the tamales by spreading the dough on the corn husk.
“We’re a very united family,” Matilde said in Spanish.
But Matilde said this year is different. They don’t feel like they have much to be thankful for.
Ten days before Thanksgiving, Gonzalo was looking for work outside of a McDonald’s at the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Western Avenue when he was taken by federal immigration officers.
“The days are coming where family gets together with pozole, enchiladas, but we don’t know what we’re going to do,” Matilde said.
As many families gather for the holidays, others are left with empty seats at the dinner table as they grieve their family members ripped from them by the Trump administration’s increased immigration enforcement efforts. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 10,000 undocumented people have been arrested in Los Angeles since enforcement operations escalated in June.
The department claims that federal immigration officers are arresting the “worst of the worst” undocumented individuals who have been convicted of various crimes. However, a New York Times analysis earlier this month found that more than half of those arrested had no criminal record.
Matilde said many day laborers like Gonzalo congregated near the McDonald’s where he was taken in hopes of being picked up for a job. On that day, she said she called Gonzalo around 9 a.m. and told him to come home after she heard from neighbors that ICE was nearby. Knowing Gonzalo was undocumented, Matilde feared for him.
Eloisa also said she called him around the same time asking if he was on his way home. He had assured her he was. Moments later, though, she said he stopped answering their calls. That was unusual.
“He would always answer my calls,” Eloisa said in Spanish.
The two women continued calling him, they said, but Gonzalo didn’t answer. They thought his phone had run out of battery, or maybe his service was cut off. They drove around the McDonald’s, they said, looking for him. They went to Cricket Wireless to confirm his phone was working. But there was no sign of him.
Around noon, Matilde’s daughter, Gloria, contacted Harbor Area Peace Patrols for help. The organization monitors San Pedro, Wilmington and the Port of LA for ICE sightings. Organizers with the group confirmed to LA Public Press that they were able to locate Gonzalo in the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles. One of them delivered a sweater to him that afternoon.
The next day, Matilde said Gonzalo called his family to tell them he was being deported. In less than 48 hours from the time he was detained, he arrived in Tijuana.
To Matilde’s knowledge, her brother Gonzalo did not have a prior removal order. She said she believes her brother signed his own self-deportation. LA Public Press reached out to DHS to verify this, but they did not respond before publication time.
Eloisa, who lived with Gonzalo, said she’s getting used to the new reality of living without him. Dinner time comes around, and she said she prepares food, but then looks around, and doesn’t see anyone. “I feel okay, but my heart hurts from thinking so much of him,” Eloisa said. She said she could not bear to celebrate the holiday without her son.
“We would hear about [ICE detaining people] and watch it on TV, but we never thought that it would happen to us and that we were going to feel this pain,” Matilde said. She and Eloisa said they’re also undocumented and fear what might happen to them.
Gonzalo lived in Wilmington for 31 years and was the primary provider for Eloisa, who said she’s now unsure how she’ll come up with her rent. The family started a GoFundMe to try to cover some of her expenses.
He is now living in Rosarito, Baja California with his nephew. He’s originally from Michoacan, Matlide said, but she fears it is too dangerous for him to go there. On Nov. 1, the mayor of Uruapan, was assassinatedin a public plaza during Day of the Dead celebrations, sparking protests across the country.
Families confront difficulties finding loved ones in detention
While Gonzalo’s family was able to quickly locate him in ICE custody, other families continue to struggle to find loved ones who have been detained in immigration operations, according to Yliana Johansen-Méndez, chief program officer at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a nonprofit providing legal representation, education and social services to immigrant communities.
“It is really hard to find information on them,” Johansen-Mendez said.
She said federal immigration officers sometimes input someone’s name or case number incorrectly or add them into the online system long after they were detained.
Since June, Johansen-Méndez said Immigrant Defenders has tracked about 2,000 individuals who were either detained by federal immigration officers in Southern California or reported missing to them or a partner organization. Johansen-Méndez said her organization doesn’t know the locations of nearly 20% of those people.
“We know they were taken by ICE, but we don’t know which facility they’ve been taken to,” she said.
Immigrant Defenders manages a legal resources hotline, which helps locate and secure legal representation for families and individuals when someone has already been detained by ICE, Johansen-Mendez said. Detained individuals can call from inside a detention center, or families and friends can call if they believe a loved one has been detained by ICE, she added.
This is not a rapid response hotline for reporting ICE sightings. Families and individuals can call 213-833-8283, Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., according to their website.
Johansen-Mendez said nearly 20% of the people in the Immigrant Defenders database have been confirmed deported. Jesus Contreras, a communications strategist for the organization, said via email that they do not have data on whether those deported had prior removal orders.
“If the person has a prior removal order and that order is still enforceable, it is more likely that they’ll be removed very quickly, especially to Mexico because it’s a bus ride away,” Johansen-Mendez said.
She said some people immediately sign a voluntary departure not wanting to be detained in a detention center for months. But there are also people who’ve said they misunderstood the document or were provided misleading information, she said.
People are “emotionally exhausted” by the trauma of separation.
On Nov. 12, Jose was selling fruit out of his cart at the Culver City stairs, a popular hiking spot in the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, when he noticed a suspicious vehicle parked nearby. The car remained parked for about 20 minutes as the person inside it watched him, according to his wife, Herlinda. Jose was on the phone with Herlinda, describing what he saw, when federal immigration officers approached him and asked him for identification, she said.
“I heard it with my own ears,” Herlinda said in Spanish. “In an instant they took him.”
Herlinda said since her number is displayed on the fruit cart, she received several calls from bystanders at the hiking spot who witnessed Jose being taken by immigration agents. Those included calls from the West Los Angeles Rapid Response team, whose members delivered the abandoned fruit cart to her home.
In a statement, DHS confirmed a raid near Culver City that day resulted in 22 people being detained. The department said the combined criminal records of the people it arrested included “illegal reentry,” DUIs, fraud and selling and possessing controlled substances. DHS did not provide any specific charges, documents or details to confirm this. In September, the U.S. Supreme Court gave federal immigration agents the green light to detain people based on their appearance, language, accent, workplace, or any characteristic that “looks suspicious” to them.
Jose, in a video interview on Monday with LA Public Press, said he spent five days in detention before voluntarily signing his deportation. He didn’t have a prior removal order, according to his wife. He made the choice, he said, after hearing horror stories of detainees who’ve spent months in detention.
“The first night, they put us in a cold room, gave us natural water and some cold sandwiches right out of the fridge,” Jose said. Many detainees with health conditions also lack medical treatment, he added.
“There’s no way out, it has to be deportation,” Jose said in Spanish.
With Jose gone, Herlinda is left with bills and debt to pay that she said is slowly swallowing her up. The West Los Angeles Rapid Response group has started a GoFundMe to help the family with expenses.
“My heart feels like it’s going to explode and I feel like I can’t anymore,” Herlinda said.
LA Public Press reached out to eight families who recently had a loved one detained or deported, but many declined to speak or were unresponsive.
Johansen-Mendez said she’s not surprised by that response. Many families are living in fear right now, she said, and others are just “emotionally exhausted.”
“People are scared that other members of the family will be targeted, especially because when one family member gets detained, it’s very likely there’s somebody else in that household who is also undocumented,” Johansen-Mendez said.
On Thanksgiving Day, Herlinda said she tried her best to celebrate despite her husband’s deportation just days before. She said she cooked a turkey that was gifted to her and made the best of the day with her children. The family put up a Christmas tree in their living room and decorated it with lights, bows and ornaments. Herlinda said the tree helps bring some light to the darkness she feels being left behind without Jose.
“We’re going to celebrate [Christmas], but with a broken heart,” Herlinda said. “Sometimes in front of my kids I act like nothing happened, but in silence, I can’t stand the heartbreak.”