WASHINGTON — The Senate on Monday prepared for a showdown over whether noncitizens held at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a right to question the legality of their imprisonment.
A measure passed by the chamber last week on a 49-42 vote would effectively overturn a Supreme Court decision granting detainees the right to challenge their detention in federal court. A final vote on adding that language to a defense spending bill was expected today.
But two proposed amendments would slightly ease that prohibition; one of them was proposed by the author of the original language, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
If adopted by the Senate, the detainee amendment would need to be accepted by the House of Representatives to be sent to President Bush.
Graham sponsored the amendment to ban foreign captives at Guantanamo — who number about 500 — from challenging their detention with a writ of habeas corpus, a provision that dates from English common law.
In an effort to soften the prohibition, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) on Monday introduced a competing amendment that would permit prisoners to question the rationale for their incarceration but exclude petitions over other matters, including conditions of confinement.
“It is reasonable to insist that when the government deprives a person of his or her liberty, and in this case for an indefinite period of time, that the individual have a meaningful opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention,” Bingaman said on the Senate floor. “This is not a radical proposition that I’ve just enunciated. It is enshrined in our Constitution.”
But Graham, a military lawyer before he began his political career, argued that since the Supreme Court granted Guantanamo prisoners access to federal court in 2004, the system has been swamped with frivolous complaints.
“Does the United States Senate want [to give] enemy terrorists, Al Qaeda members being detained at Guantanamo Bay, unlimited access to our federal courts to sue our troops?” Graham asked. “Never in the midst of warfare has an [enemy] prisoner been allowed” such judicial rights.
In response to concerns raised by some senators, Graham was offering to amend his initial provision to give Guantanamo prisoners some legal rights to appeal findings by the military that they are enemy combatants. In addition, detainees sentenced to 10 years or more would receive an automatic appeal; those who received a lesser sentence could ask for a hearing.
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he hoped his colleagues would adopt Bingaman’s more permissive language. But if not, he added, he hoped the Senate would accept Graham’s revisions to his amendment as an improvement over the measure adopted last week.
“All of us really believe that we must operate according to our Constitution and our laws,” Levin said.
WASHINGTON — No one seems to know what happened to Vicente Ventura Aguilar.
A witness told his brother and attorneys that the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant, who doesn’t have lawful immigration status, was taken into custody by immigration authorities on Oct. 7 in SouthLos Angeles and suffered a medical emergency.
But it’s been more than six weeks since then, and Ventura Aguilar’s family still hasn’t heard from him.
The Department of Homeland Security said 73 people from Mexico were arrested in the Los Angeles area between Oct. 7 and 8.
“None of them were Ventura Aguilar,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary.
“For the record, illegal aliens in detention have access to phones to contact family members and attorneys,” she added.
McLaughlin did not answer questions about what the agency did to determine whether Ventura Aguilar had ever been in its custody, such as checking for anyone with the same date of birth, variations of his name, or identifying detainees who received medical attention near the California border around Oct. 8.
Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing Ventura Aguilar’s family, said DHS never responded to her inquiries about him.
The family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar, 44, says he has been missing since Oct. 7 when a friend saw him arrested by federal immigration agents in Los Angeles. Homeland Security officials say he was never in their custody.
(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)
“There’s only one agency that has answers,” she said. “Their refusal to provide this family with answers, their refusal to provide his attorneys with answers, says something about the lack of care and the cruelty of the moment right now for DHS.”
His family and lawyers checked with local hospitals and the Mexican consulate without success. They enlisted help from the office of Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), whose staff called the Los Angeles and San Diego county medical examiner’s offices. Neither had someone matching his name or description.
The Los Angeles Police Department also told Kamlager-Dove’s office that he isn’t in their system. His brother, Felipe Aguilar, said the family filed a missing person’s report with LAPD on Nov. 7.
“We’re sad and worried,” Felipe Aguilar said. “He’s my brother and we miss him here at home. He’s a very good person. We only hope to God that he’s alive.”
Felipe Aguilar said his brother, who has lived in the U.S. for around 17 years, left home around 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 7 to catch the bus for an interview for a sanitation job when he ran into friends on the corner near a local liquor store. He had his phone but had left his wallet at home.
One of those friends told Felipe Aguilar and his lawyers that he and Ventura Aguilar were detained by immigration agents and then held at B-18, a temporary holding facility at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles.
The friend was deported the next day to Tijuana. He spoke to the family in a phone call from Mexico.
According to Felipe Aguilar and Toczylowski, the friend said Ventura Aguilar began to shake, went unconscious and fell to the ground while shackled on Oct. 8 at a facility near the border. The impact caused his face to bleed.
The friend said that facility staff called for an ambulance and moved the other detainees to a different room. Toczylowski said that was the last time anyone saw Ventura Aguilar.
She said the rapid timeline between when Ventura Aguilar was arrested to when he disappeared is emblematic of what she views as a broad lack of due process for people in government custody under the Trump administration and shows that “we don’t know who’s being deported from the United States.”
Felipe Aguilar said he called his brother’s cell phone after hearing about the arrests but it went straight to voicemail.
Felipe Aguilar said that while his brother is generally healthy, he saw a cardiologist a couple years ago about chest pain. He was on prescribed medication and his condition had improved.
His family and lawyers said Ventura Aguilar might have given immigration agents a fake name when he was arrested. Some detained people offer up a wrong name or alias, and that would explain why he never showed up in Homeland Security records. Toczylowski said federal agents sometimes misspell the name of the person they are booking into custody.
Vicente Ventura Aguilar, who has been missing since Oct. 7, had lived in the United States for 17 years, his family said.
(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)
But she said the agency should make a significant attempt to search for him, such as by using biometric data or his photo.
“To me, that’s another symptom of the chaos of the immigration enforcement system as it’s happening right now,” she said of the issues with accurately identifying detainees. “And it’s what happens when you are indiscriminately, racially profiling people and picking them up off the street and holding them in conditions that are substandard, and then deporting people without due process. Mistakes get made. Right now, what we want to know is what mistakes were made here, and where is Vicente now?”
Surveillance footage from a nearby business reviewed by MS NOW shows Ventura Aguilar on the sidewalk five minutes before masked agents begin making arrests in South Los Angeles. The footage doesn’t show him being arrested, but two witnesses told the outlet that they saw agents handcuff Ventura Aguilar and place him in a van.
In a letter sent to DHS leaders Friday, Kamlager-Dove asked what steps DHS has taken to determine whether anyone matching Ventura Aguilar’s identifiers was detained last month and whether the agency has documented any medical events or hospital transports involving people taken into custody around Oct. 7-8.
“Given the length of time since Mr. Ventura Aguilar’s disappearance and the credible concern that he may have been misidentified, injured, or otherwise unaccounted for during the enforcement action, I urgently request that DHS and ICE conduct an immediate and comprehensive review” by Nov. 29, Kamlager-Dove wrote in her letter.
Kamlager-Dove said her most common immigration requests from constituents are for help with visas and passports.
“Never in all the years did I expect to get a call about someone who has completely disappeared off the face of the earth, and also never did I think that I would find myself not just calling ICE and Border Patrol but checking hospitals, checking with LAPD and checking morgues to find a constituent,” she said. “It’s horrifying and it’s completely dystopian.”
She said families across Los Angeles deserve answers and need to know whether something similar could happen to them.
WASHINGTON — For more than a year, detainees at a California immigrant detention center said, they were summoned from their dorms to a lieutenant’s office late at night. Hours frequently passed, they said, before they were sent back to their dorms.
What they allege happened in the office became the subject of federal complaints, which accuse Lt. Quin, then an administrative manager, of harassing, threatening and coercing immigrants into sexual acts at the Golden State Annex in McFarland. A person with that nameworked in a higher-ranking post, as chief of security, at the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana until August — the same month The Times sent questions to the company that operates the facilities.
The Department of Homeland Security said it could not substantiate the allegations. According to an attorney for one of the detainees, the California Attorney General’s office opened an investigation into the matter.
Immigrant advocates point to the case as one of many allegations of abuse in U.S. immigration facilities, within a system which they say fails to properly investigate.
In three complaints reviewed by The Times that were filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), to a watchdog agency and with DHS, detainees accused Quin of sexual assault, harassment and other misconduct. The complainants initially knew the lieutenant only as “Lt. Quinn,” and he is referred to as such in the federal complaints, though the correct spelling is “Quin.”
The complaints also allege other facility staff knew about and facilitated abuse, perpetuating a culture of impunity.
The Golden State Annex, a U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement detention facility, in McFarland last year.
The California and Louisiana facilities are both operated by the Florida-based private prison giant, the GEO Group.
A Dec. 10, 2024, post on Instagram Threads appears to allude to issues Quin faced in California. The post pictures him standing in front of a GEO Group flag and states: “Permit me to reintroduce myself … You will respect my authority. They tried to hinder me, but God intervened.”
Asked about the accusations, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary, said in a statement that allegations of misconduct by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees or contractors are treated seriously and investigated thoroughly.
“These complaints were filed in 2024 — well before current DHS leadership and the necessary reforms they implemented,” McLaughlin wrote. “The investigation into this matter has concluded, and ICE — through its own investigation reviewed by [the DHS office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] — could not substantiate any complaint of sexual assault or rape.”
The GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Advocates for the detainees say they are undeterred and will continue to seek justice for people they say have been wronged.
Advocates also say the potential for abuse at detention facilities will grow as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown brings such facilities to record population levels. The population of detained immigrants surpassed a high of 61,000 in August, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan research organization.
The allegations against Quin by a 28-year-old detainee are detailed in his FTCA complaint, a precursor to a lawsuit, filed in January with DHS. The complaint seeks $10 million for physical and emotional damages.
The Times generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse and is referring to him by his middle initial, E.
McLaughlin’s response did not address the FTCA complaint that details E’s sexual assault allegations.
Reached by phone, Quin told The Times, “I don’t speak with the media,” and referred a reporter to the Golden State Annex. After being read the allegations against him and asked to respond, he hung up.
E alleged abuse in interviews with The Times, and in a recorded interview with an attorney, which formed the basis for the FTCA complaint.
In the complaint, he said that beginning in May 2023, Quin would call him into a room, where no cameras or staff were present, to say he had been given a citation or that guards had complained about him.
One day, the complaint alleges, Quin rubbed his own genitals over his pants and began making sexual comments. E told Quin he felt uncomfortable and wanted to go back to his dorm. But Quin smirked, dragged his chair closer and grabbed E in the crotch, the complaint says.
After E pushed Quin away and threatened to defend himself physically, the complaint alleges, Quin made his own threat: to call a “code black” — an emergency — that would summon guards and leave E facing charges of assaulting a federal officer.
Instead, E said, Quin called for an escort to take him back to his dorm.
After that, the late-night summons — sometimes at midnight or 2 a.m. — increased, E said in his complaint. Each time, Quin continued to rub his genitals over his clothes, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges Quin repeatedly offered to help with E’s immigration case in exchange for sexual favors. Then Quin found out E is bisexual and E alleged Quin threatened to tell his family during a visit. Afraid of his family finding out about his sexuality, E said in the complaint, he finally acquiesced to letting Quin touch his genitals and perform oral sex on him.
“I just, I ended up doing it,” E said in a recorded interview with his attorney.
Afterward, the complaint says, Quin told E that he would make sure to help him, and that no one would find out.
The complaint alleges that Quin brought E contraband gifts, including a phone, and, around Christmas, a water bottle full of alcohol.
“I feel dirty,” E said in the recorded interview. “I feel ashamed of myself, you know? I feel like my dignity was just nowhere.”
E said in his complaint that a staff member told him in December 2023 that a guard had reported Quin to the warden after noticing E had been out of his dorm for a long time; the guard had reviewed security cameras showing Quin giving E the bottle of alcohol.
E said the staffer told him that Quin was temporarily suspended from interacting with detainees, and the late-night summons stopped for a while.
Lee Ann Felder-Heim, staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, which filed a complaint with the federal government alleging mistreatment of detainees at the Golden State Annex in McFarland.
(Maria del Rio / For The Times)
A second, earlier complaint alleging mistreatment at the McFarland facility was filed on E’s behalf in August 2024 by the Asian Law Caucus with the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL).
That complaint alleges that other GEO Group staff targeted him with sexually harassing and degrading comments. It does not address E’s sexual assault allegations, because E said he was initially too afraid to talk about them.
Once, when E was lying on his stomach in his cell, a guard commented loudly to other staff that he was waiting for a visit from Quin; the guard made a motion of putting her finger through a hole, insinuating that E sought to engage in sexual intercourse, the complaint states.
The broader issue isn’t one person, “but rather a system of impunity and abuse,” said Lee Ann Felder-Heim, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus. “The reports make it clear that other staff were aware of what was going on and actually were assisting in making it happen.”
In addition to detailing E’s own experiences, the complaint also details abuse and harassment of five other detainees. One detainee is transgender, a fact that would play a role in how federal officials investigated the complaint.
In February and March, CRCL sent Felder-Heim letters saying it had closed the investigation into the alleged sexual abuse and harassment, citing, as justification, Trump’s First-Day executive order concerning “gender ideology extremism.” The order prohibits using federal funds to “promote gender ideology,” so Felder-Heim said it appears the investigation was shut down because one of the complainants is transgender.
She called the investigation process flawed and “wholly inadequate.”
E filed a third complaint with another oversight body, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. To his knowledge, no investigation was initiated.
In March, the Trump administration shut down three internal oversight bodies: CRCL, OIDO and the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Ombudsman. Civil rights groups sued the following month, prompting the agency to resurrect the offices.
But staffing at the offices was decimated, according to sworn court declarations by DHS officials. CRCL has gone from having 147 positions to 22; OIDO from about 118 to about 10; and the CIS Ombudsman from 46 to about 10.
“All legally required functions of CRCL continue to be performed, but in an efficient and cost-effective manner and without hindering the Department’s mission of securing the homeland,” said McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman.
Michelle Brané, who was the immigrant detention ombudsman under the Biden administration, said the civil rights office generally had first dibs on complaints about sexual assault. She recalled the complaint about Quin but said her office didn’t investigate it because the civil rights office already was.
Brané said the decrease in oversight amid increased detention will inevitably exacerbate issues such as allegations of sexual assault. Worse conditions also make it harder to hire quality staff, she said.
Around the same time that E was held at Golden State Annex, a gay couple from Colombia reported in April 2024 to the OIDO that Quin had sexually harassed them.
D.T., 26, and C.B., 25, were separated upon arrival at Golden State Annex. D.T. began to experience severe anxiety attacks, they said in the Asian Law Caucus complaint and in an interview with The Times. The couple asked to be placed in the same dormitory.
Before granting their request, Quin asked what they would give him in return, the couple recounted in the complaint. Afterward, the complaint alleges, he frequently invited them to his office, saying they owed him.
“We never accepted going to his office, because we knew what it was for,” C.B. told the Times.
In their complaint, they allege that Quin asked D.T. if he wanted to have sex and told C.B., “You belong to me.”
The couple became aware that Quin had also harassed other detainees and gave preferential treatment to those who they believed accepted his requests for sexual favors, according to the complaint; one detainee told them that he had grabbed Quin’s hand and placed it on his penis to avoid being taken to solitary confinement for starting a fight.
D.T. said in an interview with The Times that he believes “below him are many people who never said anything.”
In a Dec. 2, 2024, internal facility grievance from Golden State Annex reviewed by The Times, another detainee alleges that Quin retaliated against him for speaking out against misconduct.
In the grievance and in an interview with The Times, the detainee said he spoke up after, on several occasions, watching another man walk to Quin’s office late at night and come back to the dorm hours later. He also said in the grievance that Quin brought in marijuana, cellphones and other contraband.
Another witness, Gustavo Flores, 33, said Quin recognized him as a former Golden State Annex detainee when he was briefly transferred to the Alexandria facility, just before his deportation to El Salvador in May.
Quin pulled Flores aside and offered to uncuff him and get him lunch in exchange for cleaning the lobby; after he finished, Quin brought him into his office, where he peppered Flores with questions about Golden State Annex, Flores said.
Flores said he asked about certain staffers and detainees. He told Flores people wanted to sue him, calling them “crybabies.”
“He’s telling me everything, like, ‘Oh yeah, I know what goes on over there,’” Flores said.
When E tried to end the sexual encounters, his complaint says, Quin threatened to have him sent to a detention facility in Texas or have his deportation expedited.
In October 2024, E was transferred to the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield.
Heliodoro Moreno, E’s attorney, said the California Attorney General’s Office confirmed to him in February that it was investigating. An investigator interviewed E in April and again in May, he said, and the investigation remains open.
California Department of Justice spokesperson Nina Sheridan declined to comment on a potential investigation. But in a statement she said the office remains vigilant of “ongoing, troubling conditions” at detention facilities throughout California.
“We are especially concerned that conditions at these facilities are only set to worsen as the Trump Administration continues to ramp up its inhumane campaign of mass deportation,” she wrote.
E, who had a pending claim for a special status known as withholding of removal, dropped his case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Moreno said his client wished to no longer be detained.
“It’s very unfortunate that he’s in these circumstances,” Moreno said. His client was forced to forgo his appellate rights and leave “without really getting a conclusion to receiving justice for what happened to him.”
