South L.A. residents who allegedly tried to chase and block immigration officers face federal charges
Gustavo Torres, 28, and Kiara Jaime-Flores, 34, are charged with conspiracy to impede or injure officers, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The couple could not be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear if they had legal representation.
The charges stem from an incident on Feb. 28 when agents with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection were serving search warrants in South Los Angeles. A small crowd gathered outside a home in the Florence neighborhood, according to a federal affidavit that accompanied the charging documents.
At 9:32 a.m. three federal law enforcement vehicles left the scene with "evidence," court documents said. There was no indication if anyone in the home was taken by the federal agents.
An agent recorded Jaime-Flores outside the home standing next to a Honda Fit as they departed. That same car blocked the agents' vehicles at 61st Street and Broadway. The agents were able to drive around the Honda, according to the affidavit.
While driving away, Torres drove in front of one of the government vehicles and used his brakes aggressively, according to the affidavit. Agents said that Torres then pulled into a gas station and followed the agents for approximately two miles.
Federal agents identified the license plate of the Honda Fit through surveillance footage from a local business.
On May 5, a federal agent interviewed Jaime-Flores during a traffic stop. She acknowledged that she was driving the Honda Fit with an expired driver's license. She asked if she was being questioned in relation to an incident related to immigration, according to the affidavit.
Read more: Border Patrol sued for tactics used in Kern County immigration raid
She told the agent that she and her boyfriend, later identified as Torres, went to the residence in the Florence neighborhood after seeing the activity on social media. According to the affidavit, she said the couple were opposed to the immigration agent's activities.
According to the agent, Jaime-Flores consented to a search of her mobile phone. The agent found deleted social media pictures of the home where immigration agents served the Feb. 28 search warrant.
One dated photo had writing on it that said, "We Try to Stop But I Can't Do It Alone! We Need to Stick Together To Stop Them For as Long As We Can! Please Let's Fight Together In A Good Way! Somos Mas Gente Que Officiales migra! [We outnumber the immigration officials]'
Jaime-Flores was detained and placed into the backseat of an Inglewood Police Department cruiser. She was read her Miranda Rights and agreed to speak with the agent, according to the affidavit.
Jaime-Flores then phoned Torres in the presence of an immigration agent. She told him to meet the agent, because "we did nothing wrong," according to the affidavit.
Torres met with the agent at a Santa Fe Springs business and was told he was not under arrest. Torres said that he had a suspended driver's license and it was suspended on the same day the agents were conducting their operation.
Read more: 2 U.S. border inspectors in San Diego charged with taking bribes to wave in people without documents
During the interview, Torres allegedly admitted to being involved in blocking the immigration vehicles, driving aggressively around their vehicles and following them.
He told the agent, "We thought that it'd be a good idea, ya know maybe if, maybe if it was immigration they were taking someone's family member unjustified… So, well me and my girlfriend the first instinct was, well, to block the cars."
The agent showed him additional photos from surveillance footage and asked him about driving behind the federal agents after pulling out of the gas station.
"I know, it was so stupid, and I would never do that in my life, I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know. I would never do it again,' he told the agent during the interview.
The couple are scheduled to appear in federal court Wednesday afternoon.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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The Hill
7 hours ago
- The Hill
Venezuelan migrant files wrongful detention claim against DHS
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San Francisco Chronicle
10 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
This man is a U.S. citizen by birth. Why did ICE mark him for deportation — again?
As Miguel Silvestre stared at the government document he'd been emailed, he couldn't believe what he was reading. His full name was atop the 'Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien' form from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but just about everything else on the page was false. Silvestre, a 47-year-old construction worker, was born in Stockton, but the document listed his birthplace and country of citizenship as Mexico. At the bottom were words that Silvestre didn't understand completely, though well enough: 'Received … on June 26, 2025 at 11:31. Disposition: Expedited Removal.' 'Now I have to be looking over my shoulder,' he said in a recent interview. 'It's hurtful.' Despite being a U.S. citizen by birth, Silvestre had reason to be paranoid about his status. Remarkably, this was not the first time the government had targeted him for deportation. After Stockton police arrested him for public drunkenness in 1999, Silvestre, then 21, was deported to Nogales, Mexico — twice — under an erroneous removal order. U.S. citizens cannot legally be deported. An immigration judge finally overturned the removal order in 2004, ruling Silvestre was indeed an American. It remains unclear why federal authorities created the new expedited removal paperwork. Known as an I-213, it's an internal record of people believed to be deportable created before the government initiates the deportation process. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said Silvestre was deported in 1999, under President Bill Clinton's administration, because he 'claimed to be a Mexican citizen without any legal status to remain in the U.S.,' an assertion Silvestre denies. 'This individual has no active immigration case and is not a target of ICE,' McLaughlin said. She did not deny that the agency had created the new expedited removal paperwork. 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The latest threat of removal for Silvestre came as the Trump administration ramped up its mass deportation campaign of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, widening the net to include green card holders and floating the idea of shipping U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to Salvadoran prisons. But Silvestre's saga — propelled by government failures and complicated by his own struggles with the law — spans across administrations, exemplifying what experts say are due process violations in a deportation system that can ensnare vulnerable people with little understanding of what's happening to them. Although the immigration detention and deportation of U.S. citizens is illegal, it does happen, according to research, media reports, first person accounts and the U.S. government's federal watchdog agency. The Government Accountability Office said in a 2021 report that ICE safeguards against wrongfully deporting U.S. citizens are 'inconsistent,' resulting in the agency not knowing the extent to which its officers are arresting, detaining or deporting such people. Moreover, deportation can create a permanent stain, given that a person who is removed can be barred from entering the U.S. again for 10 years. A 2011 study by Jacqueline Stevens, director of Northwestern University's Deportation Research Clinic, estimated that 1% of people in ICE detention and 0.05% of those deported are U.S. citizens. ICE's own data, which Stevens said is probably an undercount, indicates the agency arrested 674 U.S. citizens from mid-2014 to mid-2020, removing 70. Most of the wrongfully deported weren't born in the U.S. but obtained citizenship through citizen parents — either at birth or because children under 18 generally become citizens when a parent naturalizes. Many don't have passports. 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It was Northwestern's Stevens who unearthed the latest removal paperwork. In 2021, Silvestre had contacted her for help. She filed Freedom of Information Act requests with three Homeland Security agencies on his behalf. Last month, on June 30, she was checking her inbox when she found that Customs and Border Protection had finally responded to her inquiry. The records, shared with the Chronicle, reveal that immigration officials created the new paperwork for Silvestre's expedited removal, or deportation without a hearing, effective June 26. Stevens called Silvestre immediately, unsure whether he'd already been picked up. On July 4, he returned her call, and that's when she emailed him the deportation record. 'If U.S. citizens, who under the U.S. Constitution have full due process protections, are being detained and deported, that tells us an awful lot about the treatment of other people,' Stevens said, referring to immigrants seeking legal status. Silvestre's case, she said, is like a '900-pound gorilla in a coal mine.' A minor arrest goes wrong Silvestre was born on Feb. 16, 1978, at Dameron Hospital in Stockton. His parents, Ernestina and Raul, were working-class immigrants from Mexico. Raul, also a construction worker, was a U.S. citizen through his own father. By his own admission, Silvestre ran afoul of the law. Coming of age on Stockton's south side during a time of rampant gang violence, Silvestre said he grew up too fast. The baby of the family, he followed his two older brothers to car shows and hung out with the wrong crowd. He started drinking and smoking marijuana at around 11, tried methamphetamine soon after and was expelled from Franklin High School in 12th grade. He recalled his brothers warning him, 'You're not going to live to see 21.' At 18, with his father's help, he joined the local laborers union and started working. 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'They're like, 'That's not what our paperwork says.'' The men loaded him onto a bus and drove to what Silvestre recognized as the Port of Stockton, the shipping hub on an eastern finger of the delta. Silvestre assumed he was being transferred to prison for violating the terms of his probation. He didn't know it at the time, but the men in green were from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the agency known as INS that handled immigration before being split into three departments in 2003, including ICE. In a holding cell, he was surrounded by people speaking many languages. A man handed him a Bible and asked whether he was scared. 'We're being deported,' he told Silvestre, who didn't know what the word meant. 'I ain't scared of nothing,' he recalled saying. He was hotheaded. He'd always been scared of God, but not prison. Hours later, for reasons neither the Chronicle nor Silvestre nor Stevens could determine, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office released Silvestre to Border Patrol, which placed him in deportation proceedings, INS records show. 'The subject was interviewed at the San Joaquin County Jail after his arrest for DUI,' a Border Patrol agent wrote in a document dated Feb. 1, 1999. 'The subject said that he was a citizen of Mexico without immigration documents to enter or remain in the United States. He also said that he entered the United States at a place other than a port of entry to avoid immigration inspection.' Stevens called the record a 'fiction' contradicted by Silvestre's U.S. birth certificate. In a warrant for Silvestre's arrest, a Border Patrol agent claimed he was a Mexican national who entered the U.S. illegally near Nogales, Ariz., two weeks earlier — even though a litany of public records showed him to reside in California. Silvestre remembered a terrible journey south. After he and other men were loaded onto a bus, his stomach started hurting. He needed to use the bathroom badly but couldn't. As the sun rose, they arrived somewhere in Los Angeles. Shackled, he and the others were ordered onto a plane and flown to Arizona, where Silvestre was placed in a two-man cell with seven other men. His stomach still hurt. He recalled telling a guard he desperately needed to use the bathroom. His hands were in zip ties, so he had no choice but to defecate in his pants. When a guard returned to his cell and opened the food tray slot, Silvestre spat at him, he said. Soon, he heard the slot open again and felt something hit him in the eye that burned like mace. The door opened and he felt two to three men grabbing him. He was sprayed again, he said, burning his genitals. He felt like he was going to pass out. Silvestre's next memory is of being at a court hearing, though he remembers little of what happened. According to records, he told the judge he was a U.S. citizen, but the judge deferred to INS. The judge ordered him deported on Feb. 5, 1999. He was bused to the Arizona-Mexico border, where he was instructed to get out and continue on foot. He said he walked into Nogales, Sonora, hungry, thirsty and cold. Using the phone at a church, he called his parents and told them he was in Mexico. They were incredulous. His mom asked whether he was really out partying with his friends. 'I'm not lying to you,' he recalled saying. His father drove to Mexico armed with his son's birth certificate. Rescuing him took two tries: During the first attempt, Silvestre was stopped at the border, detained and swiftly deported. When he tried again, he showed his birth certificate and an officer admitted him. Detained again Silvestre found that the ordeal did not end with his return. Often, he said, he woke up terrified in the middle of the night, not knowing where he was. He felt nobody believed his account of what had happened. He was left with almost no proof except for a flimsy wristband that immigration officers put on him in detention. He began to feel suicidal and used drugs heavily. As years passed, he kept working, but also partying and getting into trouble. In 2004, his mother told him he needed to change his life. He decided to move to Arizona, where he found a job packing vegetables. One weekend that year, believing he was safe because five years had passed, he joined a friend from work on a weekend trip to Mexico, where they had pizza and beers. Upon trying to reenter the U.S. with his birth certificate and California ID, he was once again detained and held in Yuma, Ariz. 'Silvestre is a citizen and national of Mexico and of no other country,' ICE records from the time state. 'He does not have nor has he ever had documents with which to enter, live, work or stay in the United States.' ICE moved to deport him, alleging he was falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen. ICE made the claim even though, two years earlier, the agency had run Silvestre's fingerprints after an arrest and correctly determined that Silvestre was who he said he was, records show. From detention in Yuma, Silvestre called his mother, who rushed to free him. She handwrote and notarized an affidavit in Spanish, stating, 'I am sending the evidence proving that my son Miguel Silvestre was born in the United States, in the city of Stockton, California.' Silvestre spent two weeks in detention before an immigration judge ruled on March 24, 2004, that he was indeed a U.S. citizen — and ordered him released. Homeland Security terminated deportation proceedings the same day. Back in California, Silvestre returned to more familiar problems. Later in 2004, he was convicted of carjacking with a gun and went to prison for three months. He bounced in and out of jail, as well as addiction treatment. Last year, his older brother accused him of threatening him, resulting in criminal charges. Silvestre maintains he's innocent. 'The truth is, it doesn't matter if this guy was a mass murderer,' said Johnson, the UC Davis law professor. 'He could go to prison and be punished but you couldn't deport him, as long as he's a citizen.' Though there is no evidence, Johnson said it's likely that racial and class profiling played a role in Silvestre's deportation. 'It's hard to imagine,' he said, 'the same kind of mix-up with a John Smith who goes to Pacific University.' In 2021, the Government Accountability Office reported that ICE policy did not require officers to update the citizenship field in their data systems after identifying evidence that a person could be a U.S. citizen. In Silvestre's case, the original 1999 mistake that seeded his long predicament was apparently unremedied in immigration records. In 2015, Silvestre said, he sobered up and devoted himself to God. But his mother's death in 2023 plunged him into grief that he hasn't recovered from. When he learned about the latest deportation paperwork, he said he felt suicidal. He got into his car and started driving recklessly, hoping police would pull him over. But then he sensed his mom was watching over him. 'Calm down, go back to your room, and go to sleep,' he heard her say. So he did. For 21 years, Silvestre hasn't left the country, fearful of being barred again. A drawstring bag that he carries everywhere contains his birth certificate, along with the immigration judge's order affirming his citizenship.
Fox News
20 hours ago
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Columbia University janitors settle case after being held hostage by anti-Israel rioters on campus
Two Columbia University maintenance staff workers who alleged they were held hostage by anti-Israel protesters during a riot last year and were forced to scrub swastikas have settled a complaint with the Ivy League school. Lester Wilson and Mario Torres settled with the university for an undisclosed sum, days after Columbia announced a $220 million settlement with the Trump administration for civil rights violations and racially discriminatory practices in an effort to restore federal funding, the New York Post reported. The settlement included $200 million over discrimination claims and another $20 million to employees who alleged they were victims of civil rights violations. Wilson and Torres filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which sparked a civil rights probe into the school. The two men are still moving ahead with a lawsuit against 40 protesters they allege held them hostage inside the school's Hamilton Hall building. The pair, who have reportedly worked at the university for five years, claim they were assaulted as protesters stormed the campus building April 29, 2024. The protesters allegedly "terrorized the two men into the early morning of April 30th, assaulted and battered them, held them against their will," the lawsuit states. When the janitors attempted to "defend" Hamilton Hall from the individuals, they were called "Jew-lovers," "Jew-worker" and "Zionist." At the time, the protesters renamed the building "Hinds Hall." Prior to taking over Hamilton Hall, the protesters allegedly agreed they would "intimidate, harass, bribe, threaten, and/or assault and batter such employees" who posed a threat to their plan, the lawsuit said. At one point, Torres reportedly used a fire extinguisher to defend himself and was hit on the back by protesters while Wilson was shoved and had furniture pushed into him. "'I'm going to get twenty guys up here to f--- you up'," one masked rioter who shoved Torres threatened, according to the complaint. Both custodians claimed they had sustained physical injuries and PTSD as a result of the Hamilton Hall takeover. They have returned to work since, a source told the Post. Officers with the New York Police Department eventually cleared the building and made more than 100 arrests. Before the riot at Hamilton Hall, Torres was required to scrub swastikas and became upset over the feeling that Columbia failed to take aggressive action against the vandals. "They were so offensive, and Columbia's inaction was so frustrating, that he eventually began throwing away chalk that had been left in the classrooms so vandals would not have anything to write with," Torres' complaint alleged. Fox News Digital has reached out to Columbia and Torridon Law, the firm founded by former Attorney General William Barr, which represented the two men in their complaint against the school.
