Immigration attorneys in the Bay Area and Southern California worked to free 11 of the men from the Adelanto ICE detention center and secured long-term representation.
“We wanted people to know that they could fight back. We didn’t know what it was going to look like, but we also knew that our community does have rights,” said Alejo, 33. “But it is hard to organize your own family into action, especially when there’s just so much at stake.”
The family joined protests, including outside of the Adelanto facility, and packed court hearings to show support — a factor immigration judges often consider when deciding whether to release a detainee on bond.
One of Alejo’s relatives is still locked up at the Adelanto facility, about 90 miles from LA. Two were deported, including a 22-year-old who, the sisters said, didn’t realize the papers he signed sealed his removal to Tijuana. The other relative, unable to endure detention conditions, voluntarily agreed to deportation.
ICE did not respond to requests for comment on why Ambiance Apparel, which employs about 150 employees at its warehouse and showroom, was targeted in June or about the operation’s outcome. It’s unclear whether the 2021 sentencing of the company’s owner to one year in federal prison for failing to pay more than $35 million in taxes and customs duties was connected to the raid. Ambiance has denied any wrongdoing.
“Ambiance is committed to following the law and to supporting its workers, many of whom have worked for the company for decades,” said Benjamin Gluck, an attorney representing the company, in a statement.
A protester carries a sign reading “Immigrants Built America!” as anti-ICE demonstrators protest outside a federal building on June 19, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
White House “border czar” Tom Homan said federal agents executed a search warrant at the business, which has locations in LA’s Fashion District and Vernon, as part of a criminal investigation that also swept up undocumented workers. But U.S. Attorney Bill Assaily said the judicial warrant that gained agents’ entry to the gated worksite was only for immigration enforcement.
California law prohibits employers from allowing ICE into their facilities unless agents present a valid judicial warrant.
The roughly 10,300 ICE arrests in California from January through July represent nearly double the total for all of 2024 and more than five times the arrests in 2023, according to a KQED analysis of data from the UC Berkeley Deportation Data Project. About 62% of this year’s arrests occurred in ICE’s Los Angeles area of responsibility, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
The Trump administration says its immigration crackdown prioritizes expelling dangerous criminals, but undocumented immigrants with no criminal records are being detained as well.
“I’ve said a thousand times that aperture will open,” Homan told NBC News in June. “And I said, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”
Deciding to push back
After Alejo and Citlali drove to L.A. on the evening of June 6, they met with dozens of worried relatives and friends who gathered at a Quinceañera party hall someone had secured. They tallied which family members hadn’t returned home from their shifts and spoke with two Bay Area immigration attorneys Alejo had already contacted. Her first question: Could the family help by speaking up and organizing?
The hall had a projector. Alejo brought in Lisa Knox of the California Center for Immigrant Justice and Luis Angel Reyes Savalza of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office via Zoom. Both attorneys, active in local immigration rapid response networks, confirmed that public pressure could boost a legal process to get the fathers and husbands out of detention. Alejo reminded her family that it would take work and courage.
Jennifer Alejo works in her office in Oakland on Oct. 27, 2025. (Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)
“I was transparent, that, hey, this is going to be a big fight. I do think we can fight back, but we need to be vocal,” Alejo, an Oakland resident who organizes low-wage cooks, builders and other workers to combat labor violations such as wage theft.
Her sister Citlali, 27, who works in communications, organized Lucha Zapoteca’s first press conference that weekend. Many relatives felt anxious, Citlali said, but Yurien Contreras was the first to volunteer to talk to reporters about her father’s arrest and what it meant for her and three younger brothers.
On June 9, supporters held cardboard signs with photos of their 14 detained relatives outside of Ambiance’s warehouse. When it was her turn to speak, Contreras stepped onto a wooden box near a podium and faced a wall of reporters for the first time. The 20-year-old American citizen had rushed to the warehouse in time to see federal agents lead her father and roughly 40 others away the previous Friday. She demanded that immigration authorities respect the workers’ due process rights and release them.