{"id":232145,"date":"2026-04-02T17:57:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/232145\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T17:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:57:13","slug":"as-ice-shipped-minnesotans-to-texas-el-paso-groups-stepped-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/232145\/","title":{"rendered":"As ICE shipped Minnesotans to Texas, El Paso groups stepped up"},"content":{"rendered":"

As hundreds of federal immigration agents flooded into Minnesota for Operation Metro Surge, this winter, flights filled with detainees<\/a> ramped up at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thousands of miles away, in El Paso, Texas, Marisa Lim\u00f3n Garza\u2019s phone started ringing \u2014 attorneys, families, friends and friends of friends asking if she could find their loved ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Can you go check on my person? Can you make sure they\u2019re OK?\u2019\u201d Garza said, of the calls her staff received at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.<\/p>\n

In many cases, what callers were seeking was \u201cliterally proof of life,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Garza, executive director at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, it was a reminder that even in Texas, which has the highest number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers in the <\/a>country, it was not business as usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ICE has long transferred detainees across state lines. But a Sahan Journal analysis<\/a> in December found that during Operation Metro Surge, more Minnesotans were being transferred out of state \u2014 and more quickly \u2014 often cutting them off from their families and legal counsel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the information vacuum, families and attorneys began calling the people who knew the system best: immigrant advocates on the ground in Texas who became an emergency support system for people they did not expect to serve.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The need for support crystallized ongoing efforts to centralise a response system in Texas. Last week, Together and Free, a local organization launched a detainee hotline<\/a> in collaboration with other local service providers, advocates and aid workers to help locate people detained in El Paso by consulting with the most relevant organization. The hotline can also help people consult an attorney for legal information, if not representation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Imelda Maynard, legal services director of Estrella del Paso, left, with executive director Melissa M. Lopez during a know-your-rights session in the Sacred Heart church in downtown El Paso, May 2023. Credit: Cristian Trujillo | Estrella del Paso<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s probably the only good thing to come out of this chaos is a coordination of resources and communication,\u201d Imelda Maynard, legal services director at El Paso-based Estrella del Paso<\/a>, told Sahan Journal. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely made all of us see the need to be coordinated not just regionally, but also nationally.\u201d<\/p>\n

A hub for detainees, and advocates helping them<\/p>\n

Texas has long been a pass-through destination for immigrants crossing the border from Mexico. The state also has 26 detention centers<\/a>, including a recently opened tent facility in Fort Bliss \u2014 Camp East Montana \u2014 with a capacity to hold up to 5,000 people, making it the largest in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long before the pipeline of detention from Minnesota to Texas to become a black box.<\/p>\n

For lawyers, relatives, and advocates in Minnesota trying to navigate Camp East Montana from hundreds of miles away, even basic access felt out of reach. Daniel Hatoum, a senior supervising attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, described locating and assisting detainees there from outside the system as \u201cdamn near impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

These organizations say they used their institutional knowledge, physical proximity to the detention centers, and years-long contacts with officers when the need arises. Despite shifting policies, undertrained detention staff and limited capacity, the expertise these organizations have built over years of navigating Texas detention centers is now serving those from cities thousands of miles away \u2014 Los Angeles, Chicago and, most recently, Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Hatoum and his team helped train people \u2014 including some legal teams in Minnesota who reached out for help \u2014 file habeas corpus petitions and litigate the cases of their clients, provide information on the detention centers and even communicate with detainees. Hatoum said that they also had volunteers help people from Minnesota figure out the nuts and bolts of the detention system in Texas. He described his role as having had \u201ca small hand in a lot of cases, as opposed to a big hand in one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI get questions daily still for people who were arrested in Minnesota: \u2018How can we make this come to light? What steps can we take to get this case moving? These are the medical issues my clients face, and how does the court respond to these? How does [ICE] respond to that argument?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Minnesota detainee\u2019s death cuts off access<\/p>\n

At Estrella del Paso, Maynard started receiving calls from Minnesota in January after a death at Camp East Montana made an already clogged system even harder to navigate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Victor Manuel Diaz, a cook at a Coon Rapids restaurant, was detained on Jan. 6 and died a week later at the El Paso camp in what ICE claimed was a suicide. Following his death, <\/a>visitors from Minnesota were denied access<\/a> to the detention center. Maynard said there was \u201cno rhyme or reason\u201d given for the restriction. However, while families weren\u2019t allowed entry for a few days following Diaz\u2019s death, lawyers from Estrella and other organizations were able to collect and share information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Sahan Journal\u2019s requests for comment on how many Minnesotans were detained and still remain in detention at Camp East Montana, ICE locator backlogs and restrictions on access for Minnesota visitors.<\/p>\n

During this period, Maynard\u2019s team received repeated requests to help detainees left stranded<\/a> after their release in Texas without the identification or documents needed to fly home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe essentially dug in and relied on our community partnerships to try and just sort of triage initially.\u201d Many released detainees ended up at Annunciation House<\/a>, an immigrant shelter in El Paso. There they found shelter and received help from staff to arrange travel back to Minnesota.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Now, the border is everywhere\u2019<\/p>\n

It was not the first time Texas-based organizations had to provide what Garza calls \u201cpalliative care\u201d for detainees during an immigration operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always been this kind of institutional knowledge from our nonprofits and our NGOs, about how to respond when the system changes, whether it\u2019s providing shelter, food, transportation and receiving migrants,\u201d said Cindy Ramirez, editor of the nonprofit news outlet El Paso Matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was kind of a pipeline and a communication and a relationship that has long been established here between law enforcement and immigration enforcement agencies and these nonprofits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A mural by artists Kelsey Kilcrease and Nikki Diaz graces the side of Estrella del Paso, formerly Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services, in central El Paso. Credit: Corrie Boudreaux | El Paso Matters<\/p>\n

A similar precedent of interstate collaboration and sharing of resources emerged during the first Trump administration when these organizations were on the front lines helping families torn apart by the family separation policy implemented at the U.S.-Mexico Border.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing mass groups of people come in, being bused from all different parts of the country, that\u2019s not new here,\u201d Maynard said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Garza, however, something was new about this time. \u201cI think what was sobering to me was being on calls with attorneys who are very competent, very excellent at their practice, and they were completely lost,\u201d Garza said. \u201cIt really was important that we connected as a community of practice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, she, too, said that the violence and injustice she had witnessed in Texas for decades was unfolding in Minnesota. \u201cIt chokes me up,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking to see it happen to others. But in some ways, it also means there are more people willing to stand up against this machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immigrant-serving nonprofits in El Paso were already stretched thin, trying to respond to changes in federal immigration policy and the influx of detainees from all over the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, advocates say they want to do everything they can to support out-of-state detainees and their families.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have done our best to respond and to take the call, make the visit, share whatever we can in a way that\u2019s manageable for us with our limited capacity,\u201d Garza said. \u201cIt\u2019s our responsibility, it\u2019s part of our mission, and it\u2019s best done in collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hatoum said that local organizations like the Texas Civil Rights Project have long been on the front lines because of their proximity to the border. \u201cAnd now the border is everywhere,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe border came to Minnesota in the form of CBP, in the form of excessive force. And now, when it hits other states, we\u2019re still here. We\u2019re still finding a way to help them out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As hundreds of federal immigration agents flooded into Minnesota for Operation Metro Surge, this winter, flights filled with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58529,138,140,139,1829,12811,11728,89812,51248,27,6956],"class_list":{"0":"post-232145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-alex-pretti","9":"tag-el-paso","10":"tag-el-paso-headlines","11":"tag-el-paso-news","12":"tag-ice","13":"tag-minneapolis","14":"tag-minnesota","15":"tag-operation-metro-surce","16":"tag-renee-good","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-u-s-immigration-and-customs-enforcement"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}