Not Even Disabled U.S. Military Veterans Are Safe From ICE’s Grasp

George Retes was just trying to drive to work when he was brutally arrested during an ICE raid. “I clearly identified myself as a U.S. citizen," the disabled U.S. military vet said. They ignored him.

Disabled U.S. military veteran George Retes was simply trying to get to his job as a security guard at a central California farm earlier this month when he was attacked with a chemical agent and brutally dragged out of his vehicle at gunpoint by mass deportation agents, which resulted in his days-long detention despite facing no charges at all.

“I clearly identified myself as a U.S. citizen and an employee of the farm, yet federal agents ignored me, yelled conflicting orders, and then violently detained me,” the U.S. military veteran said through a United Farm Workers (UFW) statement. Retes was then denied access to legal help – or even just a chance to let worried loved ones know his whereabouts – and held without charges for three days. He was finally released on Tuesday.

“I was never told why I was arrested,” Retes said. “I never received care to clean myself despite being covered in tear gas and [oleoresin capsicum] spray for days.”

The disabled U.S. military veteran’s ordeal began when he was driving to what he thought was a normal day of work but was suddenly stopped as part of a chaotic – and ultimately deadly – raid targeting a cannabis, tomato, and cucumber farm in Camarillo. Retes said he tried to explain to federal agents that he was American, but they ignored him. 

Instead, they screamed conflicting orders that were impossible for a trained U.S. military veteran like himself to follow, with some telling him to reverse while others told him to exit his vehicle. He was then pepper-sprayed and had his window smashed before he was physically removed from his vehicle and detained, including experiencing two officers kneeling on his back despite already being covered in pepper-spray. Retes described the brutal incident and his subsequent detention during a Wednesday interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

“Did you tell them you were a veteran?” Hayes asked. “I did,” Retes responded. “I also let them know that I was a veteran, and I wasn't doing anything wrong, that I'm just trying to get to work. I'm not trying to protest them. I'm not trying to fight them. I'm just … I'm just a man trying to get to work.” One worker at the farm would tragically lose his life, after falling off a building while trying to flee from agents. “Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first known person to die during one of the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration enforcement operations,” the AP reported.

Retes said that he was then sent to a facility in downtown L.A. with no explanation as to why he was being detained or a chance to call a lawyer or even a family member. His daughter’s birthday party was scheduled for Saturday, but instead of celebrating, his family spent the weekend frantically searching for a father who simply tried to drive away from the chaos.

“They took us in an SUV, a blacked out SUV, and they took us to a downtown facility, or a facility in downtown LA, where we didn't get there probably 'til late at night,” Retes continued. “And they booked us and everything and they threw us into a cell. They didn't care to check on any medical, any like issues wrong with us. They didn't care about what happened to us or anything, or why we were even there. They just put us in a cell without anything — phone call, attorney, speaking to anyone. They just threw us in a cell.”

This outrageous treatment is despicably par for the course for this administration, which has targeted U.S. military veterans and their loved ones alike as part of mass deportation architect-in-chief Stephen Miller’s dangerous ICE quotas that clearly do nothing to address public safety or national security. Just as importantly, it’s also an example of the dangers that face us all, because when ICE attacks disabled veterans, it shows that no one is safe from his deportation machine.

“I’m calling for a full investigation into the actions of ICE and other agencies involved in this operation,” Retes said in the UFW statement. “I want the agents who ignored protocol and used force against me to be held accountable. And I want the public to know the truth: this raid didn’t just target immigrants. It hurt Americans too.” Retes has also said he intends to sue.

At the same time, the detained father of the three U.S. Marines was also released this week but much worse for wear. Narciso Barranco, 48, had been kidnapped by masked mass deportation agents while he was out working a landscaping job at a local IHOP. Horrific footage captured by a bystander showed the masked men holding the dad of three U.S. Marines to the ground while one repeatedly punched him. 

Barranco, who has lived in the U.S. for more than three decades, was finally released on bond after three weeks and has remained visibly shaken, his concerned children said.

“‘Thank you for everything,’ Barranco said by phone after he was released from federal custody,” NBC News reported. “His son, Alejandro, said his father looked bad as he stepped out of the detention center. ‘He was wearing the same clothes, and he was crying,’ the son, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, said as he was preparing to take his father to a doctor to make sure he’s free of pain, followed by home-cooked meals.”

“We’re willing to give all this for this country and then they take our parents like this,” Alejandro continued to NBC News. “I don’t think it’s fair.”

The attacks on U.S. military veterans and their loved ones come as the Trump administration is also detaining significant numbers of immigrants with absolutely no criminal record at all. At the Everglades detention camp in Florida, a teenager is among those caught in Miller’s grasp.

“In the rush to open a detention camp in the Florida Everglades for ‘some of the most vicious’ migrants illegally in the country, state and federal officers detained a 15-year-old boy with no criminal record and sent him in handcuffs to Alligator Alcatraz,” the Miami Herald reports. “Records reviewed last week by the Herald/Times show that, like Alexis, hundreds of detainees who were slated to be sent to Alligator Alcatraz or were already there had no criminal convictions or pending charges.”

According to ICE’s own data, more than 71% of individuals in the agency’s custody have no criminal convictions. This travesty of justice is to the financial benefit of companies and executives who have aligned themselves with mass deportation proponents in order to enrich their own pockets. Under the big, ugly budget, $45 billion of the nearly $171 billion dedicated to brutal immigration enforcement will go towards building new ICE detention camps to jail immigrants, including children and families.

As some of those caught in these indiscriminate, unapologetic raids are now attempting to pick up the pieces, we can’t forget what happened to them, what’s happening to thousands more every single day, and the frightening leaps this Big Brother administration is willing to take in order to enact its mass detention and deportation agenda, including seizing DNA from immigrant children and using confidential, protected tax information to hunt down workers.

“What happened to me wasn’t just a mistake — it was a violation of my civil rights,” Retes continued in the UFW statement. “It was excessive force. And it was a failure of justice. I’m speaking out not just for myself, but for every citizen who could’ve ended up in my place that day.”