Rami Othmane was driving to the supermarket to pick up ingredients to make dinner when he noticed a car following closely behind.
“I thought [the driver] was just being aggressive, but a few moments after, they blocked my way,” Othmane said. “They ordered me to leave my car. But I kept asking them — who are you?”
Othmane is a 36-year-old Pasadena resident from Tunisia, and his wife is Dr. Wafaa Alrashid, chief of medical staff at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, whom he was speaking with as federal agents descended.
“I was surrounded by like five or six masked people in unmarked cars,” Othmane told The Times. “I kept telling them I have my ID and I’m a green card applicant. … I was following the right procedure.”
Othmane spoke with The Times this month about his July 13 arrest and subsequent 13-day detention in harsh conditions while suffering from a brain tumor. The experience, he said, left him altered.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to The Times’ request for comment on Othmane’s case.
Othmane said that prior to the arrest he was in the process of obtaining an I-130 petition, which would allow him to stay in the country by qualifying his marriage to Alrashid — a U.S. citizen. The couple wed in March.
Othmane said he provided the agents with a receipt of his green card application but was ignored and ordered to get out of the car.
“They took my wallet,” he said. “They just took me.”
He was brought to the downtown Los Angeles ICE facility known as B-18, or “the basement,” a temporary immigration processing center. According to the Pasadena-based Barcena Law Offices, “this is where people go to be detained for less than 12 hours … [and] are either released or deported.”
But Othmane’s stay was many times longer than that.
The Pasadena resident said he waited 12 hours just to be processed into the facility. This is despite a 2009 lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The suit was brought to end “unsanitary conditions” in B-18, but in a settlement, it was agreed that ICE would not keep detainees for more than 12 hours on any given day or over a two-day period, with limited exceptions.
Further, ICE agreed to put a stop to “the practice of shuttling detainees back and forth to overcrowded local jails in an effort to avoid rules prohibiting long-term detention,” according to an ACLU news release.
“No longer can ICE stuff people into overcrowded cells or deny detainees their right to see a lawyer,” Karen Tumlin, then legal director at the National Immigration Law Center, said in 2009. “As this lawsuit shows, major national policy changes are desperately needed to safeguard against the terrible conditions that afflict so many immigrants held in detention centers across the country.”
After waiting hours to be booked, “the first person I spoke to didn’t understand why they arrested me,” Othmane said. “He said my application was legit.”
Othmane said he was later booked for overstaying his visa in 2015, although he’d since had that case dismissed by an immigration judge and had a green card application in process. He said he saw an ICE case manager the following day, who also questioned why he’d been booked.
Othmane said he sought to reassure the case manager. “This is how it is, you know, we’ll get through it and survive,” he said.
For 13 days, Othmane endured severe conditions. He lost sleep while sharing a cell and an open toilet with other men who would jockey at night for space to sleep on the cold concrete floor. (“The smell was horrible,” he said.) No bedding was provided. The facility is kept at 50 degrees, according to one Congress member who visited there.
He lost 15 pounds due to malnutrition. Meanwhile, he was fighting a growing tumor in his head.
“How many nights can you stay without sleep, or without proper food, without brushing your teeth,” Othmane said. “You can hurt your lungs in there because of the horrible AC; you feel like you’re in a freezer.”
Othmane said he was often fed the same finger-sized, wet bean burrito paired with chips and water. He began “to look forward to it,” though, as his quick weight loss began to worry him.
Days after her husband’s arrest, Alrashid and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network rallied outside B-18 to shed light on Othmane’s case.
“He does not have a bed to sleep on,” Alrashid said at the rally in July. “My husband is 6 foot 7 inches, for those of you who have met him. He’s a very kind, nice person. But he’s also very tall.”
Othmane said that, while he was detained, his wife received death threats and racist comments on her social media and work email and in letters in the mail.
“People were telling my wife to leave even though she was born here,” he said. “It’s sad to see that humanity is gone.”
Due to hunger and severe headaches — a side effect of the tumor — Othmane fainted and was taken to a hospital.
“They gave me liters of IV, food and warm blankets,” he said. “It’s like if you got lost on an island alone for like two weeks or a month, but then they find you … and try to bring you back to life.”
During the visit, his wrists and ankles were handcuffed, his chest tied down to the hospital bed.
Othmane returned to his cell on July 21. After almost two weeks, he was told he was being transferred to a facility in Arizona — prompting an emotional reaction as the uncertainty of his future in B-18 was coming to an end.
“I collapsed. I just started crying. It was the best news I ever heard,” he said. “The guards started hugging me; it was like a celebration.”
As Othmane’s transfer was underway, ICE was preparing for a scheduled tour of the facility. U.S. Reps. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) and Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) visited B-18 on Aug. 11, days after Othmane was moved.
Rep. Chu represents Pasadena, where Othmane lives. She said the facility was “wiped clean.”
“They let us into the area where the detainees come in. They come in on a van, they are handcuffed and they take them in through this little hallway, where they take their things,” Chu told The Times. “Then we went where the processing desks are, which are surrounded by nine cells capable of holding 336 detainees. But the strange thing is there were so few detainees there.”
Chu later visited the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, which holds about 2,000 people, and spoke with detainees.
“Some of them told me the conditions [in Adelanto] are better than B-18. At least there was a jug of water in the middle of the room. They can talk on the phone, and engage in board games,” the lawmaker said.
ICE agents told Chu that detainees in B-18 are held for no more than 12 hours, but that they have specific waivers that allow them to keep people for 72 hours.
“As we can see,” Chu said, referring to Othmane’s case, “people are being held in B-18 for as long as 13 days. I’m searching if this has happened with others. But B-18 has been a mystery where few have been let in.”
Chu said that during her visit to the facility, she asked about the food and was shown the burritos Othmane was fed. “They told me people could just ask for more food or bottled water by tapping on the window,” she said.
Othmane said more food was provided “if you were lucky.”
As for hygiene in B-18, Chu said, “there’s no change of clothes, no toothbrush, no toothpaste or soap. They said, well, they’re only here for 12 hours,” she said, although that is not always the case.
Othmane was removed from the chill of B-18 and driven seven hours inside a truck with no air conditioning to the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, according to Chu. He spent another 13 days in Eloy before being released on $20,000 bail. Alrashid drove to Arizona to pick him up.
“When I saw him, it was surreal, honestly,” Alrashid told Newsweek in an interview. “I couldn’t believe I finally could see him in front of me. I could touch him, I could hug him.”
He was released with an ankle monitor, which he said will be removed once he is a green card holder. While awaiting a court hearing in April, he is required to stay within a 70-mile radius of Los Angeles. He also is considering treatment options for his brain tumor.
For now, he remains shaken.
“I feel so bad for [my wife]. I’m not the same person,” Othmane said. “It’s traumatizing. I hope I go back to where I was, but it’s hard.”
Othmane, a classically trained singer, had a performance scheduled for Aug. 15, seven days after his release. Alrashid asked her husband if he was still up for it; he replied yes.
“I wanted to do it because it’s like therapy,” he said. “But it was one of the toughest performances I’ve ever had. I’m still weak, and I was sick, so I lost my voice.”
Despite his experience at B-18, Othmane said he is trying to stay positive — and is willing to accept deportation if that’s what it comes down to.
But, he said, “I still have faith in the judicial system. Hopefully everything turns out good.”
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