A U.S. Army veteran who was detained during the massive immigration raid in Ventura County last week said Wednesday that he wants “a full investigation” into how he could have been held behind bars for three days despite being an American citizen.
“What happened to me wasn’t just a mistake,” he said in a written statement. “It was a violation of my civil rights. It was excessive force.”
At a news conference Wednesday, Retes, who is 25 and the father of two children, said he had been on his way to his job as a security guard at Glass House farms on July 10 when “I got caught in the middle between protesters and [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents.”
Retes had been focused on his 3-year-old daughter’s upcoming birthday party and didn’t realize that Glass House, one of the largest legal cannabis operations in California, was being raided by scores of heavily armed immigration agents.
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security later said they detained more than 360 people in the raid, including numerous undocumented immigrants who had been charged with crimes. As agents moved through the company’s greenhouses, many workers fled in a panic. One worker, Jaime Alanis Garcia, 56, died after he fell three stories while trying to evade capture.
Protesters and family members of workers, meanwhile, massed at the Glass House gates on Laguna Road, squaring off against federal agents, who deployed chemical agents and less-lethal ammunition.
Retes said he had worked at Glass House as a contractor for the security firm Securitas for seven months. He said he unwittingly headed straight into that melee as he drove down Laguna Road to report for his afternoon shift.
“I had no clue about it,” he said. “When I pulled up, I saw all the cars, I saw all the traffic, and I was just trying to make my way through.”
He did not get to work. Instead, he said, agents smashed his car window, pepper-sprayed him and dragged him out at gunpoint.
“I let ICE agents know that I’m a U.S. Citizen, that I’m American,” he said. “They didn’t care. They never told me my charges. They sent me away.”
Retes, who served in Iraq, said agents never told him why he was being detained at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. He was packed off, without a phone call, access to a lawyer, or even a way to clean the pepper-spray residue off his clothes and face, he said.
While in custody, Retes said, he became so distressed that he was put on suicide watch, but he was still not allowed to contact an attorney.
His sister and wife meanwhile gave tearful interviews to local television stations, pleading for information as to his whereabouts.
“We don’t know what to do,” his sister Destinee Majana told KABC-TV Channel 7 last week. “We’re just asking to let my brother go. He’s a U.S. citizen. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car.”
“I just don’t know where he’s at. I’ve been up since 6 a.m. trying to call the sheriff’s, the police department, Oxnard, Camarillo, Ventura,” added his wife, Guadalupe Torres. “They say they don’t know.”
Finally, on Sunday, Retes said, guards came to his cell and told him he was going to be released.
“An officer walked me downstairs,” he recalled. “I signed a paper to get my stuff back. That was it. They let me go.”
In a statement, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said: “George Retes was arrested and has been released. He has not been charged. The [U.S. attorney’s office] is reviewing his case, along with dozens of others, for potential federal charges related to the execution of the federal search warrant in Camarillo.”
Retes said he is home in Ventura now, spending time with his children and “enjoying being free. I took that for granted.”
He recovered his car, which he said still has a smashed window, numerous dents and a sharp tang of pepper spray.
But he said he plans to file a lawsuit against the government over the way he was treated.
“What they did isn’t right,” he said. “I’m here speaking for everyone who doesn’t have a chance to speak.”
