One of Our Newest Cases - “You Have No Right to Be Here”: How a California Surgical Center Stood Up to ICE Agents

It was just before noon when the doors of the Ontario Advanced Surgery Center near Los Angeles opened not only for patients, but for a drama that could not be more telling of the new severity of US immigration policy. Wearing blue surgical scrubs, with bare hands and heads held high, medical staff stood in the way of a squad of armed ICE agents - to protect a man who was gasping for air through tears and defending his last rights: a 30-year-old landscaper from Honduras who had fled into the clinic hallway.

The scene, captured in a cellphone video that has now been shared millions of times, shows the moment when moral courage meets state force. A staff member, less than two meters from the officer, shouts, “Get your hands off of him. You don’t even have a warrant.” Another employee shields the man, who is visibly struggling to maintain composure. In a country where federal law is beginning to override human rights, such images are not only rare - they are risky. According to the Department of Homeland Security, it was a targeted operation: two men without legal status were to be apprehended. But Javier Hernandez of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice disagrees. “It looked anything but targeted,” he says. The detained Honduran was the only one taken - his two colleagues had legal status, one a US citizen, the other a green card holder. It seems likely that ICE is hunting at random - even in medical facilities. The fact that the man fled because he was sending money to Honduras to help pay for his mother’s dialysis treatment shows how much more lies behind these stories than just an “illegal presence.”

What followed was an escalation that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. The Department of Homeland Security later publicly claimed that the clinic staff had “assaulted law enforcement officers” and obstructed the arrest. No evidence for this was provided. The clinic itself remained silent - media inquiries have so far gone unanswered. However, more clips are circulating on social media showing nothing but courageous employees asking questions and defending human rights. The case is part of a new wave of aggressive ICE tactics that have markedly increased under Donald Trump’s second term. In San Francisco, for example, eyewitnesses filmed agents dragging a man into a black SUV right after a court hearing just one day earlier. Protesters threw themselves onto the hood, screamed, held on - one clung to the car until it sped up and shook him off. Even churches are no longer off-limits: in San Bernardino, which belongs to the Diocese of Ontario, the local bishop has excused Catholics from Sunday Mass - too many ICE raids on parish grounds. Fear is spreading. And it is real.

These are no longer isolated incidents. They are building blocks of a system that is baring its teeth - in clinics, in houses of worship, in courtrooms. And it is people like the clinic staff in Ontario who confront this inhumanity with dignity. Without weapons, without uniforms, but with backbone. And while no one knows where the Honduran worker is today, the image of his arrest remains burned into memory. It shows not just a man in distress - it shows an America in a state of emergency. We have now managed to get the case taken on by the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, and he now has legal representation. And the work continues ...