My wife Patti received a call the afternoon of Monday, August 25th, informing her that ICE agents were at Stanford Hospital. Patti is part of the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network which sends volunteers to witness and document local ICE activities aimed at our immigrant community.
She immediately went to the hospital to join other volunteers, and I joined her later, to help cover the incident for the Mercury News, where I write the weekly tech column. An editor at the Mercury put me in touch with reporter Jason Green who wrote our joint bylined story based on my on-scene interviews and reports. I also notified Channel 2 — KTVU — the Bay Area TV station where I serve as a frequent source and commentator on tech issues. Patti and I remained at the hospital in a waiting area with her father, lawyer, friends and others until nearly midnight when hospital staff insisted, we leave. The was off my beat, but news is news.
As the story was reported in the Mercury News, Channel 2 and other outlets, a 47-year-old woman from Guadalajara, Mexico, was hospitalized Monday after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained her in East Palo Alto, according to officials and family members.
She remained at Stanford Hospital Monday night under guard, with ICE agents stationed outside her room. We don’t know her current status as of noon Tuesday, but she is presumably still under care at Stanford. I’m assuming ICE agents will remain with her and take her into custody whenver she is released from the hospital.
Her father, Armando Rodriguez Garcia, told me through a Spanish interpreter that the agents tried to detain his daughter’s husband, but he escaped. His daughter wasn’t as fortunate. “When she woke up, she was here in the hospital,” he said.
Garcia described the detention as violent. He says the agents left marks on his granddaughter’s wrist during the struggle.
My gut reaction
Throughout the afternoon and evening, I had a sickening feeling in my gut. This is happening in the United States of America — and my own community — to a mother and father who are trying to support their family by providing useful services to my neighbors — doing work that’s rarely done by native born Americans.
These are not the “worst of the worst” criminals that Donald Trump promised to remove from our country. The mom at Stanford works as a housekeeper and her husband, who gave an interview to Channel 2 is a gardener. The woman’s father told me that she has never been arrested or accused of a crime and that she attended Catholic mass daily.