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4 people who were arrested after a Phoenix BLM protest wound up in ICE custody — and it shows the risk of protesting as an immigrant
Although all the charges were dropped, ICE detained four of the arrestees who were not US citizens and threatened them with deportation.
By Jacqueline Baylon and Dylan Bank
More than 100 people were arrested in downtown Phoenix after a Black Lives Matter protest on May 30.
Some people were leaving the protest. Others were just passing through. But when the Phoenix police blockaded several streets in the downtown area, it did not matter.
Máxima Guerrero, Johan Montes, Roberto Cortes, and Jesus Orona Prieto were four of those arrested that night. We gathered some of their cell phone and social media footage to tell the story of what happened to them after they were pulled out of their cars at gunpoint, handcuffed, and charged with a Class 5 felony for rioting.
Because none of the four are US citizens, their arrests were only the start of a perilous journey that led to them being held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Their treatment, contrasted with that of the US citizens arrested that night, underscores the hardships noncitizens face in the US criminal justice system, and how the…
