U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in three unmarked SUVs surrounded 56-year-old Rafael Lopez Gomez in a Las Vegas neighborhood and arrested him at what appeared to be gunpoint last month. Afterwards, his family struggled to locate him for days — calling ICE repeatedly without answer. 

About a week later, his daughter found him in a hospital room barely able to breathe.

“I got to see my dad handcuffed to the hospital bed. His feet were swollen. He was in tears, and could barely speak,” his daughter, Diana Lopez, said in an interview with The Nevada Independent. 

As ICE arrests skyrocket across Nevada and nationwide, aggressive encounters with ICE such as Lopez Gomez’s have become increasingly visible to the public. Late last week, an ICE officer was “relieved of his duties” after he pushed a woman to the floor at an immigration courthouse, and earlier this month, a man was fatally shot by immigration agents after dropping his children off at elementary school. 

The family — as well as some legal experts — contend that Lopez Gomez’s case highlights ICE’s lack of transparency on detainee whereabouts and their safety. Although many aspects about his case are not atypical — such as the manner of his arrest — the rare video footage and his daughter’s testimony shed light on what conditions can be like for ICE detainees in an increasingly tense political landscape.

“I was in shock,” Lopez said of her father’s arrest, about “the way he was detained, and how he ended up in the hospital with nobody giving us any information of his whereabouts.”

Her father, she said, had an outstanding removal order from 2002 after he filed for political asylum. After he mistakenly bought stolen merchandise in 2020, he was charged with a misdemeanor, Lopez said. 

In the past few months, Lopez, 32, had become increasingly worried about the possibility of her father being detained by ICE. He was the main economic support for Lopez and her two children, helping cover insurance and phone bills. The family had taken increasing precautions, such as leaving the house less and staying vigilant, but on Sept. 16, while collecting mail, her father was arrested by immigration officials.

Video footage of the arrest from a doorbell camera shows three SUVs pulling up while Lopez Gomez was outside, agents pointing a gun or taser at him, and forcing him into a vehicle without appearing to ask him his name or to show identification.

As Lopez Gomez gawks and slowly backs away, an officer yells, “Don’t even think about it.” Lopez Gomez did not visibly resist arrest. 

In a statement to The Nevada Independent, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that “under President (Donald) Trump and (DHS) Secretary (Kristi) Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”

McLaughlin also said that detainees receive comprehensive medical care and a full health assessment from the moment they enter ICE custody, including intake screening, and within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility. They also have access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. 

“This is the best health care [that] many aliens have received in their entire lives," McLaughlin said.

Michael Kagan, director of the UNLV Immigration Clinic that defends people facing deportation, said that these types of arrests are not uncommon, especially for people such as Lopez Gomez who have had prior orders of removal.  

Although Kagan is not directly involved in the case, he surmised based on the video that Lopez Gomez was subjected to a “targeted arrest,” meaning that ICE officers already knew who they planned to detain.

While it's not apparent in the video, it can be difficult to hold ICE accountable in cases of alleged mistreatment of detainees, Kagan said. 

“There certainly needs to be answers about how he ended up in the hospital and why,” Kagan said. 

After the arrest 

In the days following his arrest, the family had scant communication with Lopez Gomez, who is being held in the Henderson Detention Center. They had tried several times to schedule an appointment to see him through the Securus Technologies app, but were unsuccessful in doing so.

Then that Thursday, Lopez Gomez’s location disappeared from an online ICE detainer locator. After reaching out to the Mexican Consulate, officials told Lopez that her father was set to be deported but was later pulled from a flight that they said was headed to Texas.

After calling ICE nearly a dozen times, they eventually told her that her father was being held in a hospital. After spending days going from hospital to hospital looking for him, an ICE official finally told her that he was located at Henderson Hospital. 

“I found him. I went inside his room, and there were two cops,” she said. Lopez said the officers questioned who she was and ultimately denied her a visit. 

Sadmira Ramic, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said that it is often difficult to pinpoint where ICE detainees are. The agency frequently moves people and usually the only resource available to the public is the online ICE detainer locator, which Ramic says can take a while to update. 

“The only other way to really know if someone is in custody is if they are contacting someone outside,” Ramic said. 

Before his arrest, her father never had any known medical problems. Now, he is using a walker and taking medication he doesn’t know the name of, Lopez said. During conversations with her father, he told her that he was being held in a freezing cold room.

“I think it was because of the conditions there, how cold it was,” Lopez said. “You know him being in this situation, I think it caused him a huge amount of stress and anxiety.”

The next time she returned, her father was gone. Law enforcement told her they could arrest her and anybody who accompanied her if she visited her father in the hospital again. 

Ramic said the ACLU is looking into visitation restrictions for ICE detainees at hospitals. If someone is in criminal custody, there are general restrictions put in place because of security concerns, she said. However, cases are more complicated for someone in civil custody, such as Lopez Gomez. 

“What we have seen in the past is that the hospitals themselves may have policies which regulate the visitation of someone, but the entity [that arrested them]… would have their policies as well,” Ramic said. 

The family is considering pressing charges against ICE for Lopez Gomez’s hospitalization, Lopez said.