Her husband was picked up by ICE at a car wash. Where is he now?

Sunday was supposed to be a happy day for Noemi Ciau and her family.

The mother of four had the day off work and was taking her daughter to buy a dress for her upcoming middle school graduation. They dropped by Ciau's husband's workplace, a Westchester car wash, to bring him a pizza at lunchtime.

It was the last time she saw him.

Just hours later, advocates say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived and started detaining people. Ciau said her husband, Jesus Cruz, was among them.

She showed up to the carwash Sunday and all the workers were gone. Three days later, she still doesn't know where her husband is.

The family is just one of many swept up in the past week of federal immigration raids, which have led to the detention of hundreds of people, according to the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights.

"I just want to know where he's at, if he's OK," Ciau said. "That's all I want."

She said she can't find him in the ICE online locator, and she hasn't received a call from him. LAist has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Families gathered at Culver City Car Wash on Wednesday to protest after immigration raids there earlier this week.

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Libby Rainey

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LAist

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As Ciau waits for more information, her family's life has been abruptly upended. Her 5-year-old keeps asking where his dad is. The older kids — ages 10, 14 and 15 — are trying to hold it together as they head into the summer without their dad, who picked them up from school and cooked for them while their mom worked a 9 to 5 at LAX International Airport.

"He was my backbone," Ciau said on Wednesday. "He was the one who picked up my kids, he was the one to take them to school … How am I gonna do it?"

Dozens of car wash workers detained

At a news conference Wednesday, Flor Melendrez with the car wash worker center CLEAN said she knew of at least 26 people detained by federal authorities at L.A. area car washes. She said the center had only been able to locate four of them.

"These were parents, providers and valued members of our community" she said at Culver City Express Hand Car Wash, which she said was raided by ICE on Sunday and Monday.

A teenager who only gave her first name, Jaslyn, said at that news conference that her dad had also been detained by ICE while working at the Culver City car wash.

"Because of him, I was able to finish high school with great achievements. But because of him being detained, he wasn't able to watch me walk the stage," she said. "I just want my dad to come home safe and I wish that he was able to see his little girl graduate."

Finding people once they're detained by ICE

Noemi Ciau said the most agonizing part of her husband's detention is that she has no idea where he is. She said she had her husband's location on her cellphone, and the day he was detained, she tracked him to a facility in Bell Gardens. She drove there, and when she showed up she saw white vans and law enforcement officers. But no one there gave her any answers.

"I never in my life thought that I would be the person standing here fighting for my husband, just to locate him," she said Wednesday.

Lynn Damiano Pearson, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, said she has heard multiple reports of family members not being able to locate their loved ones in federal custody. She said one reason is that many people are being held in temporary facilities like the Metropolitan Detention Center downtown.

A teenager who gave only her first name, Jaslyn, said her father was detained while working at Culver City Car Wash this week.

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Libby Rainey

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LAist

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"Unfortunately, those kinds of temporary sites often don't appear on the locator system," she said. "So we're seeing family members experience longer delays in being able to even find where their loved one has been taken."

Damiano Pearson said that unlike in the criminal justice system, people detained by immigration authorities don't have a right to a phone call, but individuals are often able to make calls once they reach a detention facility.

"If they're in these sort of temporary holding facilities, that's not necessarily gonna be something that the detained person has immediate access to," she said.

Family life in limbo

While Ciau waits and waits for a phone call from her husband, she's trying to hold it all together for her kids. The day after her husband was detained, she attended a ceremony celebrating her 14-year-old daughter graduating middle school with honors.

She spoke with pride about her daughter's 4.0 GPA and success in activities like dance and playing an instrument. But soon she was in tears.

"It was heartbreaking," Ciau said. "There was a point where everybody steps outside and starts taking pictures with the whole family. And I couldn't do that, because my husband wasn't there."