His cell-mates self-deported. He fought to get back to his family

Los Angeles Times ^ | Sept. 20, 2025 3 AM PT | Brittny Mejia

[E. Pluribus Unum]

• A strawberry delivery driver was arrested by Border Patrol near Gov. Newsom’s Little Tokyo news conference, becoming “collateral damage.”
• Angel Minguela Palacios endured six weeks of harsh detention conditions, watching fellow detainees give up and self-deport.
• Over more than a month in detention, the 48-year-old father prayed he’d get back to his family.

The lights never dimmed and Angel Minguela Palacios couldn’t sleep. He pulled what felt like a large sheet of aluminum foil over his head, but couldn’t adjust to lying on a concrete floor and using his tennis shoes as a pillow.

He could smell unwashed bodies in the cramped room he shared with 40 detainees. He listened as men, many of them arrested at car washes or outside Home Depots, cried in the night for their loved ones.

Minguela, 48, lay in the chilly downtown Los Angeles ICE facility known as B 18 and thought about his partner of eight years and their three children. In his 10 years in the United States, he had built a secure life he had only dreamed of in Mexico, ensconced in their humble one-bedroom rented home, framed photos of the family at Christmas, his “#1 Dad” figurine. Now it was all falling apart.

The morning of Aug. 14, Minguela had been on his last delivery of the day, dropping off strawberries to a tearoom in Little Tokyo. He didn’t know that Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference there to inveigh against President Trump’s efforts to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives through redistricting in Texas. U.S. Border Patrol agents were massing nearby, creating a show of force outside the event.

As they moved in, one agent narrowed in on Minguela’s delivery van. Soon, he was in handcuffs, arrested for overstaying a tourist visa. As his lawyer...

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Your family can self-deport with you, Angel.

[philman_36]

Your daily dose of sympathy driven media.

[crusty old prospector]

Partner? So I guess we will end up paying for his spawn.

[marktwain]

So, he was here illegally, and we are supposed to accept that and have sympathy for him.

Actually, I do not find him vile. It is the California Democratic party and their lust for power which did this to him.

[crazyhorse691]

Sorry, Angel. Sorry that you created your own troubles. And your troubles caught up with you and now your family will suffer because of your deliberate actions. Man up for crying outloud. You sound like a little girl that spilled choclate milk all over her bestest dress.

[Jeff Vader]

I voted for this

[chief lee runamok]

His cell-mates self-deported. He fought to get back to his family 

[DeplorablePaul]

Maybe Miguel should have come to the US legally. Otherwise, boo freaking hoo.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

Thanks to ChatGBT the Lefist Media Mafia can concoct these sob stories faster than you can say Jiminy Crickets.

[thegagline]

His employer paid the $1,500 bond to have him released. Which raises the question, why isn’t the Trump administration prosecuting the employer of illegal aliens to the fullest extent of the law?

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Tell you what, pendejo. Spend 6 weeks in a Mexican jail and get back to me.

[servo1969]

Get the hell out of my country.

[Retgearjammer]

IS HE A CITIZEN OF ANOTHER COUNTRY IN THE UNITED STATES ILLEGALLY???

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Actually, I do not find him vile. It is the California Democratic party and their lust for power which did this to him.

Do you feel the same way about Decarlos Brown?

That he is "not" vile, is someone else's fault that he killed Iryna Zarutska?

We all carry the responsibility for our actions.

He broke the law by coming here. He did it willingly and knowingly.

[No name given]

Exactly.

[No name given]

My thoughts exactly.

[No name given]

Well said.

[JennysCool]

He broke the law by coming here. He did it willingly and knowingly.

Let's not forget that Joe Biden and his "Administration" actually invited these people to come here.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

He has been here for ten years.

So Biden is irrelevant.

I repeat, when you do something wrong that is all you. No matter what other people around you have done the choice was yours and you made it.

I don't care that someone left the door to their house open with a pile of gold on the couch. You went in and stole it.

[kiryandil]

All they need is one example, and the plucking of the heart-strings begins.