Los Angeles, California

Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios pulled up for his last strawberry delivery, at a tearoom in Little Tokyo, late on the morning of August 14. Next door, Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a press conference at the Japanese American National Museum. On the street outside, a team of U.S. Border Patrol agents in masks and tactical gear had gathered.

As Minguela adjusted pallets in his van, one of the agents approached and asked for identification. After a computer check, Minguela was placed in handcuffs for overstaying a tourist visa, according to a subsequent account in the Los Angeles Times. (Federal agents said they had been conducting routine “roving patrols. But the location of Minguela’s arrest prompted many – including Governor Newsom – to suggest that agents might have been deployed there partly to send a message of warning to a blue-state governor. Minguela’s lawyer described his client as “political, collateral damage.”)

Minguela, 48, fled Mexico in 2015 after being kidnapped twice and stabbed by robbers during a stint as an ATM servicer in Ciudad Juárez. He entered the U.S. on a tourist visa and overstayed. Settling in Los Angeles, he found steady employment in the downtown produce market, bringing fruits and vegetables to restaurants and shops.

By the time of his arrest, Minguela had been with the same company for eight years, and, according to the owner, had “never missed a day” while working shifts that typically began around 2 a.m. As the L.A. Times story also noted, Minguela was the primary breadwinner for his family, including three children – one of them a seven-year-old with autism. They had “hardly stopped crying” since his detention, the Times reported.

After processing him at the immigration facility known as “B-18” in downtown Los Angeles, authorities transferred Minguela to a detention center in Arizona, where he slept on concrete floors under a foil blanket in a brightly lit room with dozens of fellow-detainees. “My first day there on the floor, I cried,” he told reporter Brittny Mejia of the L.A. Times. “It doesn’t matter that you’re men – it doesn’t matter your age. There, men cried.” Eventually, he began to fill the hours with reading – a luxury his life had not permitted him lately. At other times, Mejia wrote, Minguela would lie “in his darkened cell, reflecting on moments when he had arrived home, tired from work and traffic, and scolded his children about minor messes” or “argued with his wife and given her the silent treatment,” and he would vow to do better if life gave him the chance.

After a little over a month in custody, Minguela was released on $1,500 bond, by a judge who cited his years of tax filings and steady work as evidence of his stability and strong community ties. A Greyhound bus brought him back to Union Station in Los Angeles, where Minguela was met by a crowd of welcomers. One of them, his youngest son, “jumped up and down with anticipation as he stepped off the bus,” the L.A. Times reported.

“Estas contento,” Minguela asked him. “Are you happy?”

Posted on October 8, 2025