Trapped for 13 days in ICE's 'basement'

Pasadena resident, a green card applicant, recounts traumatizing, unsanitary conditions.

- BY JASMINE MENDEZ

STUDENTS Zach Zimmerman, at left, and Lauren Simons embrace at a Utah Valley University vigil for Kirk.

Rami Othmane was driving to the supermarket to pick up ingredients to make dinner when he noticed a car following closely behind.

"I thought [the driver] was just being aggressive, but a few moments after, they blocked my way," Othmane said. "They ordered me to leave my car. But I kept asking them - who are you?"

Othmane is a 36-year-old Pasadena resident from Tunisia, and his wife is Dr. Wafaa Alrashid, chief of medical staff at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, whom he was speaking with as federal agents descended.

"I was surrounded by like five or six masked people in unmarked cars," Othmane told The Times. "I kept telling them I have my ID and I'm a green card applicant. ... I was following the right procedure."

Othmane spoke with The Times this month about his July 13 arrest and subsequent 13-day detention in harsh conditions while suffering from a brain tumor. The experience, he said, left him altered.

VISITORS try to enter the B-18 facility, a temporary immigration processing center in downtown L.A.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to The Times' request for comment on Othmane's case.

Othmane said that prior to the arrest he was in the process of obtaining an I-130 petition, which would allow him to stay in the country by qualifying his marriage to Alrashid — a U.S. citizen. The couple wed in March.

Othmane said he provided the agents with a receipt of his green card application but was ignored and ordered to get out of the car.

“They took my wallet,” he said. “They just took me.”