An Argentine immigrant who denounced in a documentary abuses in a detention center for undocumented immigrants was arrested by ICE

L & # 39; Argentina Claudio Rojas, a participant in "The Infiltrators", a film about prisons for undocumented immigrants, is being held in one of these centers and will not be able to attend Tuesday's presentation at the Miami Film Festival.

The undocumented were arrested last Wednesday while he was going to a routine meeting with the Office of Immigration and Customs (ICE)said her lawyer, Sandy Pineda, on Monday.

The lawyer pointed out that he is weird that he was arrested this week, before the presentation of the film in Miami.

Argentina, aged 53, appears in "The Infiltrators" which, through a combination of real images and fictional scenes, tells the true story of two young activists who were deliberately arrested by ICE take place in a center for undocumented immigrants in Florida.

The film is made by Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra and was premiered at the Sundance Festival (Utah) last January.

The events reported took place in 2012, under the chairmanship of Barack Obama, in the so-called Broward Transition Center, located in Pompano Beach (South-East Florida), operated by private company Geo Group and reserved for "non-violent" immigrants.

Rojas, who had already distinguished himself for his activism in favor of the rights of immigrants, was arrested in this center when Marco Saavedra and Viridiana Martínez, of the National Alliance of Immigrants for Minors, the "infiltrators", were entered and immediately collaborated with them.

Martinez explained to Efe that Rojas is expecting a "administrative process" with the Ministry of Labor in the context of a pending application for a T visa, intended inter alia for certain victims of trafficking in human beings.

He added that a federal agency was investigating a former Rojas employer detained last Wednesday at the Krome Immigration Center in southwestern Miami-Dade County. He will not be able to attend the premiere of his film. the Miami Film Festival, which is being held these days.

In this sense, Pineda said that his client had a telephone interview with the Ministry of Labor today.

Martinez said that he did not know if it was an "immigration revenge for the film", but that "Claudio is one of the few immigrants to show exceptional courage"

Rojas entered the United States for the first time in 2000 on a 90-day visa. Two months later, his wife and two children joined him.

Pineda and her family, who will attend the film's presentation in Miami on Tuesday, have asked the help of South Florida congressmen to intercede for Rojas, among them Ted Deutch and Marco Rubio.

Rojas' family settled in Miami, where he worked as a gardener and laborer, but his immigrant status caused him problems in 2010. Two years later, he started a labor strike. hunger.

The "infiltrators" and their collaborators like Rojas They sought to identify detainees who could benefit from a directive from the Barack Obama government. (2009-2017), known as "Morton Memo", which instructed ICE to prosecute undocumented migrants with a criminal record or risk to public safety, and to educate them about their rights. .

After three weeks of internal work, Saavedra and Martinez They made it known from the inside what they were doing and shortly afterwards they were expelled from the detention center, but they remained inside the seed of the rebellion.