By Araceli Martínez, American Community Media

Posted September 1, 2026

 

 

When Jefersson Bladimir Alemán Beltrán set foot outside his prison cell in Santa Maria, California, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immediately arrested him. According to Jefersson’s mother, who was there to pick him up that day, one of the agents began beating him after loading him into an SUV.

 

“As he hit him, an agent told my son, ‘You’re an illegal abuser. You don’t belong in this country,’” said Alba Beltrán, speaking in Spanish.

 

Jefersson, 19, was arrested July 21 on suspicion of sexual misconduct by police in Santa Maria, a majority Latino city located in Santa Barbara County. Two days later a judge cleared the charges for lack of evidence. He was released on July 24.

 

His mother alleges the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department alerted ICE just prior to releasing her son, in apparent violation of California’s sanctuary statue limiting collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents.

 

ACoM reached out to both DHS and the sheriff’s office for comment but did not hear back by time of publication.

 

“I was inside my car in the parking lot at the police station waiting to pick up my son when I saw four vehicles arrive with masked ICE agents stepping out. [My son] offered no resistance when they detained him,” recounted Beltrán. “Full of fear, I threw myself on the floor of my car. I’m also undocumented.”

 

Beltrán arrived in California in 2009 from her native El Salvador. Her son, Jefersson, entered the US in 2019 when he was 14 as an unaccompanied minor, reuniting with an older sibling and his mother in Santa Maria shortly after. Jefersson graduated from Santa Maria High School last year. Both he and his mother work in the strawberry fields that surround the city.

 

“Jefersson’s problems started when he fell in love with this young woman, and when she ended the relationship, he began dating one of her cousins,” explained Beltrán.

 

“Things got complicated,” she continued, “when another cousin of his first ex-girlfriend accused Jefersson of abuse and got a restraining order against him. My son never had a relationship with the girl who accused him,” she noted. “We think it was all a plan to separate my son from his new girlfriend.”

 

After witnessing her son’s arrest by ICE, Beltrán — in a state of shock — went to Marian Regional Health Center where her younger son had just gone through minor surgery.

 

“It was there that I saw a Facebook post on my phone that a young man had just been admitted to the hospital after being severely beaten by ICE,” she said.

 

Beltrán immediately thought of her son, Jefersson. Desperate, she ran down the hospital staircase to the reception where she asked if he was being treated there.

 

“The nurses refused to provide me any information,” said Beltrán. “I returned to my younger son’s room and from there I called 911 seeking help. They told me it wasn’t their problem.”

 

That night around 7 PM Beltrán got a call. Jefersson was crying. He explained that an ICE agent had beaten him and that he was in fact in the same hospital where his younger brother was being treated.

 

His cell mates beg me to seek help, that my son is not well and that I can’t stay quiet.”
Alba Beltrán

 

According to Beltrán, her son told her that an ICE officer “punched me in the head and chest when I refused to answer whether I was illegal, and I told him I wanted to speak to a lawyer.”

 

Jefferson told his mother he had been restrained naked in a hospital bed “without even a blanket to cover myself.” Later he was transferred to a cell in an ICE processing facility in Santa Maria where Beltrán says the abuse continued.

 

Jefersson is currently being held in the Adelanto Detention Center outside Los Angeles where a three-judge panel ruled recently that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for widespread reports of inhumane conditions.

 

Beltrán has not been able to visit her son at Adelanto given her own immigration status.

 

Medical records obtained by Beltrán from Marian Regional Health Center, meanwhile, make no mention of the injuries she says he sustained at the hands of the ICE agent. She notes it took four trips over the course of a month before the hospital released the documents to her, adding she was also billed $380 for X-rays done during her son’s hospitalization.

 

But two individuals who provide support services to detained immigrants inside Adelanto and who spoke with Jefersson after his detention in late July told ACoM that he had “bruises on his chest. His neck was swollen, and he complained of back pain.”

 

The individuals requested anonymity for fear of reprisals by officials at Adelanto, including potentially being barred from entering the facility to continue ministering to detainees inside.

“I also saw the young man very worried, depressed, and sobbing,” said one.

 

ACoM reached out to Marian Regional Health Center for comment on the delay in sending the records and on Jefersson’s treatment there. We have yet to receive a response.

 

While unable to visit, Alba continues to speak with her son by phone daily since he arrived at Adelanto. “He tells me he can’t believe what he is living through … that he doesn’t deserve it. Sometimes he cries a lot.”

 

She adds that when he was 16 years old, Jefersson once attempted suicide. His mental health is a going concern for her.

 

“His cell mates beg me to seek help, that my son is not well and that I can’t stay quiet,” says Alba.

 

In July, the ACLU published a report, Agents of Chaos and Cruelty, that details incidents involving immigration enforcement operations across eight states, including California. According to the authors, of the more than 1,200 incidents examined, more than one-in-four involved aggressive and often illegal use of force by ICE agents.

 

“Far beyond Minneapolis, the Trump administration has deployed a national deportation policing force that has committed civil rights violations at a scale and severity without parallel in modern American history – turning schools, bus stops and grocery stores into sites of violence and abuse,” said Naureen Shah, director of policy and government affairs and co-author of the report.

 

“I’m not surprised by what happened to Jefersson,” says Pastor Guillermo Torres of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, or CLUE, who makes weekly visits to the Adelanto Detention Center. “It has become a very common practice for ICE agents to beat the immigrants they detain.”

 

Torres described a Nicaraguan woman he met at the facility “who was a street vendor in Los Angeles, who was beaten when she ran trying to avoid being arrested on November 25. I have photos of the bruises they gave her.”

 

He adds, “There are many cases of physical abuse against detained immigrants that do not come to light,” says Torres, “and there is nothing that can be done against ICE agents who take justice into their own hands.”

 

This story was produced as part of “Aquí Estamos/Here We Stand,” a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media.

and community news outlets statewide. Araceli Martínez is a veteran reporter with more than three decades covering the Latino community in Los Angeles and a member of ACoM’s Aqui Estámos cohort. This story was first published by American Community Media, a national nonprofit that reports on America’s diverse communities from the inside out.

This article is published with permission by American Community Media.