Week of Oct. 23, 2025

From the editor’s desk

Last week in Las Vegas, I attended a screening of Unseen Territories, a documentary about a group art project in Southern Nevada for which 14 BIPOC artists created their own distinctive flags. During a post-film panel discussion, the artists talked about the importance of sharing their stories and being visible, especially at such a politically contentious moment.

Elsa Cantu—camera operator, producer and publicist—briefly mentioned something startling: Her husband, Juan Lizarraga, was in ICE custody.

Elsa shared some details by phone today. Juan is a sommelier, originally from Peru, who has lived in the U.S. since 2003. Elsa said he has a Social Security number and can work legally in the U.S., that his citizenship status is “in limbo,” and that he has no criminal record.

She said that on Sept. 28, as Juan was leaving work in his car, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department pulled him over for reckless driving and detained him. She is not clear on what constituted the “reckless driving.” Elsa suspects that the police kept Juan in custody in the hope of charging him with a DUI. She said that she saw proof of a blood test, and “he didn’t have alcohol in his blood.” 

Elsa said that the police told her to expect Juan to be released within a day or so. Instead, they turned him over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She said that as of midafternoon today, Juan was still in ICE custody in Pahrump, and he has not been charged with a crime.

Elsa paid a $5,000 bail fee this morning. As of 2:45 p.m., she was expecting Juan to be released from custody sometime today.

While ICE says it’s “protecting America,” this Nevada family doesn’t feel safer in the least. Elsa said her life has been upended as she’s tried to cope with the extreme stress of the situation, raise money for legal fees (around $20K and counting) and the bail bond, and be there for her children—a college student, a 19-year-old, and a 10-year-old, of whom she said, “She’s very confused about the fact that her dad went to work one day and didn’t come back.”

In related news, the nonprofit news outlet ProPublica published a piece about ICE detainees— who are full U.S. citizens. (I first saw it in the Reno Gazette-Journal, where it was republished yesterday.) The headline is, “We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.” While that summarizes the situation pretty well, I recommend reading this piece. The details are important, and they’re not always easy to come by. Here are a few the author’s findings: 

When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned.

“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.”

But that is far from the reality many citizens have experienced. Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.

Kudos to these news outlets working to keep ICE’s egregious uses of force in the spotlight, and kudos to the Las Vegas artists working to make sure their own stories are heard. As of today, they did not have any Reno screenings of Unseen Territories on the books, but if you’d like to keep an eye out for their upcoming appearances, follow them on Instagram @unseenterritoriesfilm.

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor