Activists with Justice for the Children and others held a rally to oppose the opening of an immigration child detention center in Arleta, CA. on Monday, January 6, 2019. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Kathleen Hernandez participated at the rally on Woodman Ave. and Nordhoff St. Activists with Justice for the Children and others held a rally to oppose the opening of an immigration child detention center in Arleta, CA. on Monday, January 6, 2019. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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Activists with Justice for the Children and others held a rally to oppose the opening of an immigration child detention center in Arleta, CA. on Monday, January 6, 2019. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Activists with Justice for the Children and others held a rally to oppose the opening of an immigration child detention center in Arleta, CA. on Monday, January 6, 2019. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Activists with Justice for the Children and others held a rally to oppose the opening of an immigration child detention center in Arleta, CA. on Monday, January 6, 2019. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)



Dozens of protesters demonstrated in Arleta on Monday, Jan. 6, aiming to raise opposition to placing a detention center in the community for immigrant children who are separated from their parents.

The two-story building on Woodman Avenue where the facility is planned was formerly a convalescent home, said local resident Ed Rose, whose mother stayed there briefly. But “locking up little kids” was not something the 82-year-old Mission Hills resident ever imagined would happen there. He said he found the idea “absolutely ridiculous” and would rather see the building be used as a shelter for homeless people.

“To be silent is to in essence support what is going on,” added Rose, who turned out Monday to challenge the plans, by youth shelter operator VisionQuest, to lease the building and create the detention center with part of a $25 million federal grant.

VisionQuest officials did not return efforts to contact them for comment on Monday. A report by investigative journalism website Reveal last November broke the news about the facility, which it said would include 148 beds for boys between 11 and 17 years old.

A representative of the company, Mark Contento, said in a statement to Reveal’s reporters that there is “a lot of misinformation online” about shelters for unaccompanied minors.

Supporting the the Arleta protesters was Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Los Angeles, whose aides attended the protest. “I will not sit quietly as a detention center opens in my district that would put more children in cages and separate families,” Cardenas wrote on his Twitter page. The post was accompanied by photos of protesters gathered at the site.

Earlier this year, the City Council voted to create an ordinance that would ban the construction and operation of private detention facilities in the city. The developer of the Arleta facility, according to Councilwoman Nury Martinez, is VisionQuest, which typically operates housing and services for youths who have been assigned to the company by a judge or foster services.

Martinez introduced a motion in November seeking information from the city’s Planning Department and City Attorney’s Office on the proposed location and the site’s zoning in an effort to determine if the area is suitable for the project.

“As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, I am vehemently opposed to placing immigrant children in what some call holding facilities or detention centers. I call them prisons,” Martinez said. “For-profit operations like VisionQuest, whose so-called expertise is in youth discipline programming, working for a dishonest federal government that actively engaged in and then lied about separating immigrant children from their parents is a recipe for human disaster. You should not be able to profit off of the anguish of children.”

Martinez’ motion is slated to be heard by the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee in the near future.

During the protest, residents, educators and activists held up signs, chanted and elicited honks from drivers coming through the Nordhoff Street and Woodman Avenue intersection.

“We’re down the street from here, we pass by here all the time,” said Sun Valley resident Dulce Moran, 23. She clutched a bright yellow sign that read “Asylum is a Human Right.” Her friend, Amber Sanabria, held up a sign that said “Family Separation is Child Abuse.”

“To know that it might possibly turn into a detention center? It hurts,” said Moran.

On Monday, dozens of San Fernando Valley residents gathered on Woodman Avenue in Arleta to protest a plan to put an immigrant youth detention facility there. One said the proposal felt like a “slap in the face.” Here’s what others at the rally said about the proposal: pic.twitter.com/ZniKES7kHg — Elizabeth Chou (@reporterliz) January 7, 2020

Sherman Oaks resident Julian Quintero, 22, spoke at the rally dressed up as one of the three Biblical kings at Jesus Christ’s birth. Monday was Dia de los Reyes, a Christian holiday also known as the Epiphany.

Quintero said that children of immigrants know the sacrifices their parents made bringing them here. “It’s dangerous back where we live,” he said. “There’s no reason to be scared. We’re not bad people. We’re not drug lords, whatever you think it is.”

According to Reveal, the journalism website operated by the The Center of Investigative Reporting, notes between city officials and VisionQuest indicate the company wanted to lease the vacant building to “host children who have entered the country as unaccompanied minors.”

In November, VisionQuest CEO Mark Contento said on his Twitter feed, “If 20,000 children suddenly showed up on your doorstep, what would you do? How would you deal with them? How would you take care of them? The Office of Refugee Resettlement is doing an incredible job. Would you?” The Department of Health and Human Services oversees the child migrant shelters through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the agency.

City records show that VisionQuest’s “project team communicated that this would not be a detention facility,” according to Reveal. The city’s Planning Department website shows an application to change the use of the facility was submitted in October.

Van Nuys resident Mayra Todd, 53, said her two granddaughters, Britany and Iris, were held at detention centers in Texas, after they immigrated with their parents from Guatemala. The older girl and her father were held separately from her sister, who stayed with her mother, Todd said.

Todd’s family had already experienced separation before the two girls arrived, she said. She had not seen her son, the girls’ father, since he was 7 years old. It was not until tragedy struck back in Guatemala that her son decided to join her in the U.S., she said.

“Knowing that my family died, a lot of people died, my son decided to come here,” she said.

City News Service contributed to this report.