As the sun dipped low outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center, Pedro Rios and Adriana Jasso laid out the cempasúchil flowers carefully, the brilliant orange petals staining their fingertips.
Nearby, organizers and artists had built a ceremonial altar decorated with candles, calaveras and monarch butterflies.
“We’re breaking up the cempasúchil flower, the marigolds and creating a path,” Rios said, cradling the flowers in his arms. “To the ceremonial altar that recognizes them as human beings.”
On Wednesday evening, a little over a dozen people gathered for a vigil outside the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) facility, which sits along the southern edge of San Diego County.
Vigil participants were there to celebrate Día de Muertos, the traditional holiday with deep roots throughout Mexico and Central America — and to honor the dozens of people that ICE agents have shot or who have died in the agency’s custody this year.
The event came just days after a 43-year-old immigrant from Guatemala named Guillermo Pascual Vergansa died on Saturday in a cell at Otay Mesa.
Vergansa was the 60th person to die in ICE detention since President Donald Trump took office again and launched a deadly mass deportation campaign. That’s according to Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University professor who tracks deaths in ICE custody.
In a statement earlier this week, ICE said it is investigating Vergansa’s death. (The agency incorrectly identified Vergansa as “Roberto Jimenez Gutierrez.”)
San Diego County officials have demanded an independent investigation into Vergansa’s death.
Wednesday’s vigil was organized by several immigrants’ rights groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, the nonprofit human rights organization where Rios and Jasso work.
Since 2020, the organization has held an annual Día de Muertos gathering outside the detention center on Oct. 28. Traditionally, that date is reserved for honoring people who have died from sudden accidents, tragic events or violence.
Jasso said they wanted to call particular attention to CoreCivic, the private prison contractor that runs day-to-day operations at Otay Mesa. It’s one of several companies that make money by detaining immigrants on behalf of the U.S. government.
“CoreCivic has the profits of billions of dollars a year from the cruelty of holding people,” Jasso said. “It is important for us to be here and to make sure that CoreCivic knows that we know — and that ICE also understands — that they are responsible for the lives.”
Vergansa is the first person that ICE has reported dying at Otay Mesa since the beginning of Trump’s second term. Two other immigrants, Huabing Xie and Luis Beltrán Yañez-Cruz, died while being held at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in neighboring Imperial County.
Jasso said ICE has tried to criminalize Vergansa in its public statements.
Earlier this week, the agency alleged that he was arrested multiple times for charges including child abuse and battery against a spouse. ICE said he was also convicted for selling liquor to a minor. (Vergansa’s family has denied those allegations.)
“The agency seems to make a clear effort to … present people as criminal, alien rather than human beings,” Jasso said. “We didn't hear about the fact that, from what we understand now, he was a father of five children — that he had a life, dreams and aspirations just like many other people.”
Through their vigils, she said, they hope to humanize Vergansa and others who have died in ICE custody.
May, another attendee who did not share her last name, pointed out that Vergansa’s death was the second in the span of just five days. Last week, 48-year-old Luis Sandoval died amid an ongoing hunger strike at a detention center in Georgia.
“We can’t become desensitized,” May said. “We can't let at least that part of our humanity be taken away.”
Another immigrants’ rights group has planned a vigil for Sunday afternoon at 1:30pm.
