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Migrants detained at Delray Beach immigration office ‘were tricked,' families say

"They said, 'Come over here at 2 o’clock because we need to fix something on your phone for the application that we supervise you,'" one mother said. "And yeah, that was a lie."

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People were expecting a routine appointment at an immigration supervision office in Delray Beach – but when they arrived, they were detained. NBC6’s Lena Salzbank reports

Some people living in South Florida are reporting that family members who showed up to regularly scheduled appointments with immigration officers were detained on Monday in Delray Beach.

Nearly a dozen people could be seen standing outside the parking lot of an office in Delray Beach called BI Incorporated, a company which according to its website, supports the Department of Homeland Security with operating the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, an alternative to detention known as ISAP.

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Outside the immigration supervision office in Delray Beach, concerned friends and family members spoke to NBC6 on condition of anonymity.

One woman said her cousin was called to come in at 8 a.m. for what they thought was a routine appointment.

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“They were tricked into coming to see their immigration officer, as they've done time and time again, but this time they were caught by surprise and taken away,” she said. "He was given everything. Proper documentation. All he had to do was check in with immigration monthly, weekly, through a phone and continue following up until his court date, to decide if he could stay forever. And today was a normal check-in as far as we knew."

But when hours went by and their family didn't hear from him, she went to see if something was wrong.

It wasn’t until she saw a photo and videos of a group of at least half a dozen people in zip-ties being placed into SUVs that she realized her cousin had been detained.

"These people aren't bad people, these people aren't criminals," she said through tears. "The person, my family member, they took away today, is not a criminal. He has never been to jail."

And her cousin wasn’t the only one. Another woman said she waited for more than five hours before her son was escorted out by agents.

"They said, 'Come over here at 2 o’clock because we need to fix something on your phone for the application that we supervise you,'" she said. "And yeah, that was a lie."

She said 30-year-old son came to the United States from Venezuela when he was just 6 years old.

"They didn’t give us the opportunity to at least tell us, 'Look, you have a deportation order, we want you to be removed by February or something,'" she said. "They just [give us] lies. They were lying to him."

NBC6 asked the company for comment, but they referred us to their federal partners. 

Garrett Ripa, the acting assistant director for field operations with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did respond to what the families say happened.

Ripa denied the family members' claims that they're being lured in for their regularly scheduled appointments or to fix applications as a tactic being used by ICE.

"No, there's no truth to that. Like I said, what we're doing today is what we do every day. We're just doing it with more of our federal partners," Ripa said.

While Ripa said he doesn't have information about the actions taken on Monday in Delray Beach, he said they will only detain and/or deport people with a final order.

William Botsch, a volunteer with the Miramar Circle of Protection, an organization that helps people at the Miramar ICE facility, said it's not a routine practice, but also not unheard of for people to be taken into custody when they've reported to their check-in.

"That makes them the easiest people to take in to custody if these field offices want to boost their arrest numbers to meet these new standards. The fear is that it will become a routine thing," Botsch said.

He hopes that people won’t be scared away from reporting in to immigration officials, because that can have serious consequences.

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