That literally happened and it was the high profile nature that got him found. So many people without the resources and support do lose family members this way.
On January 25, at the San Diego, California border with Tijuana, Mexico, a German tattoo artist and tourist, Jessica Brösche, was detained indefinitely while trying to enter the US through a port of entry.
Brösche was accused of violating the terms of her visa waiver program. This was despite Brösche having her passport, confirmation of her visa waiver, and a copy of her return flight ticket to Berlin for February 15. Brösche was detained by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for days and then transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, where she has faced horrific conditions and remains to this day.
But after Lofving and other loved ones had not heard from Brösche for over a week, and had been given no information as to where she was, they became extremely concerned for her well-being and appealed for help on social media. By using the Federal Detainee Locator website they were eventually able to track her location to the ICE detention facility in Otay Mesa in Southern California, which is run by the for-profit prison corporation CoreCivic.
Interviews conducted by ABC10 with Brösche and Lofving have exposed the nightmarish conditions faced by victims of ICE. Brösche described how she was held in solitary confinement for nine days. She was isolated and left without a pillow or blanket, in what amounts to a form of torture.
CoreCivic, the private prison company that operates Otay Mesa, told CNN that the company “does not know the circumstances of individuals when they are placed in our facilities.”
By entering on the waiver program, a tourist waives their right to any kind of litigation, Joseph explained.
But normally, a tourist denied entry to the US would be allowed to withdraw their application for admission. “Instead of being subjected to deportation proceedings, they’re allowed to kind of get back on the airplane and turn around and go home, and that does not appear to have happened in this case,” Joseph continued.
The only reason people are even aware of what’s happening to her is because she’s white and has first-world friends. There have been brown people flooding into this system, sometimes dying there quietly as the world moves on without them, for years. And no one really knew anything about it except maybe a handful of loved ones who were left to wonder what happened.
Being disappeared means one day someone vanishes. No-one knows where they are, what happened to them, or who is responsible. This is not that.
That literally happened and it was the high profile nature that got him found. So many people without the resources and support do lose family members this way.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/07/jbfi-m07.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/04/world/german-detained-ice-intl-latam/index.html
The only reason people are even aware of what’s happening to her is because she’s white and has first-world friends. There have been brown people flooding into this system, sometimes dying there quietly as the world moves on without them, for years. And no one really knew anything about it except maybe a handful of loved ones who were left to wonder what happened.
They attempted to do this to this person.