A local family is scrambling to help 24-year-old Celso Guillen-Zambrano in photo, described by family and friends as a loving father of a 22-month old baby boy, now in ICE Detention at the Nevada Southern Detention Center in Pahrump.
That name shows up in the publicly available online detainee locator system.
A friend says he was given a quick two minute phone call when he is said to have arrived earlier today, quoted as saying “hi I only have two minutes to talk. I’m at the detention center in Pahrump. Please let everybody know I’m okay and safe. Please fight to get me out of here please.”
Even though he’s been in the United States over twenty years, the friend says he’s undocumented.
The friend says he was arrested locally in October after having a mental breakdown at a party, with the friend saying he was grieving his father’s recent death, allegedly murdered by a cartel in Mexico, and charged with “battery on protected person.” The friend says he accidentally kicked an officer while being restrained.
The friend says he was then bailed out with loans for eight thousand dollars.
He had a public defender, and in late May the friend says he was sentenced to a month in jail, during which time he got a visit from ICE and a federal hold was placed on him, before being taken to the Nevada Southern Detention Center today. We could not independently confirm these chain of events other than the current ICE custody of Guillen-Zambrano.
“We packed him a bag for whenever he gets deported with clothes and a phone charger and his only request was a shirt or toy that smells like his baby,” the close friend wrote to us.
“We are going through a very hard time and would absolutely be destroyed if we lost my brother too,” Celso’s sister Brandy wrote to us separately.
The gofundme with additional details can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ju3rey-help-us-fight-for-my-brothers-future