Charleston immigrant community decries police, ICE raid of SC nightclub
NORTH CHARLESTON — After law enforcement arrested 80 people during a weekend sting operation at a nightclub in Charleston County, federal immigration officials claimed 'the community at large knew that there was nothing good going on at that establishment.'
But for some people present during the 3 a.m. June 1 raid at the Alamo, that simply was not the case. For Alejandra De La Vega, the venue located just outside the town of Summerville, right along the Charleston and Dorchester county line, was a place to dance with friends.
'I went to Alamo to enjoy the night, just like many others,' she told reporters Friday. 'But instead of fun, it turned into fear and humiliation.'
De La Vega had just stepped out of the restroom when she said police stormed in, guns drawn. Patrons were running and screaming, she said, as more officers streamed in and ordered people to the ground.
'It was chaos,' she said at the news conference outside the Lonnie Hamilton Public Services Building in North Charleston.
County, state and federal law enforcement held and questioned the more than 200 people present at the club during the raid, dubbed 'Operation Last Stand,' for two hours, De La Vega said.
The S.C. State Law Enforcement Division began investigating Alamo in November 2024 after receiving a tip about potential human trafficking at the venue, agency spokeswoman Renée Wunderlich told the SC Daily Gazette Friday.
The Department of Homeland Security also got involved in the investigation at that time, she said.
Later Friday, SLED announced criminal charges against two people, the club's 59-year-old owner, Benjamin Reyna-Flores of Hanahan, and a 44-year-old security guard at the club, Terone Lavince Lawson of North Charleston.
Reyna-Flores faces multiple charges related to unlawful sale of alcohol. The club had no alcohol license.
Lawson faces illegal gun and drug possession charges. According to warrants from SLED, Lawson had 2 grams of meth, an eight ball of cocaine, and less than a gram of psychedelic mushrooms in his van. Police also found a pair of handguns in the van, which Lawson cannot legally possess due to past convictions for burglary in 2008 and assault in 2003.
Those arrested include two unidentified 'high-level cartel members' associated with the Mexico-based Los Zetas cartel and the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang and one person wanted by Interpol for murder in Honduras, said U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent Cardell Morant.
Ten juveniles as young as 13 — including one reported as missing — as well as an unidentified number of potential human trafficking victims were at the club at the time of the raid. Law enforcement also reported seizing guns, cocaine and cash.
In her retelling of events, De La Vega said police separated anyone with visible tattoos and photographed them.
De La Vega, a transgender Latina woman who has lived in the United States since 2001, said officers questioned the validity of her state-issued I.D. card, as well as that of the transgender woman she was there with.
De La Vega has legal residency status in the U.S. She was not arrested.
But 80% of those arrested Sunday did not have legal status to be in the country. The vast majority were arrested on civil immigration charges, not criminal violations.
Five people were arrested for criminal offenses, Morant said.
Homeland Security confirmed to The Post & Courier that Sergio Joel Galo-Baca is the Honduran man wanted for international homicide. Beyond SLED's announcement Friday, no other names or list of charges have been released.
Homeland Security officials have not responded to emails sent by the SC Daily Gazette.
'The narrative that's been put out by the sheriff, by the governor, by the attorney general, is that they are just trying to stop violent criminals, stop trafficking,' said Will McCorkle, a member of the Charleston Immigrant Coalition. 'But what they quickly overlook are the many innocent people that were detained and are now in the process of deportation for no real purpose.'
Now, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina, several families do not know where their family members are.
They have searched their names online using Immigration and Customs Enforcement's database that people can use to locate the state and center where detainees are being held. But their family members' names have not shown up in the search, said Dulce Lopez, immigrant rights advocacy strategist for the ACLU.
They can only assume, based on news reports, that their family members are at an ICE holding facility in Folkston, Georgia.
'That made me realize, how easily everything can be taken away,' De La Vega said. 'I keep thinking, what if I didn't have a legal status? What if I were detained and ripped away from my family?'
'My mom is my hero,' De La Vega continued. 'She came to this country and gave me and my siblings a better life. She raised us with love and sacrifice and with so much strength. We're really close, and I don't know what I would do if I was taken from her. No one should have lived with that fear.'
Charleston County Sheriff Carl Ritchie, during a news conference Monday, cited noise complaints at the club and reports of assaults in the parking lot.
Outside of Sunday's raid, the sheriff's department responded to the club 13 other times since 2020 for calls including 'suspicious circumstances,' vandalism and one armed robbery, according to a call log provided by the department.
Area business owners said their biggest issue in the last several months had been club goers parking on the side of the highway and in their parking lots after the club's lot filled up, leaving behind excessive trash and beer bottles after nearly every weekend.
The nightclub did not have a license to sell alcohol.
A group of faith and immigrant community leaders stressed that they do not condone criminal activity.
'But no one deserves to be treated as guilty by association,' said Lopez, of the ACLU.
People have reason to be afraid, McCorckle said, citing the recent case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Living in Maryland, Garcia had been protected from deportation by a 2019 judge's ruling that he likely faced gang persecution in his home country.
The Trump administration has insisted Garcia is an MS-13 gang member, which Garcia denied. On Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Garcia was back in U.S. custody to face criminal charges in Tennessee related to human smuggling.
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