Here is a list of Rami Othmane’s loves: a good steak at Arroyo Chop House. At 6 foot 7 inches tall, and for such a skinny guy, he sure does love his food. Then there’s classical Arabic music, made with the pear-shaped oud, ancestor of the guitar, from which he plucked songs from his home country Tunisia. He dotes on his two dogs, Nova and Rizu.

And then there is Dr. Wafaa Alrashid, 47, his bride, who herself can list all the ways she loves her husband, before she stutters to a stop: reminded she is standing outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A. Remembering he is close, but not beside her. Because on Sunday, July 13, on his way to pick up sausage fixings at a Pasadena grocery store, Othmane, 36, was taken from his car and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

About 60 people, including Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo, and Pablo Alvarado and Nadia Marin-Molina, co-executive directors of NDLON, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, stood for more than two hours outside the Edward Roybal Federal Building on Friday to protest Othmane’s arrest, since he is in the country legally with a pending petition for a green card.

“Today is the 12th day he has been in B-18,” Alrashid said, referring to the infamous basement facility in the building. “He does not have a bed to sleep on. He does not have a toothbrush or toothpaste. There’s no soap. They feed them sporadically and my husband is 6-foot-7 and he needs a certain amount of nutrition and he has not received that for days.”

She said this is not just an immigration issue but a human rights crisis happening in downtown Los Angeles, a nightmare she shares with many others around the country.

“My husband has been subjected to 12 days of inhumane treatment in a federal building,” Alrashid said. “He is not a criminal. He is a kind, peaceful man with an open immigration petition. He should be with his family, not sleeping on a concrete floor without medical care.”

The event was part protest and vigil, and also a “serenata,” a serenade, said Alvarado, who assured the crowd Othmane and other detainees can hear the Arabic, and later, Spanish-language cumbias and ballads musicians played from a mobile stage.

“In the Latin American culture, the serenade is an act of love and kindness,” Alvarado said. “Today it is also an act of resistance, to bring music to those in captivity, knowing so much pain families are enduring in this moment. We’re not going to stay quiet, we’re going to raise our voices.”

Alrashid said she was speaking with her husband via Facetime when he called to tell her ICE officers in five cars were following him and that they blocked his car on Pasadena Avenue, did not show a warrant and did not identify themselves.

“I was screaming, ‘Don’t get out of the car,’ but one had a baton and he said they had weapons. My husband is the most peaceful man and he cooperated and they took him,” she said. “I flew out of our apartment crying to my Mom on the phone, telling her they might arrest me. I was so ready to fight for him.”

The arrest happened near Huntington Hospital, where Alrashid has worked for 21 years and where she serves as chief of medical staff.

Born and raised in Utah of Egyptian and Iraqi ancestry, she married Othmane in 2024.

“This is my country. I don’t know any other,” Alrashid said. “But I don’t recognize my country now.”

Gordo, the mayor of Pasadena, said the city stands with Alrashid, a leader at the hospital he calls a “community gem.”

“You’ve been here for us and now we’re here for you,” he said. “What’s happening in our community is unrecognizable, unlawful, and most importantly, illegal. It’s wrong. Rami is not a criminal and the great majority of the people who have been impacted have no criminal record. This is not just un-American. It’s unethical.”

Dr. Elisa Alvarado is Othmane’s doctor and Alrashid’s friend. She was one of many white-coated residents and staff from Huntington Hospital at the serenade.

“I’m here in support of Rami and his family, to say this is not right,” she said. “I’m concerned for Rami as my patient because these conditions are not good for his health.”

Alvarado said the suffering Alrashid is undergoing also affects the Pasadena community, as she oversees more than 1,000 doctors and her husband’s unlawful detention is taking her focus away from that life-saving work.

“The community is suffering also,” Alvarado said.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Since June 6, armed federal immigration agents have converged on local cities, without warning, to arrest immigrants. They are seeking to fulfill President Donald Trump’s pledge to arrest the “worst of the worst” criminal immigrants and mass deport them. Administration officials call the influx of undocumented immigrants a “invasion,” which federal authorities say justifies the nationwide crackdown.

But advocacy groups say most of the people being arrested are neither criminals nor the “worst of the worst.”

Nationwide, there were 47,238 people being detained by ICE as of July 7. According to the agency, 13,656 of those detained — 28.9% — were categorized as criminals.

“In the end, that is the only shield that we have against the constitutional violations this administration’s been engaged in and that have been sanctified by the Supreme Court,” Newman said. “It’s imperative. We need to have public opinion on the side of what’s moral and bedrock constitutional rights that are being jeopardized. I think the Trump administration is trying to make all of us indifferent to the suffering of people, and this is proof that we are not going to do that.”

Alrashid said a high note in these days spent fighting and waiting is when her husband calls from B-18. She makes sure the man who mesmerizes his audience with music hears it now in his captivity. He serenaded her with a French-Arabic song at their engagement party two years ago, and she laugh-cries as she confesses she doesn’t know its title.

But “I’ll play it for him for as long as they’ll let me.”