LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen and took his car with a child in the back seat and drove off from the scene of a raid in Los Angeles, advocates and family said Wednesday.
On a video provided by immigrant advocates, masked and armed agents are seen arresting a man by his car in a parking lot while his 1-year-old daughter is strapped into a car seat in the back. After the man is led away, agents are seen getting into the front of the car and driving off with the girl still inside.
The man is a U.S. citizen who was at the scene of a federal immigration raid at a Home Depot store in Los Angeles, said Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. The firm, which handles immigration cases, was contacted by community members for help reuniting the family, but isn’t representing the man because he is American, she said.
“It was a dangerous act to have armed men get in a car with that child and remove her from the situation,” Toczylowski said, adding relatives picked up the child later that day from federal offices in Los Angeles. “They should have followed protocols that had the best interest of that child in mind.”
U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to questions about why agents drove the man’s car or took the child.
In an email, an agency spokesperson said a U.S. citizen was arrested for investigation of assault on Tuesday after carrying a hammer and throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents carrying out a raid at a Home Depot store in Los Angeles while a child was in his car. Five immigrants were arrested during the operation on suspicion of immigration violations, the spokesperson said.
It was not immediately known where the man was on Wednesday, more than 24 hours after his arrest. His mother, Maria, told reporters, the family received a call from an unknown number Tuesday to pick up the girl at Border Patrol offices in Los Angeles, so they did. She said the child is fine but asking for her father, who was born in California and works in the restaurant industry.
Maria said she and the girl are also U.S. citizens. She declined to provide her last name to protect her granddaughter’s identity.
“It’s something very frightening,” she said in Spanish after seeing the video. “You don’t know who those people are.”