los angeles — Federal immigration agents arrested a US citizen, took his car with a child in the back seat and drove it from the scene of a raid in Los Angeles, lawyers and family said Wednesday.
In a video provided by immigrant advocates, masked and armed agents are seen arresting a man next to his car in the parking lot while his 1-year-old daughter was strapped into a car seat in the back. After the man was led away, agents were seen getting into the front of the car and driving off with the girl still inside.
The man was a US citizen who was at the site of a federal immigration raid at a Home Depot store in Los Angeles, said Lindsay Tozilowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Advocates Law Center. She added that community members have contacted the company, which handles immigration cases, to help with family reunification, but it does not represent the man because he is American.
“It was a dangerous act to have armed men get into the car with that child and take her out of the situation,” Tozilovsky said, adding that the child was picked up by her relatives later that day from federal offices in Los Angeles. “They should have followed protocols that had this child’s best interest in mind.”
US 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 US citizen was arrested for investigation into an assault on Tuesday after he carried a hammer and threw rocks at Border Patrol agents who raided a Home Depot store in Los Angeles while a child was in his car. The spokesman said five migrants were arrested during the operation on suspicion of immigration violations.
The man’s whereabouts were not immediately known on Wednesday, more than 24 hours after his arrest. His mother, Maria, told reporters that the family received a call from an unknown number on Tuesday to pick up the girl from the Border Patrol offices in Los Angeles, so they did so. She said the child was fine, but she was asking about her father, who was born in California and works in the restaurant industry.
Maria said that she and the girl are also American citizens. She declined to reveal her last name to protect her granddaughter’s identity.
“It’s very scary,” she said in Spanish after watching the video. “You don’t know who these people are.”