LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal immigration agents in Los Angeles arrested an American man during a raid outside a Home Depot store, then two of them got into his car and drove off with the man's young daughter strapped into a car seat in the back, activists and family members said Wednesday.
The video, recorded by a member of the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, an immigrant rights coalition, shows the man with his hands behind his back and leaning against his car before being driven away while two officers wearing masks, helmets and bulletproof vests get into the car and drive away. The blurry image shows the man's one-year-old daughter strapped into a car seat in the back.
People can be seen filming the police in the car and they can be heard shouting, “There’s a child in the back!” when the agents leave.
“It was dangerous for armed people to get into a car with this little girl and take her away from this situation,” said Lindsay Toczylovsky, co-founder of the Immigrant Advocates Law Center. Community members have contacted an immigration firm to help reunite the family, but it does not represent the man because he is American, he said.
Tochilovsky said the girl's relatives later picked her up at the federal office in Los Angeles.
“They should have followed protocols that had the best interests of this girl in mind,” he said.
In an email, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said a U.S. citizen exited his vehicle swinging a hammer and throwing rocks as Border Patrol agents conducted the raid. Officials said he was arrested on suspicion of assault and a handgun that was reported stolen in New York state was found in his car. Officials did not respond to questions about why officers took the man and his girlfriend's car.
The operation resulted in the arrest of five immigrants on suspicion of immigration violations, the spokesman said.
Ed Obayashi, California's special prosecutor and an expert on national and state police practices, said that during operations to arrest drunk drivers, police often encounter arrested parents and children left alone in vehicles. In such cases, the police usually call a tow truck because they do not want to be responsible for the car, and take the children in a patrol car to the police station, where the family can pick them up.
But he said federal immigration raids suggest a different scenario, and given the fact that there are often bystanders nearby who record video, he believes agents likely made a better decision.
“I think they were just trying to get the car and the girl out of there and get them to safety,” he said.
The man's mother, Maria, told reporters that on Tuesday the family received a call from an unknown number and asked to pick up the girl at the Border Patrol office in Los Angeles. He noted that the girl was fine, but asked about her father, who was born in California and works in the restaurant sector. It is currently unknown where the man was on Wednesday.
Maria said that she and the girl are also US citizens. She declined to give her last name to protect her granddaughter's identity.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor using a generative artificial intelligence tool.
