Among Americans harassed by immigration agents include a woman who was days away from giving birth and a special needs teen who was held at gunpoint outside a school
A U.S. citizen who went into labor prematurely after being violently detained by masked deportation agents is among a group of Americans who have recently filed legal claims against the federal government for civil rights violations, including racial profiling.
Cary López Alvarado, a U.S.-born American, was working at a private residence when she got a call from her boyfriend informing her that mass deportation agents were following him and a cousin and were soon going to pull up to the address. When agents arrived, López Alvarado asked them for a warrant in order to enter. The request was perfectly within her rights. We all have rights, no matter what administration officials might claim.
But López Alvarado, who was just days away from giving birth, said that agents instead accused her of interfering with their operation and violently restrained her as horrified witnesses watched on.
“The agents manhandled Ms. Alvarado by grabbing and pulling Ms. Alvarado’s arms, twisting her arm on the truck, and pushing her body, including her pregnant belly, onto the truck,” said the Carrillo Law Firm. The mother-to-be said all she could do was think of how she could protect her unborn child from any physical harm.
“I crouched down and held my belly, because I was scared they would hurt me,” she said at the time. “Three agents were grabbing me and trying to handcuff me.” The Sacramento Bee reports that “footage the attorneys shared with McClatchy News shows Alvarado, who is visibly pregnant, being detained against a white truck.” Witnesses who recorded the unjust arrest could be heard shouting “let her go” and “she’s pregnant,” NBC News said.
López Alvarado said that she tried to tell the agents that her baby was due within days. “OK, your baby is going to be born here, but you’re from Mexico, right?” she said they responded. “I was born here,” López Alvarado later told Spanish-language media. “I was born in Los Angeles; I was born in Hollywood Hospital.”
“Alvarado is one of five U.S. citizens who filed claims on Aug. 20 against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE and Customs and Border Protection over their arrests by immigration authorities in Southern California,” as The Sacramento Bee reported. “A sixth claim was also filed on behalf of a legal U.S. resident.”
One of the claims from the group of U.S. citizens includes a special needs teenager who was accosted at gunpoint while sitting in a car with his mother outside a Los Angeles high school. “I just seen all of these men coming out of that truck, pointing their guns and a taser gun at my son and myself,” said his mother, Andreina Mejia. “I looked at my son’s reaction and saw that he was scared. He didn’t know what was going on.”
As we’ve previously noted, there have been empty desks in classrooms this back to school season after schoolkids as young as six have been swept up and deported by the administration. And, these sweeps have been unsparing, as the claim shows.
“The teen was forcefully restrained and apprehended by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol, according to the claim filed Aug. 25 with both agencies, as well as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” The Sacramento Bee continued. The report notes that federal agents had the boy cuffed for about seven minutes before releasing him. But there was no apology or inkling of regret from the federal agents.
“Oh, we just confused you with somebody else, but look at the bright side, like, you’re going to have an exciting story to tell your friends when you go back to school,” the agents reportedly told him. “There’s nothing exciting about getting guns pointed at you,” his mother later said, “especially when you’re a 15-year-old, you don’t know what’s going on, you’re scared and there’s nothing exciting about that.”
Nor was it an exciting experience for Andrea Velez, another American citizen who was racially profiled and wrongfully detained while just going about her day. When Velez exercised her rights and sought to question mass deportation agents about a warrant, they refused to comply. “They just wanted to arrest me and put me inside the car,” she said. “Same for Javier Ramirez at his job at L.A. City Junk Cars in Montebello on June 12, racially profiled him, threw him to the ground and wrongly arrested him, according to his legal claim,” CBS News reported. “Get him, he’s Mexican,” masked agents reportedly said.
Yet in the shadow docket ruling from the Supreme Court giving the green light to racial profiling by immigration agents, Justice Brett Kavanaugh insisted that any targeting of U.S. citizens would be nothing more than a mild inconvenience.
“Moreover, as for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U. S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States,” Justice Kavanaugh claimed in his concurrence. “Typically brief” must be news to U.S. citizens like disabled U.S. military veteran George Retes, who was jailed for days after being violently detained at his work site. “I clearly identified myself as a U.S. citizen and an employee of the farm, yet federal agents ignored me, yelled conflicting orders, and then violently detained me,” he said.
“Justice Sotomayor, one of the three Justices who dissented, raised a clear alarm in her dissent,” said the American Immigration Council. “She warned that this decision risks turning Latinos into second class citizens. In her words: ‘We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.’” And, it was up to the court’s sole Latina justice to note this abuse of power. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Justice Sotomayor concluded.
We are finding out that citizenship is no longer enough to protect us – and that should worry every American that treasures our personal freedoms. We cannot look away, as the ACLU said.
“Will we accept a country where Latino citizens are forced to prove their citizenship on demand? Where language, accent, or workplace can be turned into suspicion? Where the Constitution bends depending on who you are and how you look? Or will we demand a country where rights are not contingent on appearance, where law enforcement cannot terrorize communities under the excuse of ‘reasonable suspicion’?”
