Video surfaced online Tuesday of two Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE) agents assaulting a woman on July 26 while she was asking for identification.
The video shows the agents arresting a man inside a courthouse elevator after his court case finished.
The last names of everyone involved in the video has not been made public out of safety reasons. The man getting arrested is Carlos.
Immediately after the judge hit the gavel giving Carlos probation for an incident that happened last year, the two plainclothed officers stood up and told Carlos that he needed to come with them.
Carlos was just given probation for an accident where he hit a pedestrian with his car after drinking two beers, even though he was not legally drunk. He just didn’t have a perfectly sober .00 blood-alcohol level.
Both the immigration and lower court agreed that Carlos should be given probation due to his character, support from the community based on how visibly remorseful he was; the fact he has been showing to his weekly check ins with immigration; and for the fact he has since been clean of alcohol.
However, more than 800 miles away in Washington D.C., Attorney General Jeff Sessions staff was not happy with the decision and appealed the ruling with their own court and won, overriding the local court’s decision, ordering the two ICE agents to arrest Carlos inside the court room.
That is when it started to escalate.
“He didn’t say anything else. Just ‘Let’s go, Carlos,’” Catalina, Carlos friend, said. “Carlos looked at him like, what are you talking about, I don’t know who you are.”
According to Think Progress:
“A woman with the group told the men they were leaving. One of the men said Carlos was coming with them. The other shoved Carlos’ nephew into a doorframe, Catalina said, prompting her to whip out her phone and start filming.”
At that point, the men have yet identified themselves or explained what was happening.
The men attempted to physically move Carlos to the elevator while everyone was shouting over each other.
It took 35 seconds into the video for the officers to finally state that they were arresting Carlos.
“Do you have a warrant?,” one of the women ask.
“Yes,” the officers respond.
“Can i see it please?,” the same woman asks.
“No. Okay, next person that touches me is getting charged with assault on a federal officer,” the dark shirt officer says.
“Do you have any identification?,” asks the woman.
“No, i do not need to present you with anything,” says the same officer.
Carlos lawyer and supports enter the elevator before the officers can enter.
“Get out of the elevator! Get out of the elevator!,” the peach shirt colored officer yells.
The woman asks again for the officers to identify who they are and is told that she is going to be moved out of the elevator.
A minute and forty-five seconds into the video one of the officers finally shows his badge.
Five seconds later the peach shirt officer grabs the woman recording by the elbow and wrist and shoved her out of the elevator and tells her she needs to get out.
The officer scuffles with the woman for the next twenty seconds till the video ends.
According to Think Progress:
“For me, as a woman of color, right now, for a white man to touch me so aggressively, and scream at me, I was completely shocked. And I kind of just went into the mode of just keep asking the same questions,” Catalina told ThinkProgress. “But we were scared, scared they would do more harm to us and to Carlos, and I didn’t want to leave him alone. When he started to grab and pull me, my wrist and my arm started hurting because of how much he was pulling me.” As the man shoved her, nearly knocking her to the floor, Catalina said she felt her body freeze and flash back to the numerous other times she’s been traumatized by police in her decades living in the midwestern United States.
Carlos was one of the only people in his family to have a driver’s license and used to to constantly drive friends and family to appointments and jobs and school trips so they would not risk getting on ICE’s radar while working two jobs.
Carlos wife and three kids are currently in hiding out of fear that they are next on ICE’s list of deportation.
The jail where Carlos is being held has federal agencies paying the county 160 percent per prisoner per day, according to Workday Minnesota.
