On busy Downtown Street, four masked plain cross agents push Luis Hippolito into the pavement and stack him up towards the curb. One is pounding the arm around the neck of the 23-year-old. Hipolito appears to be having trouble breathing on his stomach as the agent tries to cuff him for more than two minutes.
“Can you let him die?” one bystander cried as the other agents pushed the crowd back.
After a while they pulled him up. Hipolito’s legs tremble and buckle. His head turns and his body sways violently. A sudden convulsion appears to be the beginning of a seizure.
It was filmed on multiple videos Tuesday morning and shared on social media, infuriating immigrant advocates, their families and residents who witnessed it. He questioned the risks of Trump administration crackdowns in Los Angeles. There, agents are sweeping immigrants on busy streets with clear targets.
Share with intimate additional sharing options
“This refers to the risk of inheriting a massive arrest,” said Deborah Freyshaker, former chairman of the US immigration and customs enforcement agency, who reviewed some of the videos. “They should avoid as much as possible. You can’t control everything. It’s high that risk of violence, someone is hurt, or someone is hurting or causing a medical case. And that applies to the executives and targets too.”
However, she said the uprising appears to be part of the government’s plan. “The level of chaos and the fear of it being born doesn’t look like a bug here, it looks like a feature here.”
Bill Essayli, a US lawyer in Los Angeles, accused Hippolito, a US citizen of attacking a federal official who allegedly punched his agent before he worked on it. And officials from the Department of Homeland Security have repeatedly said they will arrest people who are blocking their businesses.
Fracas began when an unidentified agent began detaining a street vendor near the intersection of Main Street and Ninth Avenue in Downtown. Hippolito and the other bystanders rushed to film the action and scream at the agents.
The video appears to show the agent taking out a red bottle and spraying Hipolito within a few inches of his eyes, causing Hipolito to swipe. Footage reviewed by the Times does not show whether Hippolito’s hands are connected, but officers dodged the blow and lost his baseball cap. Hipolito’s family says it was pepper spray and Hipolito intentionally didn’t touch the agent because he was blinded.
At a hearing Thursday, Hippolito walked to court, limped and bound in the same clothes he had been arrested. A federal judge was released to him on a $10,000 bond.
Another woman, 32-year-old Andrea Guadalupe Verez, also a US citizen, was charged with assault during the same sweeping. The judge released her on a $5,000 bond as her mother and sister were watching in tears in court.
The DHS said their agents dramatically raise the assault on them, putting them at risk by those who interfere with their operations.
“Committee Noem was clear. If he puts his hands on a law enforcement officer, he will be charged to the fullest extent of the law,” said DHS Deputy Chief Tricia McLaughlin. “The actions of these US citizens prevented ICE law enforcement from arresting illegal foreigners targeted in the operation.”
Both defendants were immigrant children and were downtown when the agent’s convoy rode down Ninth Avenue. Most were wearing masks, but it was not clear what many agencies had. According to criminal charges filed by the US Attorney, U.S. immigration and customs enforcement agents had sought “questioning two individuals as to whether they exist legally.”
Court documents did not name those individuals, but agents stopped in front of a stand where the family sells tamares, coffee, champalads and pandals near the California Mart.
A graduate of Polipomona California, Veres had just been dropped by his mother and 17-year-old sister Estrella Rosas as the operation was underway.
According to criminal charges, Veres stepped into the agent’s path “suddenly” and “an obvious effort to prevent the arrest of the male subject he was chasing.” Veles, 4 feet 11, is said to have stood in the path of an agent with his arms stretched out. The agent said he was unable to stop within time and was hit in the head and chest.
Veres’ mother, Margarita Flores, looked in the rearview mirror. She said she saw the man running towards her daughter and saw her fall on the ground. Flores said the man didn’t have ID or license plates in the car.
She told Rosas to call the police, thinking that she was being invited.
“I called 911 and said they were tempting my sister because I didn’t know who these people were,” Rosace said.
Velez ran towards the deployed LAPD officers.
The crowd was gathering. The horns rang out. People were screaming indecent. They lifted Veles off the ground and carried him towards the SUV, so they pointed to the agent and took a picture with their cell phone. Her knees were pushed into her chest.
“They didn’t identify themselves,” Veles said Thursday after being released. “I was just going to work, but everything happened so quickly.”
Her lawyer, Gregory Russell, said in the confusion she saw was a police officer charging straight into her, “He thinks I’m illegal because of my skin color.”
He said that she instinctively lifts her work bag up and holds herself to protect herself from a much larger man as she pushes her to the ground.
“What scared me was that I didn’t know what was going to happen to me or where I was going,” she said.
Hipolito was part of the gathering crowd screaming at the agents.
When the agent was about to leave, he was standing near one of the cars arguing with the agent wearing the “police” vest.
The agent, identified as “CC,” ordered Hipolito and the other two to leave the scene, but they refused to move, so he sprayed them, according to the complaint. Next, “Hipolito punched CC into his face.”
An unstable video taken from inside a nearby car shows Hippolito facing a masked agent wearing a police vest.
The man tries to brush him off and moves his hand to allow Hipolito to leave, but he lifts his phone up to the masked agent to make it last. The agent then turns away for a moment and retreates towards him, apparently caught by Hipolito’s cell phone near his face. Another close-up video shows him spraying Hippolito’s face directly from the bottle. It appears that Hipolito swipes and swings, but it comes from a camera shot. The only ones being captured are agents who appear again in the frame with their hats missing.
“They make him look wrong. He was someone who violated the law. On the other hand, many of these agents were violating my cousin’s rights,” said Hippolito’s cousin Angela Martinez.
She says her cousin said her agent sprayed him and he was blind.
“When someone is blind and can’t see, they know they’re stable by moving their hands in front of them. That’s what he was doing. So he got into contact with the agent while he was walking,” Martinez said.
While no further mention of what happened next is in court documents, a video shot by the bystander shows the agent working on Hipolito in the next few seconds, holding him while he is struggling to breathe.
One agent grabs each of his arms, the other on his arms, and the last agent wears an orange shirt, trying to hold his legs.
About 30 seconds later, the agent with his arms wrapped around his neck. The orange man lets go of Hippolito’s feet, puts himself near the man’s head, and points a taser to the shoulder. He doesn’t seem to fire it, but the other agents keep pushing the man down as they try to handcuff him. Other agents crush the surroundings. At Fracas, Hipolito shoes fly.
About a minute later, the sirens scream and people are screaming, so an orange-wearing agent gets up to try to push the crowd back. He points the Taser to the woman’s recording and when she doesn’t come back he swipes to grab her phone, but misses it and turns away.
After about two and a half minutes, they finally cuff him and let him sit.
Hipolito is breathing rapidly and deeply. He is bent down. The agent, with a baseball hat and an FBI vest, appears to be patting him on the heart, talking to him, trying to calm him down. He wipes Hipolito’s eyes with his shirt and grabs his back. Hiporito breathes in. The man then places his arm under his shoulder and pulls him up from behind.
Hipolito Stand is an agent on both sides. He wobbled, then his head shaking and his legs began to sway violently.
The agent sits him on the ground and pours water over his face. Eventually he is picked up and put in the car.
Reuben Lopez, a Force use expert and retired Li during LAPD SWAT, said federal agents working on LA Street are raising tension levels and that regular field operations at some local agencies are mistaken for immigration enforcement.
“The anger from the bystanders is a direct result of what people perceive as offensive tactics when people come out and grab someone without ID and face covering in an unmarked vehicle,” he said.
“The relationships with the community, law enforcement, and the community are a delicate balance,” he said. “A single incident could erode years of public trust and confidence in law enforcement.”
Lopez said he was particularly concerned that the incident could lead to a “blue blue.”
Building manager Glenn Sittwell, who saw all this play from his corner office, said the agent’s aggressive attitude surprised him.
“If this sh- continues every day, we count the days when people start to get killed,” he said.
