The disabled DACA immigrant is speaking out after being caught up in a federal immigrant attack near a car wash in Temple City.
The deaf Javier Diaz Santana said he was shocked when the masked agent appeared in his work on June 12th.
“I was very nervous,” Diaz Santana said through a sign language interpreter.
Surveillance from the Temple City car wash showed the agent entered the business as Diaz Santana cried out that he was screaming for an order that he could not hear or understand.
“They tried to talk to me. They tried to see if I could speak. I couldn’t speak. I pulled out the phone and tried to communicate, but they removed it,” Diaz Santana explains the interaction, and the agent confiscated his real ID and wallet before handcuffing him.
“I ask them to remove my handcuffs, so I can sign. They said no, so I was hit,” he recalled.
Diaz Santana’s family didn’t know what happened to him until they tracked his phone downtown Los Angeles.
“It’s not right to be treated that way for it to happen to him. He’s not a criminal,” said his brother Miguel Diaz.
The lawyers were able to track him down on the Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency website as he was about to banish him to Mexico, a country he remained as a child more than 28 years ago.
“I have a DACA. I have applied. I’ve gone through the steps. I thought everything would work. I was doing it all.
Diaz Santana also said that federal agents gave him a document to sign him, but he didn’t understand it as it was written in Spanish. He asked for an American sign language interpreter, but never got it, he said.
However, the Department of Homeland Security has denied Diaz Santana’s claim.
“The allegations that ICE did not provide services to Javier Diaz Santana because of its ability to communicate with others is false,” the department said in a statement. “ICE medical staff provided him with the Communications Commission and the American Sign Language Interpreter.”
Diaz Santana’s lawyers were unable to see or speak to him until his detention hearing a few weeks later. He was then allowed to be released and began to see his family.
“In my opinion, it’s a tragedy of justice,” his lawyer said.
This horrifying ordeal is currently underway, but Diaz Santana is currently at risk of arrest and deportation, fearing that DACA protections will soon be eliminated.
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