Brian Gavidia was working in a tow yard outside Los Angeles on Thursday, an armed masked man – wearing a “Border Patrol” vest – pushed against a metal gate and demanded he knew where he was born.
“I’m American, mate!” Gavidia, 29, pleaded in a video filmed by a friend.
“What kind of hospital did you create?” the agent barked.
“I don’t know, Dawg!” he said. “East LA, buddies! I can show you: I have my f – a real ID.”
His friend, who Gavidia didn’t name, spoke the video. “These people are literally based on skin tone! My buddy was born here!” My friend said Gavidia was being asked “just because of his appearance.”
In a statement Saturday, Homeland Security Advisor Tricia McLaughlin said a U.S. citizen was arrested for “assaulting an agent in the US Border Patrol.” (McLaughlin’s statement all emphasized the word “assault” in capital and bold letters.)
When a reporter told him that Gavidia had not been arrested, McLaughlin revealed that Gavidia had been questioned by Border Patrol agents but had “no arrest records.” She said Gabizia’s friend was arrested for assaulting a police officer.
As immigration operations took place across Southern California last week, lawyers and supporters say people are being targeted because of their skin color. Met with Gavidia and others they tracked, sweeping out hundreds of migrants and raising legal questions about enforcement efforts that have shot fear into the deeply intertwined communities they call home.
Agent picking up street vendors without a warrant. American citizens are burned. Home Depot lots have been wiped out. Cleaned car wash. In many cases, broad arrests and detention in mostly Latinos of the region includes racial profiling and other due process violations.
“We see ice coming to our communities to make indiscriminate mass arrests of immigrants or immigrants that look like immigrants or immigrants, primarily based on racial profiling,” said Eva Bitran, lawyer for the ACLU in Southern California.
When asked about racial profiling accusations, the White House biased.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “American victims of illegal alien crimes and radical Democrat rants cheated the Times Reporters on Saturday for hoping to do something to keep dangerous illegal alien in the American community.
She did not answer the question.
“Anyway, any claim that an individual was “targeted” by law enforcement because of the disgusting skin color and categorically incorrect,” McLaughlin said in a statement.
She said the proposal incites flames and puts the agent in danger.
“DHS’s executive operations are highly targeted and executives do due diligence,” she said. “We know who we are targeting in advance. If we meet the individuals that are eligible for an arrest, our law enforcement agencies are trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine their status and removability.
“We will follow the directions of the President and continue to work to get the worst of the worst crime illegal aliens from the streets of America,” she said.
Customs and border guards are stationed in a federal building in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
The unprecedented show of force by federal agents follows an order from Deputy Director Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration plan and deputy chief of staff at White House, from Santa Monica, to carry out 3,000 a day. In May, Miller reportedly instructed Top Ice officials to go beyond their target list and to arrest agents at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores.
US Customs and Border Protection did not answer any specific questions about their encounter with Gavidia, saying immigration enforcement is “targeted.” The agency did not explain the meaning of targeted enforcement.
However, federal criminal charges against Gavidia’s friend Javier Ramirez said he was “engaged in an agreement” in the parking lot at West Olympic Boulevard, running a “roving patrol” in Montebello around 4:30pm. The complaint noted that the parking lot was fenced, but the gates to the parking lot were open at the time of interaction.
The enforcement was part of a roving patrol, which was described by customs and border protection spokesman John B. Mennell as a “legal immigration enforcement activity” in which immigrants without legal status arrested “without incidents.”
Gavidia said that both he and Ramirez would rent space in the tow yard to repair the car.
In the video captured with security cameras at the scene, the agent pulls up the open gate of the white SUV, and three agents leave the car. At least one covers his face with a mask and enters the property and begins looking around. Shortly afterwards, one man, handcuffed, can be seen standing quietly towards the fence, but Ramirez can be heard screaming and wrestling to the ground.
Gavidia confronts the scene from the sidewalk outside the business where agents are parked. He turns around seeing the fuss. He is followed by an agent other than business, then another agent.
Gavisia, identified by Mennell as a third party, was “detained (in enforcement operation) for an investigation into interference and released after being confirmed as a US citizen without an unresolved warrant.”
“The video didn’t show a complete story,” he said in a statement.
However, it is unclear what the interference is from the video. And Gavidia denies interference in any operation.
The CBP, an agency that played a prominent role in the recent sweeps, is under a federal injunction in Central California after it discovered that judges were engaged in “patterns and practices” of infringing people’s constitutional rights in raids earlier this year.
US Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino oversaw the attacks, including stopping people on the highway to pick up at Home Depot, and has emerged as a key figure in LA.
“There are a lot of bad people, a lot of bad things in our country,” Bovino said. “That’s why we’re here now. It’s about getting rid of those bad people and bad things, whether we’re here or not. We won’t leave.”
Bovino said hundreds of Border Patrol agents were instigating and were on the ground carrying out enforcement in LA.
A federal judge for the Eastern District of California ordered Bovino’s agencies to halt unlawful halts and arrests in the district after agents detained and arrested dozens of farm workers and workers, including US citizens, in the Central Valley just before President Trump took office.
The lawsuit, brought by United Farm Workers and Central Valley residents, accused people of brave and racial profiling in days of enforcement. It circulated on video with agents slashing tyres for citizen gardeners on their way to work, primarily shaking agricultural areas, raising fears that those tactics could become new norms there.
The effort was a “proof of concept,” David Kim, assistant chief patrol agent under Bovino, told San Diego’s research attire Inewsource in March. “We tested our abilities and it was extremely successful. We know that as long as the distance goes, we can push beyond that limit.”
Bovino said at a press conference that his agent “will not go anywhere anytime soon.”
“We’ll see us in Los Angeles, we’ll continue to see us in Los Angeles,” he said.
Bitlan, who is working on the case in Central Valley, said Miller’s orders “will lead to “loose” agents “retaining people in a way that violates the Constitution.”
In Montebello, a 78% Latino suburb that shares the border with East Los Angeles, Border Patrol agents have obtained Gavidia’s ID. They eventually let him go, but Ramirez, who is also an American and his father of the two, wasn’t that lucky.
Ramirez’s cousin and his lawyer, Thomas de Jesus, said the authorities have accused them of “resisting arrests and attacking people.”
“What is the reasonable doubt that he is being charged?” asked Deiss. “What causes them to enter a private business area? … At this point it seems like they have the authority on blankets to do almost anything.”
Ramirez is charged with assault, resistance or obstruction of a federal officer in a federal criminal charge. Authorities allege that Ramirez was trying to hide himself and ran towards the exit and refused to answer questions about his identity and citizenship. They also claim that he pushed and bitten the agent.
Montebello Mayor Salvador Melendez said he watched the video and called the situation “very frustrating.”
“It doesn’t seem to be a legitimate procedure,” he said. “They want a particular look that is what our Latino, the immigrant community looks, and they have been asking questions since.
A third individual was detained on the street for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed as a US citizen without an unresolved warrant.
Even before the video loops over social media feeds, Angelica Salas, who heads one of Los Angeles’ most established immigration advocacy groups, said she has been receiving reports of “indiscriminate” arrests and US citizens being questioned and detained.
“We have American citizens who are asked for their documents and when we prove that they are American citizens,” said Saras, executive director of the Humanitarian Immigration Rights Coalition. “They happen to be Latinos.”
The Supreme Court has long held that law enforcement officers cannot detain people based on a generalization that casts widespread suspicion on a large segment of the law-abiding population.
Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA Law School, said:
Agents can ask people about “anything,” he said. However, if the person refuses to speak, the agent cannot restrain them unless there is a reasonable doubt that the individual is here illegally.
“Governing the Fourth Amendment and immigration regulations does not allow immigration agents to detain anyone against their will, even in very short periods, even if there is no reasonable doubt,” he said.
Just being brown doesn’t qualify. They are also not road power sources or farm workers. Warrants to search documents at work are also not sufficient to restrain anyone there.
“It appears that agents are breaching these immigration laws seriously,” he said. “All Southern California.”
Gavidia says the agent who questioned him in Montebello did not return his true ID.
“I’m legal,” he said. “I speak perfect English. I also speak perfect Spanish. I’m bilingual, but that doesn’t mean I have to be chosen, like “This guy looks like Latino. This guy looks a bit dirty.”
“It was the worst experience I’ve ever had,” Gavidia said. “I felt honestly like I was going to die.”
On Saturday, Gabizia joined Daese in downtown Los Angeles for her first protest.
Now he said, it felt personal.
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