Andrea Velez, a US citizen, was arrested in the time it took her mother to drive less than a block. She was on her way to work. She’s Latina. It appears that was enough.
Tuesday morning, Andrea Velez’s mom and sister dropped her off near her workplace. She’s a production coordinator at Top Pick Global. Andrea graduated with a degree in fashion from Cal Poly Pomona.
Near Andrea’s work, an ICE raid was taking place. In fact, someone had called the LAPD to say a “kidnapping” was taking place. The LAPD showed up, saw it was an immigration raid — LAPD is not permitted to assist ICE in immigration raids — and immediately switched to crowd control, making sure people weren’t in the street and so on.
As Andrea walked toward her place of employment, she says she looked up and saw an ICE agent barreling toward her. In the flash of thoughts that went through her mind, she thought maybe she was being targeted for the color of her skin, that maybe he thought she was not a US citizen. She instinctively held up her bag and the agent bowled into her.
Her mother — they hadn’t even made it a block away yet — looked in the rear view mirror and saw the plainclothes ICE agents standing over her daughter and putting her in cuffs. “They’re kidnapping your sister,” she said.
Andrea tried to get the LAPD to help, and so did her mother and sister. According to her mother and other witnesses, no one ever asked Andrea for ID or asked about her status. The police didn’t help, even when Andrea’s mother was screaming she was a US citizen. In fact, according to some witnesses, they moved to stand around Andrea to make it more difficult to film what was happening.
For the first 24 hours, her family couldn’t find Andrea. They didn’t know where she had been taken or what was happening. They hired lawyers who managed to find her, but no one would tell them what she was being charged with, only that she would likely face federal charges. DHS publicly said she would be charged with “assaulting an officer.”
When they got to court yesterday, ICE lawyers downgraded that to “obstructing” an officer. An ICE officer claimed that Andrea purposely stepped in his way and raised both of her arms to stop him from going after someone he was trying to arrest. Witnesses tell the story the way Andrea does: an ICE agent approached her, knocked her down, then arrested her without asking any questions about her status or identity.
Andrea, her lawyer, her mother and sister all have the same theory: during an ICE raid an ICE agent saw a Latina and scooped her up because of the color of her skin, and had to invent another reason once it was discovered she was a US citizen, born and raised in Los Angeles.
Andrea was released on a 5k bond yesterday.
Immigration officers have recently taken to arresting Latino and Hispanic US citizens on raids and claiming obstruction or assault, only to release them a few days later, sometimes without charges.
On June 12th, for instance, Brian Gavidia walked outside his work and saw immigration officers. He told them he was a US citizen and showed them his Real ID. They pushed him up against a fence and started asking him questions like “What hospital were you born in.” DHS later said he had “assaulted an officer” -- video evidence does not back this up -- but they didn’t charge him. Or return his ID. (A common pattern: DHS will say something like this on social media, but not in court. It appears to be a PR stunt, not any attempt at communicating something true or legally actionable.) When CNN reached out to DHS on this one they added that Brian “attempted to flee” as well, which is remarkable given that he’s a US citizen who literally just stepped outside his place of work.
Adrian Martinez, 20, had a run-in with Border Patrol on his break at WalMart. It sounds like — this is unclear — he tried to obstruct a BP vehicle that held one of his friends from work. Border Patrol agents grabbed him and claim that he punched one of them. Of course, a nearby bystander was recording and there is no evidence of a punch. And Border Patrol went on to say that Adrian was a “hostile group” of men, which is weird because he’s one guy… unless they are counting Oscar Preciado, the delivery driver who stood nearby and videoed the whole thing.
Neither Oscar’s video nor surveillance cameras that caught the entire event show a punch. Border Patrol says that the complete videos “are missing critical moments and don’t tell the whole story.” But after holding Adrian for THREE DAYS they also dropped the assault charge. Because, as Adrian’s lawyer said, “He didn’t assault anyone.” They’re now charging him with “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer” which his lawyer calls “trumped up” charges.
ICE has claimed that upwards of 70% of those they arrest are “serious criminals” but their own statistics tell a different story.
In the most recent ICE stats publicly released:
75% of people in ICE private prisons have nothing more than an immigration related issue or a traffic violation
47% of those being held by ICE have no criminal conviction at all… no criminal immigration violation, traffic violation, or criminal charge of any kind.
Would you like to guess the percentage of “serious criminals” who are being held by ICE? We’ve been told over and over that we’re after the “worst of the worst” so I suspect it must be an impressive number. And that number is: NINE PERCENT.
It certainly appears that the enormous daily quota for arrests is encouraging quantity arrests rather than quality arrests. Arresting a US citizen, even if you have to release them a few days later, counts toward the arrest. Arresting a tourist at the border rather than refusing them entry counts toward the quota. Arresting people at their green card interviews, tricking immigrants without lawyers into giving up their asylum claims and immediately arresting them once they agree, these all count toward the quota.
Some key takeaways:
Don’t call the police expecting help during an immigration raid. Even in states like California, where they are not legally allow to assist federal immigration forces, they also are unlikely to step in and help US citizens or others being abused. Best case scenario: they do some crowd control.
ICE and other immigration forces are not afraid to arrest US citizens (and others) on trumped up charges, hold people, and release them later. There’s literally no consequences for them as individuals or corporately.
It is ICE policy to lie. This is not an exaggeration. They call it a “ruse.” ICE agents aren’t just allowed to lie, they are encouraged to do so and trained to do so. ICE agents are trained to trick and confuse people.
Andrea Velez, a US citizen, was arrested in the time it took her mother to drive less than a block. She was on her way to work. She’s Latina. It appears that was enough.
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