A US -born citizen who was taken to dirt, handcuffs and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid, had a real identity document rejected as a fake, the man’s cousin said Friday.
A video of the arrest shown by Notchias Telemundo showed that the authorities were grabbed by 25 -year -old Leonardo Garcia Vengas, and on Wednesday in Foley, Alabama, and bent his hands behind him. Something outside the camera can be heard crying, “He is a citizen.”
Garcia said “Noticias Telemundo” that the authorities took their identity from his wallet and said he was fake against the handcuffs. The real ID is that US citizens require laws to travel through airports and access to federal buildings. This is considered to be a higher form of security identification.
“Apparently, the true identity document is no longer valid. He has a real identity document,” said his cousin Shelah Veneg. “We all make sure we have a true identity document and looked at the protocols requested by the administration. … He has his true identity document. Then they see it and I think that his English is not fluent and / or because he is brown, he is fake, he is not sure.”
Garcia said “Notticias Telemundo” that “they grabbed me really bad” and the handcuffs were “very hard”.
Garcia said he was released from the vehicle in which he was held after he gave the arrest officials his social security number, who showed he was a US citizen.
The arrest left Garcia, born in Florida, especially since officials also arrested and detained their brother, which is not legally excluded, Vengo said. She added that Garcia lived with her brother. Their parents are from Mexico.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas. (Telemundo)
“When he returned, he was really painful,” Vennegas said of Garcia. “He said his hands were painful and his hands. The wrists, you could see where he had all the handcuffs.
She said they were trying to find a lawyer, but the locals told them that it was almost impossible to go to court a federal agent. It is unclear from the video whether the authorities were federal immigration agents or local law enforcement.
The Homeland Security Department stated in its report to the NBC News that Garcia interfered with the arrest during the target workplace during the operation.
“He was physically involved in the agents and the thing they tried to arrest and refused to carry out a lot of verbal teams,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant to the DHS secretary. “Anyone who is actively hindering law enforcement of their sworn duties, including US citizens, will, of course, face consequences, including arrest.”
The reply did not address Garcia identification.
Garcia denied that he had stopped arrest. He said NBC News was trying to remove his phone when the immigration and customs execution agent took him and dropped it to the ground, and then the agent began to grab it.
Veneg said Garcia’s brother had signed deportation documents because the family did not want him to be detained “forever”, as they saw, happened to another family member who had been considered a Louisiana detention center for months.
“It’s inhumane what they do to our people. They treat them as if they were killers,” she said.
Veneg said immigration arrests create effects among Spanish, even US citizens.
“It’s about race now. It is not about whether you are legally here or not,” she said.
Her family owns a pretty big contract company, she said: “And many people working with us are not working. … They refuse to go to work. They said they weren’t going to go until they calm down.”
Venegos added that most of her family is self -employed and “we do the same as all other citizens do.”
“It’s just crazy that we can’t be different, the color we are. We contribute to this country just as every other citizen makes his own taxes,” she said. “But we have to be the ones who go to work every time we are afraid we will discriminate.”
“I’m thinking of my family,” she said. “Although many of them are citizens, I think about how we all work in the same field of construction and they cannot sit there because it could literally be harassed or attacked as my cousin did.”
This article was originally published in nbcnews.com