There's just no other way to read this story other than to conclude that 22-year-old Daniela Vargas was targeted by Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents Wednesday after she spoke at an immigration rally in Jackson, Mississippi.
Federal agents had declined to arrest Vargas, once a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, just a couple weeks earlier when her father and brother were detained by authorities. Huffington Post reports:
On Feb. 15, Vargas was half-asleep at home when Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents came for her family. Her father, a house painter, kissed her goodbye on his way to work and was apprehended in the driveway, Vargas told The Huffington Post last week. She says she never saw her brother, a construction worker who was also detained. [...]
When the agents arrived, Vargas had a problem: Her DACA status, which has to be renewed every two years, had expired ― and because of the high cost of renewal, $495, her application had only been received on Feb. 10.
She hid for hours in a closet but eventually ICE agents forcibly entered her home, guns raised, and handcuffed her. They ultimately released her after local news stations showed up at the scene. But last week, she told Huffington Post she was afraid she was being followed.
On Wednesday, she spoke at a news conference organized by local immigration advocates to highlight immigrants’ contributions to the community, according to her attorney, Abby Peterson. Afterward, she was pulled over and arrested, and is now being processed by immigration authorities.
“It could be retaliation,” Peterson said. “They had been reading about her in the news, they had seen her at this press conference... [maybe] they didn’t want to hear it anymore. Maybe I’m mistaken on that, but common sense would certainly imply that’s what happened.” Peterson said that Vargas did not have a criminal record, but had minor traffic offenses.
Vargas's attorney confirmed that she had already filed to renew her DACA status.
In case you haven’t noticed, federal immigration agents think they can do just about anything now—arrest innocent people and falsify documents to make up a rationale, demand to see people’s IDs as they exit domestic flights, follow and intimidate someone until that person does something they don’t like.
As two ICE officials in Washington anonymously told the New York Times, some agents are now bragging that their jobs are finally “fun” under Donald Trump. Anyone who thinks this type of police state is going to stop at the doorstep of immigrants is sadly mistaken. This is just the beginning of law enforcement officials running amok unless it is reined in quickly.