Trump’s ICE at work:
John Collins was standing outside the milk house at his dairy farm this morning when he heard yelling coming from inside. He ran in, he says, and saw his worker, Marcial de Leon Aguilar, pinned up against the window by armed men.
The men did not identify themselves and were screaming at Aguilar, Collins said.
"I run and say, 'What the hell is going on in here?'" Collins said.
Then the men told Collins they were officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He asked them for a warrant or some paperwork to explain what they were doing. They had none, he said, so he ordered them to get off his property and leave Aguilar alone.
As this happened, Collins said, Aguilar's children watched. They were waiting nearby for the school bus to come. Collins said the officers put Aguilar in handcuffs and took him across the rural road to their vehicles. At least seven officers had come onto the small farm, Collins said.
Adrian Smith, a spokesman for ICE, said he was looking into the situation and would comment when he knew more.
Collins said he followed the officers cross the street and asked them why they were taking Aguilar, but he didn't get a straight answer. He also continued to ask for paperwork, but was not offered any by the ICE officers.
Mother Jones has more:
In the video, Collins claims the ICE officials roughed up the worker, de Leon Aguilar, and then interrogated him in front of his school-age children. They also declined to show Collins a warrant for entering his farm. Collins says when he ordered the ICE agents to leave and began attempting to video-record the interaction with his phone, an agent threw his phone into the road and handcuffed him before eventually releasing him.
In an email, ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls stated that “ICE deportation officers arrested Marcial DeLeon-Aguilar, a citizen of Guatemala illegally residing in the U.S., on immigration violations. ICE previously removed DeLeon-Aguilar from the U.S. on three occasions, most recently in January 2014. He has criminal convictions for reckless aggravated assault and illegal re-entry and is currently in ICE custody.” He added: “With respect to judicial warrants, federal immigration law clearly provides for the arrest of removable aliens based on administrative arrest warrants issued by authorized immigration officers.”
But here’s what Collins said:
When he tried recording the detention with his phone, an officer allegedly tossed his phone into the road and put him in handcuffs, threatening to arrest him for interfering with an investigation. The agents removed the handcuffs before taking Aguilar away.
Collins told local outlets that Aguilar had the proper documentation to work for him and paid his taxes. Aguilar’s wife, Virginia Morales, is an undocumented immigrant who fled to the U.S. to escape violence in Guatemala, Collins said. Morales, who is pregnant with the couple's fifth child, has been meeting with ICE agents since she arrived, Collins said.
“Who's going to help support me and my children if my husband's not here?” Morales told WKTV 2. “We came here for a better future for our children. There's nothing really back at Guatemala for us.”
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D. NY) has called for an investigation into the unwarranted raid:
Gillibrand responded to the story and wrote on Twitter that Collins’s claims warranted an investigation. ICE officers are legally required to present a warrant before entering private property.
“Deeply troubled by this report from Rome, NY,” Gillibrand wrote. "ICE officers should not be allowed to raid private property without a warrant. There must be an immediate investigation into what happened here.”
A spokesperson for Gillibrand confirmed to Newsweek that the senator was indeed lobbying the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security to look deeper into what exactly happened on Collins’s farm.
Democrat-led criticisms of ICE have grown louder over the last few months as a number of congressional candidates have adopted a campaign calling for the outright abolishment of the 15-year-old enforcement agency.
Gillibrand is not among that group, but she is interested in seeing it reformed, the spokesperson said.
The number of deportations led by ICE has spiked under Trump’s watch, NPR reported in January. That increase is despite his predecessor, Barack Obama, breaking records for deporting immigrants, earning him the nickname among immigration rights activists of “the deporter in chief.”
If you would like more information on what’s going on with the investigation, please click here to contact Gillibrand’s office.
Thank you, Senator Gillibrand, for highlighting this story. Click here if you want to donate to Gillibrand's campaign.