Federal agents drive off with 1-year-old girl after arresting her father
in Los Angeles
[November 06, 2025]
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal immigration officers in Los
Angeles arrested a U.S. citizen during a raid outside a Home Depot
store, then two of them got into his car and drove off with the man's
toddler strapped into a car seat in the back, advocates and family said
Wednesday, decrying the action.
A video shot by a member of the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, an
immigrant advocacy coalition, shows the man with his hands behind his
back and leaning up against his car before being escorted away as two
masked agents with helmets and bulletproof vests get into the car and
drive away. The man's 1-year-old daughter appears in a blurred image
strapped in a car seat in the back.
People are seen filming the agents in the car and are heard yelling
“there's a baby in the back!” as the agents drive away.
“It was a dangerous act to have armed men get in a car with that child
and remove her from the situation,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder
of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. The firm, which handles immigration
cases, was contacted by community members for help reuniting the family,
but isn’t representing the man because he is American, she said.
Toczylowski said the girl's relatives later picked up the child from
federal offices in Los Angeles.
“They should have followed protocols that had the best interest of that
child in mind," she said.
In an email, an agency spokesperson for the Department of Homeland
Security said a U.S. citizen got out of his vehicle wielding a hammer
and throwing rocks as Border Patrol agents carried out the raid.
Officials said he was arrested for investigation of assault and that a
pistol was found in his car that is reported stolen out of the state of
New York. Officials did not respond to questions about why agents drove
the man's car away with the child.
Five immigrants were arrested during the operation on suspicion of
immigration violations, the spokesperson said.
[to top of second column]
|
In this June 28, 2019, file photo the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) seal is seen during a news conference in Washington.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Ed Obayashi, a special prosecutor in California and an expert on
national and state police practices, said local police during DUI
operations often find themselves with a parent being arrested and
kids left alone in vehicles. In those cases, officers usually call a
tow company because they don't want to be responsible for the car,
and they take the children into the patrol vehicle to the station
where they can be picked up by family.
But he said federal immigration raids entail a different scenario
and with onlookers circling to shoot video, he believes officers
probably made the best decision.
“I think they were just trying to get the vehicle and the kid out of
there and to safety,” he said.
The man's mother, Maria, told reporters, the family received a call
from an unknown number Tuesday to pick up the girl at U.S. Border
Patrol offices in Los Angeles. She said the child is fine but asking
for her father, who was born in California and works in the
restaurant industry. It was not immediately known where the man was
on Wednesday.
Maria said she and the girl are also U.S. citizens. She declined to
provide her last name to protect her granddaughter's identity.
“It's something very frightening,” she said in Spanish after seeing
the video. “You don't know who those people are.”
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
