Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pointed a gun at a family, including a mother holding her 3-month-old baby, as they burst into their Oregon home, footage of the incident showed.
The video recorded by Mari Magana and posted on Facebook showed the moment ICE agents kicked down the bedroom door in the family’s apartment in Gresham, approximately 17 miles outside of Portland, Wednesday evening. The video has been shared across social media.
The baby’s grandmother, Gloria Bautista, told The Independent that her daughter has been left shaken by the ordeal.
“The mother is so traumatized that anything scares her, she’s shaking all the time,” she said.
Agents were heard shouting, “Police, don’t move, hands up,” and appeared to point their weapons at the family after breaking down the door as the family sat in the room.
The baby, who was being held by Magana, was heard crying off-camera after the agents started shouting.
“This is unfair they scared my baby,” Magana wrote in a Facebook post alongside the footage. “We are not criminals to be treated that way let alone point us with guns.”
Two male relatives in the room were detained by ICE agents in the confrontation, where an agent appeared to grab one of them by the hair and pull him backward out of the room. The two suspects have been taken to a detention center in nearby Tacoma, Washington.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official told The Independent that “no injuries were sustained” in the operation, which was targeting “a previously removed violent criminal illegal alien from Mexico” who remains at large.
“ICE officers attempted to pull this criminal illegal alien over in a vehicle stop,” the official said. “He attempted to evade arrest and rammed into a United States Postal Service vehicle before fleeing on foot into an apartment. After refusals to come out, law enforcement entered the apartment.”
“The target escaped and remains at-large,” the official added. “Two other aliens from Mexico were found inside the apartment and taken into ICE custody at the scene.”
The family claimed the men who were detained are in the U.S. legally.
Magana filmed the moment ICE agents kicked the door down because they had been attempting to enter the property for hours, according to Latino news outlet Noticias Noroeste NW.
An agent was heard asking the mother: “Why don’t you put the phone down, we’re in your house right now.”
A GoFundMe appeal launched by Ashley Valdez, who said she was Magana’s cousin, wrote that the agents “came in forcibly with guns pointing at them” and the mom “feared for her newborn baby.”
“Her daughter was present and captured all on camera as she feared for her 3-month-old newborn baby on what would happen next,” Valdez said.
GoFundMe confirmed the page launched by Valdez, seeking support for attorney fees, was legitimate when contacted by The Independent.
“These people are not criminals,” Valdez added. “They are hard-working people, they don’t deserve this.”
The Trump administration has sought to deploy the National Guard to Portland in recent weeks but has been blocked by federal judges. Trump has dubbed the liberal city “war-ravaged,” as part of his crime crackdown and the Portland ICE facility has become a battleground for anti-immigration demonstrators and federal agents.
