Federal agents drive off with 1-year-old girl after arresting her father in Los Angeles
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.
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“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.
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.”
‘No regard for her children’: Mother arrested after leaving toddler, baby inside car while at bar
Published: Oct. 27, 2023 at 5:18 AM GMT+7
WEST MELBOURNE, Fla. (Gray News) – A mother in Florida is accused of leaving her two children unattended inside a vehicle while she was inside a bar with a friend.
According to the West Melbourne Police Department, an officer was on patrol last week when they noticed a black SUV at the back of Penny Annie’s Bar on Minton Road.
The officer decided to take a closer look and saw a 2-year-old and an 8-month-old baby asleep in the backseat of the vehicle.
The vehicle’s doors were unlocked, and the SUV’s engine was still running.
West Melbourne police said they found the vehicle’s registered owner, 33-year-old Jamie Leigh Gunn, visiting a friend at the bar.
“The investigation revealed she had been inside the establishment for at least 20 minutes while having no regard for her children who were left unattended,” the department shared.
Police said when Gunn learned they were outside with her vehicle, she was more concerned about going to jail than the welfare of her children.
Gunn was arrested and charged with child neglect. She was booked into the Brevard County Jail on a $15,000 bond.
Authorities said her children were turned over to a family member and the Florida Department of Children and Families was notified to conduct a follow-up investigation.
Gunn has a criminal history consisting of contempt of court, forgery, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving while license suspended, West Melbourne police said.
Copyright 2023 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
3 unanswered questions a day after the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis
A bullet hole is seen in the windshield of a vehicle, after an ICE agent shot a woman in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Wednesday. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
A number of questions remain unanswered more than a day after the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, potentially undermining official accounts of what led up to the gunfire and fueling tension in the Twin Cities.
Federal officials, including President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, were quick Wednesday to accuse the victim, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, of trying to use her vehicle to kill or harm the ICE agents.
But footage from the scene is nuanced. And with Minnesota officials alleging they have been effectively barred from investigating, it’s unclear whether a robust, public accounting will ever take place.
Here are a few of the unresolved questions, and why their answers are significant.
What happened immediately prior to the shooting?
One of the critical gaps in our understanding of what happened is what, if any, prior contact occurred between Good and the ICE agents.
“We don’t see the beginning, we don’t see sort of how we got to this moment,” CNN Senior National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem said Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security has said agents were performing a “targeted operation” Wednesday when one of their vehicles got stuck in the snow. As officers worked to push out the vehicle, Noem said, a “mob of agitators” who had been antagonizing agents throughout the day tried to impede their efforts.
Videos of the shooting show much of what unfolded during the subsequent deadly encounter: In one, the vehicle driven by Good is seen parked in the roadway, almost perpendicular to the lane of traffic, for about three minutes. Another that starts shortly before the gunfire shows Good in her vehicle, and the officer who will soon fire the fatal shots is seen walking behind it.
Good waves a vehicle past her. She then waves at a second vehicle, a gray pickup truck. Rather than driving around her, two ICE agents get out.
One swiftly approaches the driver’s side door as the vehicle starts to move in reverse, and the officers are heard repeatedly telling the woman, “Out of the car.”
When Good’s vehicle starts to move forward, its front wheel turned to the right, seemingly directed away from the officers, the ICE agent at the front of Good’s SUV pulls out his pistol and points it at the driver.
One video appears to show the vehicle make contact with the officer before he fires the first gunshot. Another video doesn’t capture that possible point of contact, but the officer’s body is seen moving away from the front of the vehicle and to the driver’s side of the car.
Two more gunshots sound as the vehicle pulls away and accelerates before crashing nearby.
A family photo posted in 2017 shows Renee Nicole Good. Obtained by CNN
The agents’ demand that Good exit her vehicle is suggestive of an intent to take her into custody. For what, exactly, is unclear.
What was the legal basis for stopping her? And if Good had complied, what did the agents intend to do with her? Arrest her? If so, what charge would she have faced?
These are gaps that DHS has not yet attempted to fill in publicly. But the information is essential to understanding the chain of events that led to Good’s killing.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Did the agent act according to policy?
Officials have not publicly identified the agent involved. On Thursday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed he had more than 10 years of experience as an ICE deportation officer. Noem said he was “an experienced officer who has served a number of years” and that he acted according to his training.
A decade of service would indicate this officer is not among the legion of inexperienced agents recently brought on as part of a DHS hiring blitz to realize the president’s immigration policy.
But the breadth of his experience also raises questions about choices made prior to the shooting, and whether his actions indeed comport with DHS policy, training and commonly held law enforcement practice.
US Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino joins federal agents at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday. Ellen Schmidt/MinnPost/AP
For instance, ICE officers are trained to approach a vehicle from the side, forming a “tactical L” to avoid placing themselves in front of the vehicle and potential danger. But footage of Wednesday’s shooting shows the officer approached the front of the vehicle.
Separately, while DHS policy allows for the use of deadly force when necessary, it generally prohibits officers from shooting at the operator of a moving vehicle – widely viewed as tactically unsound by many major cities’ police departments.
A 2023 study by the Police Executive Research Forum, an influential law enforcement think tank, recommended agencies’ policies “should prohibit shooting at or from a moving vehicle,” unless the driver of the vehicle is using it as a “weapon of mass destruction” in a situation like a ramming attack against a crowd or car bombing.
CNN law enforcement analyst Jonathan Wackrow said he had been in a similar situation during an arrest operation when he was an agent for the US Secret Service.
“In that moment, I chose not to fire my weapon, because firing a weapon at a moving vehicle is a high risk, very dangerous option,” Wackrow said.
John Amaya, the former ICE deputy chief of staff under President Barack Obama, told CNN Thursday he was withholding judgment about Wednesday’s shooting while the investigation unfolded. Still, “If the officer could have just jumped out of the way and let the car pass, that’s what he should have done,” Amaya said.
“And the questions will be raised to him when he’s asked by various investigators … as to whether or not he reasonably could have jumped out of the way, because it would have been a requirement,” Amaya said.
What consequences, if any, will the officer face?
To Amaya’s point, reviews of the shooting will take two paths.
One will involve the administrative process inside DHS and ICE. The agencies will examine whether the agents acted Wednesday within DHS guidelines, training and tactics, including whether the car stop and the shooting were within policy.
That review could lead to the firing, suspension or retraining of the officer – or nothing at all, depending on the findings.
DHS will investigate the shooting, and in every use-of-force incident “there are standard protocols followed and there is no exception to that here,” a senior DHS official told CNN.
Members of law enforcement photograph the vehicle at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
The other path is an investigation led by the FBI. That investigation will be aimed at determining whether the agent was under threat of “imminent death or serious bodily injury,” or whether he acted with reckless disregard for human life and in a way a reasonable person with similar training would not.
As with any officer-involved shooting, culpability – or justification – for the lethal use of force will hinge on the officer’s mindset. What he says he perceived Wednesday, and whether he felt he or his colleagues were at risk of imminent injury or death, will carry a great deal of weight legally.
His mindset may be informed by his own recent history: According to court documents, he was dragged last summer for about 100 yards when his arm got pinned in the back window of a vehicle as a suspect sped away. The agent suffered injuries to his arm and hand.
The encounter occurred in June, when federal officials moved in to arrest an undocumented immigrant who had been charged with sexually abusing his 16-year-old stepdaughter in 2022, according to a court affidavit written by an FBI agent involved in the case.
The officer could tell investigators that moment was front-and-center in his mind Wednesday – that he believed he would be hit by Good’s vehicle and that his partner, hanging on the driver’s side door, could be dragged away, necessitating his use of force.
For now, the criminal investigation is being overseen by the FBI, but Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Noem have all publicly concluded the agent acted properly and the shooting was justified. Despite early indications the FBI would collaborate with Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the BCA said Thursday it was forced to withdraw from the investigation after the FBI took control.
“I’m not in the prediction game, but I think you can bet that there is no chance that this agent actually gets prosecuted,” said CNN senior correspondent Josh Campbell, a former FBI agent.
“Because what that would take is for the attorney general and the FBI to counter the president, the vice president, Homeland Security secretary in this politically charged era,” Campbell said. “I just don’t see that happening.”
Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has called for state authorities to be involved, and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said it is “exploring all options to ensure a state level investigation can continue.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized movements of the ICE officer in the moments before he fired his weapon in Wednesday’s shooting in Minneapolis.
