The family of a U.S. citizen arrested by masked, heavily armed federal agents in Los Angeles is pleading for his return after officers entered his car and drove away with his one-year-old daughter still in the backseat.
“He is the best dad,” the man’s mother Maria Avalos said in tears during a Wednesday press conference.
“And his little girl follows him wherever he goes,” she said. “She is safe now, though. She needs her father. And I need my son back.”
Her 32-year-old son was arrested during an immigration enforcement operation in a Home Depot parking lot in L.A.’s Cypress Park neighborhood Tuesday morning. Five undocumented immigrants were arrested, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which accused the man of assaulting officers at the scene.
But video from witnesses shows several masked border patrol agents surrounding the man’s car and pulling him away in handcuffs before driving off with his toddler in the backseat, a move that Donald Trump’s administration is defending.
The man, identified as Dennis Quinonez, was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a person previously convicted of domestic violence, according to a federal criminal complaint.
Homeland Security accused him of “wielding a hammer” and throwing rocks at federal agents at the scene, which is not captured in witness video.
“He was arrested for assault and during his arrest a pistol was found in his car, that is reported stolen out of the state of New York,” according to Homeland Security deputy secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “The individual has an active warrant for property damage.”
Officers then “rightly looked over the child,” she said.
“We refuse to apologize for enforcing the law,” Homeland Security wrote on X.
“Not sure why this is so difficult for you and other reporters to understand,” U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in response to reporting from The Los Angeles Times. “Anyone who assaults or interferes with federal agents will be arrested and charged with a federal crime.”
Avalos said she later received a call from Customs and Border Patrol to retrieve her granddaughter later that day, after agents drove away from the scene with her still inside. She waited for roughly three hours to get her back,
“We didn’t know what happened to her while she was in their care, and they wouldn’t give us information about when my son would be released or where he was,” Avalos said.
She waited for several hours inside an immigration office in downtown L.A. before she could see her granddaughter, who “didn’t even know what was happening.
“She’s too small. She didn’t know what was happening to her father,” she said.
Officers at the scene refused to wait for a family member to pick up his daughter, Avalos said.
“There was no reason for ICE to abduct them,” she said Wednesday. “My son didn’t do anything from what we’ve seen in the videos. He was complying.”
Jorge-Mario Cabrera with advocacy group Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles called the incident “insane.”
“This should not be happening,” he said. “We have a grandmother here and a mother grieving and traumatized for what they saw and what they have experienced.”
The arrest is the latest among a series of immigration enforcement operations targeting parents and families in front of their children — increasingly captured on video shared widely across social media — as Donald Trump’s administration escalates a mass deportation agenda that has surged thousands of federal officers into cities across the country.
In Chicago this week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents dragged a teacher known as “Ms. Diana” from inside a preschool and placed her inside an unmarked car.
Earlier this year, a 12-year-old boy was abandoned on the street in Waltham, Massachusetts, after an immigration raid, and in Oregon, an officer smashed the car window of a chiropractor who was taking his child to daycare.
Last month, families with children were pulled out of their homes in a Chicago apartment building, crying and screaming, in an overnight raid that led to the arrests of 37 people.
Teams of federal officers are also reportedly making unannounced “wellness check” visits at the homes of immigrant families across Memphis to ask about the children inside in an apparent effort to make targeted arrests.
“People are seeing exactly what our federal government is doing,” said Chicago Alderman Matt Martin, who represents the neighborhood where ICE agents arrested a preschool teacher. “How is this making my community safer?”
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