Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong in one of the latest detention attempts by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A man in Massachusetts who was the target of an ICE raid was separated from his 5-year-old daughter as he made his way into his house, and ICE agents allegedly tried to use his daughter as “bait” to lure him out.
To make matters all the more dicey, his daughter is US-born and has autism. Just recently, Donald Trump was touting new discoveries about how he had not only uncovered the cause of autism but, in one fell swoop, also found a cure for it. So you can imagine how angry social media users were when the story broke that legal authorities were using an autistic child in one of their raids. One X user declared that cruelty is ICE’s goal and not just callousness. Another user called the ordeal a “hostage situation.”
The cruelty is the point. Instill as much fear as is possible without literally killing people outright…
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) September 23, 2025
There's only one group of fascists here, and that's the people holding a five year old hostage.
— Linoleum Blownaparte (@AaahSkulls) September 23, 2025
At this point, it’s been well established that ICE can and does use racial profiling when conducting raids — so most people who first heard of this particular case assumed this is why the man ran to his house when confronted by ICE.
According to his wife — who chose to keep her identity private — the man is called Edward Hip. He has reportedly been in the US for 22 years, having emigrated from Guatemala. They have sired two children together, and on this fateful day Hip was traveling home from work with their daughter and called his wife because he had a feeling that he was being followed.
What then happened was he drove home and ran back into their shared house. Hip’s wife alleges that during his run inside, ICE agents grabbed her daughter. The rest was captured on video as the agents tried to lure Hip back to prove through an ID that this was actually his child.
NBC Boston then called the police, who attended to the incident and returned the girl to her parents. Later on, however, ICE came back and detained Hip at Plymouth. NBC noted that they reached out to ICE through the Kristi Noem–run Department of Homeland Security for an additional comment but heard nothing back. That detail proved important, because the story soon blew up on social media, prompting a hasty response that characteristically pointed a blaming finger at the media.
The Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, decided to tackle the story head-on and label it a disgusting smear by the media, insisting that it was actually the ICE agents that called the police while also citing Hip’s alleged violent past. She claimed, “The target, Edwards Hip Mejia, ignored law enforcement emergency lights to pull over and drove back to his house. He fled from the car, gave officers the double middle finger, and darted inside his house. He abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car. Officers helped rescue the child and called local police to report the abandonment.”
Absolutely not. ICE agents NEVER used a 5-year-old girl as “bait”—what a disgusting smear. The criminal illegal alien target —with previous arrests for domestic abuse and strangulation, among other charges—ABANDONED his own child in a car.
— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) September 23, 2025
The target, Edwards Hip Mejia,… https://t.co/8LIMlC92H5
The message the Trump administration is trying to send to Americans is that this course will “protect” them — but their brutal approach, not just toward the immigrants they seek to detain but also toward the media, leaves that intention lost in translation.
