Brian Gavidia had stepped out from working on a car at a tow yard in a Los Angeles suburb Thursday when armed,masked men – wearing vests with “Border Patrol” on them – pushed him up against a metal gate and demanded to know where he was born.
“I’m American, bro!” 29-year-old Gavidia pleaded, in video taken by a friend.
“what hospital were you born?” teh agent barked.
“I don’t know, dawg!” he said. “East L.A., bro! I can show you: I have my f-ing Real ID.”
His friend, whom Gavidia did not name, narrated the video: “These guys, literally based off of skin color! My homie was born here!” The friend said Gavidia was being questioned “just because of the way he looks.”
In a statement Saturday, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said U.S.citizens were arrested “because they ASSAULTED U.S. Border Patrol Agents.” (McLaughlin’s statement emphasized the word “assaulted” in all-capital and boldfaced letters.)
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When told by a reporter that Gavidia had not been arrested, McLaughlin clarified that Gavidia had been questioned by Border Patrol agents but there “is no arrest record.” She said a friend of Gavidia’s was arrested for assault of an officer.
As immigration operations have unfolded across southern California in the last week, lawyers and advocates say people are being targeted as of their skin color. The encounter with Gavidia and others they are tracking have raised legal questions about enforcement efforts that have swept up hundreds of immigrants and shot fear into the deeply intertwined communities they call home.
Agents picking up street vendors without warrants. American citizens being grilled. Home Depot lots swept. Car washes raided. The wide-scale arrests and detainments – frequently enough in the region’s largely Latino neighborhoods – contain hallmarks of racial profiling and other due process violations.
“We are seeing ICE come into our communities to do indiscriminate mass arrests of immigrants or people who appear to them to be immigrant, largely based on racial profiling,” said Eva Bitran, a lawyer at ACLU of Southern California.
When asked about the accusations of racial profiling, the White House deflected.
Calling the questions “shameful regurgitations of Democrat propaganda by activists – not journalists,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson chided Times reporters Saturday for not reporting the “real story – the American victims of illegal alien crime and radical Democrat rioters willing to do anything to keep perilous illegal aliens in American communities.”
She did not answer the question.
McLaughlin said in a statement, “Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are revolting and categorically FALSE.”
She said the suggestion fans the flames and puts agents in peril.
“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence,” she said. “We certainly know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability.
“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” she said.
