A US-born person who was wrestled into the soil, shackled, and imprisoned in a car during an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was deemed false, according to the man’s cousin on Friday.
Noticias Telemundo published video of the arrest, which showed authorities detaining Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, at a construction site in Foley, Alabama, on Wednesday and bending his arms behind him. Someone off camera may be heard shouting, “He’s a citizen.”
Garcia told Noticias Telemundo that officers seized his ID from his wallet and informed him that it was fraudulent before handcuffing him. REAL ID is the form of identification required by law for US citizens to travel through airports and visit federal buildings. It is considered a more secure type of identification.
“Apparently, a REAL ID is no longer valid. “He has a REAL ID,” his relative Shelah Venegas stated. “We all ensured that we had the REAL ID and followed the administration’s processes. He has his REAL ID, and then they see him, and I assume since his English isn’t perfect and/or because he’s brown, it’s a forgery.”
Garcia told Noticias Telemundo that “they grabbed me real bad” and placed “very hard” handcuffs on him.
Garcia stated that he was released from the car in which he was being kept after providing the arresting officers with his Social Security number, which indicated that he is a US citizen.
Garcia, who was born in Florida, was shaken by the detention, especially since the authorities also arrested and held his brother, who was not lawfully present in the country, according to Venegas. She added that Garcia lived with his brother. Their parents are from Mexico.
“He was actually pretty sore when he got back,” Venegas said about Garcia. “He said his arms and hands hurt. His wrists were covered in handcuff markings. His knees were also hurting from the manner they lowered him to the ground.
She claims they have been looking for a lawyer, but local ones have informed them it is extremely impossible to sue a federal agent. It is unclear from the video if the authorities were federal immigration officials or local law enforcement officers doing enforcement duties.
The Department of Homeland Security told NBC News that Garcia interfered with an arrest during a targeted worksite operation.
“He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, stated. “Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest.”
The statement did not address the rejection of Garcia’s identification.
Garcia denied that he had halted an arrest. He told NBC News that he was trying to take out his phone when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent grabbed it and threw it on the ground before seizing him.
According to Venegas, Garcia’s brother signed deportation paperwork because the family did not want him to be kept “forever,” as another family member was held in a Louisiana detention center for months.
“They are treating our people inhumanely. “They’re treating them like they’re murderers,” she remarked.
According to Venegas, immigration arrests are having an impact on Hispanics, including American citizens.
“It’s about race now. It doesn’t matter if you’re here legally or not,” she explained.
Her family owns a huge contracting company, she explained, “and many of the people who work with us are not working…. They refuse to go to work. They stated they wouldn’t go until everything calmed down.
Venegas went on to say that the bulk of her family is self-employed, and “we do the same thing every other citizen does.”
“It’s absurd that we can’t be different because of the hue we are. “We contribute to this country in the same way that every other citizen does through taxes,” she explained. “But we have to be the ones that every time we go to work, we are going to be scared that we’re going to get discriminated.”
“I think about my family,” she explained. “Even though a lot of them are citizens, I think about how we all work in the same area in construction and they can’t sit out there because they could literally get harassed or attacked the way my cousin did.”