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An American citizen who was owned by immigration officers and accused of having obstructed an arrest, Before her case was ultimately rejected, said she was still traumatized by what happened.
Andrea Velez was in downtown Los Angeles on June 24 when she was owned by immigration and customs officers. She was accused of having attacked a federal officer as he was trying to arrest a suspect.
The Ministry of Justice then rejected its case without prejudice. The agency did not immediately send back comments on Tuesday.
Velez, who works as a production coordinator for a shoe company, recalled that he saw federal agents when her mother and sister deposited her at work.
“It was like a scene,” she said NBC Los Angeles. “They were just ready to attack and continue.”
Velez said she felt someone catch her and slam her on the ground. She said that she had tried to tell the agent, who was in civilian clothes, that she was a citizen, but he told her that she “interfered with what he was doing, so he was going to stop me”.
“It was then that I asked him to show me his identifier, her badge number,” she said. “I asked him if he had a mandate, and he said that I didn’t need to know all of this.”
A federal criminal complaint allegedly alleged that an agent was pursuing a man, and Velez entered the agent’s path and extended his arm “in an apparent effort to prevent him from apprehending the male subject he was pursuing”.
The complaint said that Velez’s arm struck the agent in the face.
Velez said that she had denied any reprehensible act and insisted that she was an American citizen. She was taken to a detention center in downtown Los Angeles where she gave the police her driver’s license and her health insurance card, but she has always been reserved in prison.
She said that she had spent two days in the detention center, where she had nothing to drink for 24 hours.
Velez said the test had traumatized her and that she had not been able to physically return to work.
“I take things day by day,” she told the press station.
His lawyers told NBC Los Angeles that they explored legal options against the federal government.
His story echoes those of others who said that they had been wrongly detained by immigration agents Under the push of President Donald Trump for mass deportations.
Job Garcia, a doctorate. student and photographer, said he was Faced and thrown to the ground by immigration agents For having recorded a raid in a home depot in Los Angeles. He was detained for more than 24 hours before his release. In July, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said it was Search for one million dollars in damagesalleging that Garcia was attacked and falsely imprisoned.
In June, An assistant American marshal was briefly detained In the hall of a federal building in Tucson, Arizona, because it “corresponded to the general description of a subject desired by ice,” the service of American marshals said in a statement.
And in May, student of Georgia College XIMENA ARIAS-Christobal obtained a deposit after being held by immigration agents after the local police arrested the bad car during a traffic stop.
