Viral Videos Show Toddlers Caught Up in Aggressive ICE Crackdown

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In one video, a father is arrested by immigration agents before two masked and armed officers drive away in his car with his young toddler still strapped in a car seat inside. In another, a father appears to suffer convulsions as masked agents try to wrest his screaming child from his arms.[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The two incidents—caught on videos that have gone viral in the last week—highlight how the Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown is increasingly putting young children in harm’s way. President Donald Trump has promised to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. To achieve this goal, he has deployed large numbers of federal immigration agents to cities to conduct heavily armed raids and roving patrols to arrest anyone in the country illegally. Read More: ‘Military-Style’ ICE Raid On Chicago Apartment Building Shows Escalation in Trump’s Crackdown Before the two viral videos emerged last week, a high-profile raid on a Chicago apartment building by hundreds of Border Patrol and ICE agents was heavily criticized by state and city officials after children were rounded up in the middle of the night and detained while residents were questioned. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker ordered state agencies to investigate the treatment of four children detained during the raid, saying “military-style tactics should never be used on children in a functioning democracy.” Children were at the forefront of another ICE arrest in Chicago when an employee of the Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center was detained in front of her students on Wednesday as they were being dropped off.A video of the incident, shared by Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, shows a woman later identified as Diana Patricia Santillana Galeano screaming as she is pulled from the daycare building. Quigley said ICE agents “followed a teacher into the facility without a warrant and abducted her in front of her students.” He said the incident showed a “complete lack of humanity” at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on social media that the vehicle Galeano was a passenger in fled when ICE officers tried to perform a traffic stop. McLaughlin said she then ran inside the daycare, where she was arrested. Santillana Galeano is currently detained at an ICE facility in Clark County, Indiana, according to her attorney. A federal judge has temporarily barred her removal pending a hearing. ‘Exhausted and bruised’ The first video from last week, in which agents drive away with a toddler still in the back, took place in Los Angeles during a raid at Home Depot in the Cypress Park neighborhood that led to the arrest of five people, who the government says are undocumented immigrants.The video shows immigration agents arresting a man later identified as Dennis Quiñonez, as people shout that there is a child in the back of the car. After the arrest, two agents climb into his car, weapons strapped to their uniforms, and drive his car away with the child in the back. One onlooker can be heard shouting amid the commotion: “There’s a baby in the back!” The girl was reunited with her grandmother, Maria Avalos, later that day. Avalos released a statement to the public after her son was released.“When I picked my granddaughter from the federal agents, she had a dirty diaper, a bruise on her face, and was developing a rash,” she said. “She was exhausted and cried… My heart aches knowing this could happen to others, to my kids, or even me, despite being U.S. citizens.” She went on to say her heart “aches” knowing this could happen to anyone, regardless of immigration status: “I fear for my grandkids growing up in a country that targets and profiles dark-skinned people. I hope things improve, though it’s hard to imagine how it could get worse.”A federal criminal complaint filed against Quiñonez charges him with unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a person previously convicted of domestic violence, according to a federal criminal complaint. Quiñonez and his child are both U.S. citizens.A DHS spokesperson claimed in a statement to TIME that Quiñonez attacked officers who were trying to perform arrests.“During the operation, a U.S. citizen exited his vehicle wielding a hammer and threw rocks at law enforcement while he had a child in his car,” they said. “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. The individual has an active warrant for property damage.”Avalos, Quiñonez’s mother, told the Times that the warrant that led to her son’s arrest was for graffiti. In the second video, taken on Thursday and obtained by the Boston Globe, a man later identified as Carlos Sebastian Zapata, was holding his toddler, and appeared to fall unconscious as ICE authorities attempted to arrest his wife—while officials maintain that the man “faked” his medical emergency.Read More: The Growing Resistance to Mass DeportationThe video is chaotic, as crowds of people can be seen and heard protesting the arrest, shouting “he’s having a seizure,” as the officers attempt to pull passengers from a car during a stop in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. The man sat in the driver’s seat, while the woman sat in the passenger seat, their crying child in the man’s arms. Onlookers watch, with one person shouting that “they’re trying to rip the baby out of [his] hand.”The DHS defended the arrest and called the video “misleading.” It said in a statement that agents were trying to serve a warrant for Zapata’s wife, Juliana Milena Ojeda-Montoya, for allegedly stabbing a co-worker in the hand. The DHS said Ojeda-Montoya, who is from Ecuador, is in the country illegally and was taken into custody on Thursday. The agency also claimed in the statement that the child was seated in the lap of the mother in the front seat of the car. McLaughlin claimed Zapata faked his medical episode: “Emergency Medical Personnel on the scene found no legitimate medical episode—ICE called 911 and the illegal alien refused any medical care,” she said.Zapata told The Globe on Friday that he held onto his wife out of fear for her arrest and began having “convulsions.” He said that ICE agents pushed him, hit him around his ribs and pressed on his neck during the arrest.“And that’s when I let go of my wife,” Zapata said.