Federal immigration agents were witnessed driving away with a toddler whom they separated from her father while detaining him in Los Angeles’ Cypress Park neighborhood on Tuesday, according to disturbing footage shared with HuffPost.
The distressing, nearly eight-minute long video shows at least five masked agents questioning a man while a little girl sat in the back of his vehicle, which was stopped at the far end of a public parking lot.
Another five or so armed officers circulated the area as outraged bystanders, many of who were volunteers patrolling the community as a counterforce to the immigration sweeps, confronted the agents and captured the incident on their phones.
An agent could be heard telling the man, whose hands were restrained behind his back, that he had failed to identify himself. A brief struggle ensued, prompting immigration authorities to steer the detainee to one of their trucks while two other associates entered the vehicle where the little girl had been waiting and drove away with her.
An immigration lawyer who spoke to the family told the Los Angeles Times the 32-year-old man being detained in the video is a U.S. citizen.
