I am sorry I am posting so many videos and cartoon memes. The issue is my cataracts are so bad one of my eyes is no longer working and my glasses are useless. I saw an eye doctor on Tuesday and when Ron gets back we will have a talk about surgery. It will have to be done on both eyes. What bothers me is the last time I was under for surgery they had a hard time bring me back. My breathing got too shallow and … well it took them a lot longer than they expected to bring me back to consciousness. I am worried if I go under again … I may stay there. But it is a struggle to do anything on the computer now. All the letters are made of fuzzy caterpillars and things I look at even with my glasses have fur on them. But I need my glasses for the computer, phone, and watch but can’t wear them for anything else. So I can take them off for bigger things like watching videos, moving around doing things, even driving. Just need them for reading and typing which gives me a headache after a bit. Hugs.
A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake, the man’s cousin said Friday.
Video of the arrest, aired by Noticias Telemundo, showed authorities grabbing Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, while at a job site in Foley, Alabama, on Wednesday and bending his arms behind him. Someone off-camera can be heard yelling, “He’s a citizen.”
Garcia told Noticias Telemundo that authorities took his ID from his wallet and told him it was fake before handcuffing him. REAL ID is the identification U.S. citizens are required by law to have in order to travel through airports and enter federal buildings. It is considered a higher security form of identification.
“Apparently a REAL ID is not valid anymore. He has a REAL ID,” his cousin Shelah Venegas said. “We all made sure we have the REAL ID and went through the protocols the administration is asking for. … He has his REAL ID and then they see him and I guess because his English isn’t fluent and/or because he’s brown it’s fake, it’s not real.”
Garcia had told Noticias Telemundo that “they grabbed me real bad” and the handcuffs were placed “very hard” on him.
Garcia said he was released from the vehicle where he was held after he gave the arresting officials his Social Security number, which showed he is a U.S. citizen.
The arrest has left Garcia, who was born in Florida, shaken, particularly because the officers also arrested and detained his brother, who is not in the country legally, Venegas said. She added that Garcia lived with his brother. Their parents are from Mexico.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas.Telemundo
“He was actually pretty sore when he got back,” Venegas said of Garcia. “He said his arms were hurting and his hands. His wrists, you could see where he had all the marks from the handcuffs. … The way they put him on the ground, his knees also were hurting.”
She said they have been trying to find a lawyer but local ones have told them that it is nearly impossible to sue a federal agent. It is not clear from the video whether the authorities were federal immigration agents or local law enforcement carrying out enforcement duties.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to 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,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. “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 response did not address the dismissal of Garcia’s identification.
Garcia denied that he interrupted an arrest. He told NBC News that he was trying to take out his phone when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent took it and threw it to the ground and then an agent began grabbing him.
Venegas said Garcia’s brother has signed deportation papers because the family didn’t want him detained “forever” as they’ve seen happen to another family member, who was held for months in a Louisiana detention center.
“It’s inhumane, what they are doing to our people. They are treating them as if they were murderers,” she said.
Venegas said the immigration arrests are creating repercussions among Hispanics, even among U.S. citizens.
“It’s about race now. It’s not about whether you are here legally or not,” she said.
Her family owns a fairly large contracting company, she said, “and a lot of the people that work with us are not working. … They are refusing to go to work. They said they are not going to go until this stuff calms down.”
Venegas added that the majority of her family is self-employed and “we do the same thing every other citizen does.”
“It’s just insane we can’t be different, the color that we are. We contribute to this country the same way every other citizen does with their taxes,” she said. “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 said. “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.”
ICE wrestled Alabama worker to the ground & detain him for hours—he is a U.S. citizen.
Young man was begging & shouting, "I am a U.S. citizen"—but that didn't stop ICE agents from dragging him off to a detention center.
ICE is a thug unit run by a major thug. This family was badly mistreated, in some ways brutalized. I read earlier where the mother said the 20 ICE agents who broke into their home with no warring then wanted the women, one adult and the others teenagers to remove their clothing in front of them to get dressed before being forced outside in the rain. The report said the mother refused saying even her husband had not seen the children nude and she did not want them to do that in front of these men. They were ordered in their “underwear” outside in the rain where they were kept for hours. Is this the government / police any way people should be treated by law enforcement in the US. They so disrespected this family sure in the fact they were correct with no room for any doubt. They had no empathy, no common sense. In the time I was an axillary sheriff’s deputy we were trained never to act like that. We were taught to respect the rights of people but be aware they might be lying and the danger of the situation. Respect the rights of the people. All people on US soil, in the country regardless of status have due process rights. The right wing haters want to tell you that if you are here illegally you have no rights but SCOTUS has repeatedly said every person here does. Hugs
As for Marissa’s phones, electronics, and cash, they have no idea which agency has those belongings or how to get those items back.
At this time, there is not a fundraising campaign set up for the family. KFOR will share any details if that happens.
Original:
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A woman says her family’s fresh start in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare after federal immigration agents raided their home, taking their phones, laptops, and life savings – even though they were not the suspects the agents were looking for.
The agents had a search warrant for the home, but the suspects listed on the warrant do not live in the house.
The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier.
The woman, who News 4 will refer to as “Marisa”, and her three daughters came to Oklahoma looking for a slower, more affordable pace of life.
They rented a house in a seemingly safe northwest Oklahoma City neighborhood.
Her husband stayed back in Maryland a couple of extra weeks, planning to join them this weekend.
“I was like, ‘okay, Oklahoma’s my home now,’” Marisa said.
But any comfort they had disappeared Thursday morning when about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door.
“I don’t know who they were,” she said. “It was dark. All the lights were off.”
Marisa said the men identified themselves as federal agents with the U.S. Marshals, ICE, and the FBI.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service denied having agents present during the raid, telling News 4 they were “aware of the operation before it happened,” but did not assist in any capacity.
“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”
She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.
“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”
Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
She recognized them as names listed on mail still arriving at the house—likely former residents.
“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”
She said the agents didn’t care.
“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”
Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”
“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”
Before they left, Marisa said one of the agents made a comment.
“One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning,’” she said. “It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.”
Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.
“I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” she said.
Marisa said she is left with nothing but questions.
“What if I would have been armed,” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces.Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women?A little bit of mercy. Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen, fellow resident. We bleed too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We’re scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified. What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety? Of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?”
Marisa told News 4 the agents wouldn’t even leave her a business card.
She said she has no idea who to contact to get her things back.
Marissa told KFOR the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the FBI were involved in this raid.
However, a representative for the U.S. Marshal’s Service says their team was not involved.
News 4 reached out to the FBI. Last week, a spokesperson said they were assisting on this case and directed inquiries to Homeland Security.
A spokesperson for Homeland Security told News 4 they are looking into it and will get back to us, but we have not heard from them.
As for Marissa’s phones, electronics, and cash, they have no idea which agency has those belongings or how to get those items back.
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