US Citizen Detained by Immigration Agents, Alleges Racial Profiling

What you're looking at is Ice agents in an unmarked vehicle slamming into a U.S.

Citizens pickup truck.

So that's what you actually watch happening here.

So that is an Ice agent in that car. The pickup truck is the American citizen.

Leo Martinez is an immigration rights volunteer in California.

He was driving through the neighborhood monitoring Ice activity, which he

had been doing for months before that.

The agents who have been involved with Ice raids knew who he was.

But in this case, everything was different.

Agents rammed his truck and then they took him into custody.

The incident ignited outrage and protests.

Martinez was hospitalized after that car rammed into him.

Later.

After that, they booked him into a detention center.

Of course, he's an American citizen.

When we say that ice is dystopian, crackdown on immigration puts all

of our rights and our lives at risk.

Citizens are not. This is exactly what we're talking about.

Being legal observers. We keep our distance.

We keep our safe distance to keep tabs on where they're at.

But this is the first time that they turn their aggression towards us

and really started coming after us.

So that's something new I was trying to stay away from them is why we were moving

in circles, because they kept following me and moving towards me,

and once they hit me, I knew that it was a it was a new ball game

and we were going to have to deal with this a little differently in the future.

You heard it from Leo Martinez himself.

Unfortunately, though, the pain and trauma inflicted on him by Donald Trump's

and Stephen Miller's secret police force is far from an outlier.

Yes.

All right, dude, you're making this more complicated than you want to know.

I can do that. You can do what I do.

Hey look.

Okay. I show my papers now.

I'm serious. I'm serious.

Okay.

Okay. So. Okay.

Okay. Hey, that's illegal man.

No. He's not even doing nothing wrong. He takes.

What the.

He's a citizen, bro. Oh, if he's a citizen.

If he a citizen, they they.

Yeah. He's saying I'm a citizen.

What the. I hope he got his phone.

What you just witnessed was two different angles of an Alabama construction worker

named Leonardo Garcia Venegas,

a US born citizen being detained by HSI agents alongside his brother,

who you saw being held on the ground with his face in wet concrete.

According to Venegas attorney and reporting from ProPublica,

the agent supposedly hopped a fence,

ignored a no trespassing trespassing sign and ran past black and white

construction workers to target Latino workers at the site.

Now, Venegas is seeking the justice he deserves.

Garcia Venegas is an American citizen born to parents who are Mexican nationals.

His lawsuit claims that both times he told the officers he was a he was a citizen

and showed them his real ID. As you know,

the real ID is the identification card that's issued only

to citizens and lawful residents.

But the officers still wouldn't let him go.

Two times now, immigration officers have barged onto worksites

where he was working and detained him without any reason to think that he had

done or was doing anything unlawful.

The first time they violently tackled him to the ground,

kept him in handcuffs for over an hour,

and then he had to take two, almost two weeks off from work

because he was so terrified and traumatized by what happened.

He was scared to go back.

Finally, he gathers up the courage to resume working after a couple of weeks,

and it turns out his fears were justified because it happened again

the second time around,

immigration officers actually came into a nearly fully constructed house

where he was working.

They forced him outside again, as the last time he showed him

his real ID, he said, I'm a citizen.

They refused to accept it. They refused to believe it.

There's no allegation, really, that he's done anything wrong

because he never did anything wrong.

All he did was show up to work both times.

He showed them the officer's his real ID both times they said, we don't care.

We're going to keep you detained anyway.

It is so sickening to see that Venegas couldn't even get out of this situation,

despite showing the agents a real ID, a real ID

and they felt they said it was fake.

That's crazy.

Like, yo, I'm a US citizen and this is how you're treating me.

That disgusts me. Okay?

And there are just so many horrible The implications of using race, language,

occupation and other factors to profile suspects and justify detaining them,

regardless of whether right, regardless of whether they suspect they're

suspected of committing a crime or not.

The fact that you can profile racially profile individuals

to get your agenda off, to interrogate, to intimidate people, to terrorize them.

Right.

And this whole plot or this whole, agenda to, you know, get these criminals,

you know, out of this country.

That is wild, to put it nicely. Okay.

That shouldn't be happening in this country.

Like, oh, you look like you're undocumented

or you actually aren't undocumented.

What does it matter?

Because I'm going to make up something that you were actually obstructing

the law, even though you weren't charged with anything after your arrest.

- What? - No resistance.

No resistance. What am I doing?

Hey hey.

Hey, Kevin. Baby.

Hey y'all!

Get on the ground! All right, bro.

You can't be doing that. I'm from here.

- Get on the ground! - Okay, get on your feet, sir.

Get up! Roll on your side.

I can't, bro. They gonna.

They're gonna push me.

They gonna do whatever they were doing to him.

No, I'm not gonna get up. I'm not gonna get up.

I'm gonna just stay like this. I'ma just stay like this, bro.

Y'all scaring the dude, bro. That's not how you arrest people.

Come on.

Here. I can.

Take care. I got rights to talk, bro.

- You got no rights here. - I do.

Brother. Get up.

I was born and raised here.

What about him?

- Born and raised here. - I'm starting to resist more now.

- Are you gonna end up shooting. - Someone.

- If you keep going. - Like this?

They're gonna start fighting.

Like this kid goes like, you know, you can't do that.

I'm not doing it.

Remember, you can smell that, too. With a $30,000 bonus.

Yeah yeah.

Yeah. The one that we tased.

Can you just give me a call if you want to go out?

That's the one we taste.

So this footage was taken by a US citizen.

Okay. A US citizen took this footage.

And then you have the officers who have the audacity

to make fun of the men they just detained.

And it really underscores and reveals their their mindset.

Right.

And the training that they've gotten and the mindset is,

I don't look at you as human.

You're beneath me. I'm superior to you.

I'm going to treat you any way I want, and I'm probably going

to be able to get away with it because I have the administration.

I have this Trump regime by my side.

It just shows the lack of compassion, right?

It shows the lack of empathy and treating people with respect.

They're not staying here and all you're whining and you go.

They just should get the criminals. All illegal aliens must leave the country.

I don't care if Wall Street is going to hurt the economy.

The corporations say it's going to hurt wages.

The preacher say it's going to hurt their congregations.

Yeah everybody.

It's going to hurt, but they've got to go home.

You're destroying the American republic, and you're destroying

the American citizens.

You're destroying the American people and our social cohesion.

So it's got to stop.

Trump stopped him coming in, but now they got to go home.

And we got to stop all the H1-b scams, all of it, and send them home, too, unless

on top of it, just for good measure, send all the Chinese students home.

How about this? All of them home.

All of them home.

And all the benefits of what? They go to the American citizens.

Let me tell you this.

Maggie's master plan has always been to remove anyone from the country who doesn't

align with their preferred conception of what a quote real America looks like.

So it doesn't matter, right?

If you're a US citizen. Right?

Or not, if you're undocumented, if you're documented.

They will do anything and everything to get you out of this country

or to get you out of their way.

Right. And that could mean harming you, right?

Taking your life or deporting you or severely injuring you.

Traumatizing you. Right?

By having you held up at a station after being arrested, being detained.

All those things are avenues

for them to achieve their real America.

And I don't fit that.

And I know a lot of you that are watching this video.

You don't fit that either because you actually stand for human decency.

You actually stand for human rights in treating people with respect.

And Chris Williamson, we'll see you next time.