A United States deputy marshal was briefly and wrongly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the lobby of a federal building housing an immigration court in Arizona, federal officials confirmed last week.
It’s unclear exactly when the incident, which occurred in Tucson, happened, though citing multiple sources, the Arizona Daily Star reported it was sometime in late May.
The detainment was explained away as a case of mistaken identity, with officials at the U.S. Marshals Service saying in a statement that the deputy marshal “fit the general description of a subject being sought by ICE.”
Neither the Marshals Service nor the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency that ICE operates under, identified the deputy marshal or the person they believed he was.
In reporting by NBC News, the deputy marshal’s identity was quickly backed up by fellow law enforcement officers. He was then released and left the building without further incident.
No details about how the brief detention unfolded, whether the deputy was cuffed or if there was any resistance on his part, were provided.
The tactics used by federal immigration enforcement agents under the Trump Administration have come under increasing scrutiny and criticism.
ICE agents have detained immigrants attending scheduled court appearances in federal buildings in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and Phoenix, many of them with no criminal records, Reuters reported.
School district officials in both Los Angeles and Ventura counties say federal agents have been seen loitering around public schools, presumably waiting for undocumented parents and or children.
Local restaurants, Home Depot parking lots and other areas where many undocumented residents are working or looking for work have also been targeted.
ICE raids in L.A. have led to widespread protests, some of which have devolved into violence, vandalism and looting, prompting the president to deploy 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 U.S. Marines to the city, neither of which Gov. Gavin Newsom nor Mayor Karen Bass requested.
On Tuesday, Bass declared a local state of emergency in the city and placed a single square mile of downtown, where most of the illegal behavior has occurred since demonstrations began, under a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. for at least the next several days.
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