Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tagged along for a bungled ICE raid that netted no arrests but forced a pregnant mother and her children out of their Los Angeles home.
The mother involved, Sabrina Medina, is a U.S. citizen married to an undocumented Mexican national. Cameras in her home captured ICE’s raid, which included masked agents storming her Huntington Park house with rifles in hand.
The raid was shortly before Noem’s agents pushed U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla out of her press conference, forced him to the ground and handcuffed him.
“I was just terrified, I’m not going to lie to you,” Medina said to KTLA. “I was shaking. I was scared. I’ve never gone through anything like this.”
Medina told the news station her husband, who has been deported previously, was not home when Noem and ICE agents came knocking. She did not say what, if anything, warranted ICE dispatching at least 10 armed agents to the home.
“I was like, ‘Am I dreaming? Or is this real?’” she told the news station.
Medina said that ICE demanded they see a David Garcia. She told KTLA that her husband’s name is Jorge, but she said that did not deter them from ordering her and her four children to vacate the home so they could raid it. She showed KTLA that she has a tattoo of the name “Jorge.”
It was around this point that Medina alleges an agent turned an outdoor surveillance camera away from what was transpiring—an act she caught on camera and shared with KTLA.
Security footage shows the family waiting in the driveway while agents went room by room. While this transpired, Medina said that Noem remained in shouting distance outside, donning a bulletproof vest and wearing a Homeland Security cap.
The raid took place not long before Noem held a news conference in the Los Angeles federal building, where her security detail controversially wrestled Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla to the ground after he approached Noem at the podium. Before the chaos involving Padilla, Noem referred to the raid at Medina’s home, where she left empty-handed.
ICE did not respond to questions and a request for comment emailed by the Daily Beast.
Medina said she fears ICE will return to arrest her husband. If he is ultimately deported, she says she will have no choice but to move their entire family to Mexico.
“I don’t know if they’re going to pick him up tomorrow,” she said.
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