Bodycam footage from a workplace raid shows a gang of masked male ICE agents forcibly entering a restroom and telling a woman in a stall to “pull up” her pants.
The Sept. 4 raid targeted a granola bar manufacturer in New York, though video has only now been released as part of ongoing legal proceedings. Federal agents can be seen in the footage wearing tactical gear as they kick the door open during the morning raid, ordering workers to the floor and then pushing a stall door as they call for female officers.
The operation, at Nutrition Bar Confectioners in Cato, resulted in 57 workers being detained, according to court filings tied to the case of Argentina Juarez-Lopez, who was one of five people charged with felony illegal re-entry after a prior deportation.
The footage was released as part of Juarez-Lopez’s bid to suppress evidence, arguing that agents turned what were supposed to be limited warrants into a dragnet. The video captures workers’ panic as agents fan through the plant and corral employees into a break room, in what some people experienced as their final hours of freedom in the U.S.
Factory owners said agents claimed they were hunting a “violent felon,” according to Syracuse.com. But it is argued that the Sept. 4 operation ultimately focused on workers and ended with rapid transfers to detention and deportations, separating parents from children.
Court records show many of those detained were transferred to detention facilities across the country and deported within 72 hours. At least 21 people were separated from their children, including three children under 2.
Perry Grossman, a supervising attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said those affected endured “a tremendous amount of pain and suffering.”
On Dec. 18, Chief U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes granted Juarez-Lopez’s motion to suppress, finding agents “briefly seized all employees” without individualized suspicion, per Spectrum Local News.
The judge said this was the “exact opposite” of the “consensual questioning” contemplated by a so-called “Blackie’s” warrant, which allows agents to question “suspected aliens concerning their status and to arrest, without a warrant, aliens illegally present in the United States.”
Juarez-Lopez has disputed agents’ claims that she admitted she was unlawfully in the U.S., saying in court papers: “At no time during my interaction with police did I admit to being in the country illegally or did I admit to not having any documents that would allow me to enter or remain in the United States legally. At no time did any officer learn my name, my country of birth, my immigration status or any other information about me.”
Sannes’ ruling noted that the agent, before questioning her, knew only that Juarez-Lopez had not identified herself as a U.S. citizen or an authorized worker. “In other words, that she had remained silent,” the decision stated, concluding that agents “subjected her to an unreasonable seizure violative of the Fourth Amendment.”
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and sets requirements for issuing warrants, including that they must be supported by probable cause, and describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
The NYCLU’s Grossman said the decision marked “a good first step” toward recognizing the harm caused by the raid, pointing to family separations and detention conditions.
The Daily Beast has contacted ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, for comment.
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