A federal agent on Monday brandished a gun at a Virginia woman who had shouted at him, according to videos of the encounter, the latest in a string of clashes between immigration agents and drivers.
The woman, Carolina Molina, 36, said in an interview that around 3 p.m. on Monday, several Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded her car in a shopping center in Falls Church, Va., after she had yelled at them as they detained people nearby.
One masked agent approached her car with a gun pointed at her, her videos show. Agents accused Ms. Molina of trying to run them over and threatened to arrest her.
Two videos that Ms. Molina shared on social media, which she recorded on her cellphone and the car’s dashboard camera, show no clear attempt to harm the agents. The roughly two-minute dash cam video shows that Ms. Molina had pulled into a parking spot, backed out and was driving through the shopping center when the agents blocked her vehicle, parking behind and in front of her car.
After a tense verbal exchange during which an agent pulled his weapon, the agents left, according to Ms. Molina, a mother of two. She said she had never used her car as a weapon while she drove through the shopping center or before.
“There is no way I would put myself at risk knowing I have two girls to go home to, to go and chase after ICE agents,” said Ms. Molina, a licensed counselor who works with undocumented people.
Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat whose district includes Falls Church, said that his staff had spoken to Ms. Molina and “will be demanding answers and consequences.”
The Homeland Security Department said in an unsigned statement late Tuesday that the agents had been trying to detain undocumented migrants who had committed crimes when they were approached by Ms. Molina, whom the agency called an “anti-ICE agitator.”
D.H.S. said she had driven circles around the officers and tried to harm them with her vehicle to help the migrants get away. The agents were afraid, the department said, when they stopped Ms. Molina in the shopping center.
“This is the one that tried to run us over,” the agent who pulled the gun told a colleague as they questioned Ms. Molina.
The agency did not provide any videos of the encounter. Ms. Molina, whose videos do not capture events outside the shopping center, was not detained and has not been criminally charged.
The confrontation was just the latest involving federal agents and drivers amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Since last year, more than 20 people in their cars have been shot at by federal agents, some fatally. In July, two men were killed in their vehicles during encounters with ICE agents, in Houston and Maine. In January, federal agents shot Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis. The killing set off weeks of protests nationally.
In many cases, federal officials have defended the agents’ actions, saying they were justified acts of self-defense. The department reiterated that defense on Tuesday, saying that “when faced with dangerous circumstances, D.H.S. law enforcement used their training to protect themselves, their fellow officers and the public.”
After massive immigration operations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis that roiled entire cities, federal authorities are using lower-profile tactics. They are reinvigorating the president’s crackdown after a spring slowdown; daily arrests of immigrants doubled in the last week of June and have continued to increase.
Ms. Molina, a mental health therapist in Loudoun County, Va., is a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from El Salvador. She conducts psychological evaluations for clients in immigration cases and was in Falls Church on Monday to distribute business cards at the offices of several immigration lawyers, she said.
Ms. Molina said she had been driving through Falls Church when she witnessed federal agents apprehending two men. She said that she rolled down her window and shouted at the agents. She said she saw them in the shopping center minutes later and shouted again, profanely.
Agents in two cars then blocked her vehicle, she said. In a 46-second video that Ms. Molina recorded on her cellphone and shared on social media, one agent exits his car, draws his gun and approaches her vehicle, along with several other agents.
“You almost ran us over,” the agent says in the video, after asking Ms. Molina if she had followed his vehicle. He kept his gun pointed at her during the exchange, holding it at a tilted angle.
Ms. Molina, who remained in her car, denied the agent’s accusation and said that she had not been following his vehicle.
“I’m a legal citizen,” she told him.
“I don’t care,” one agent replied, threatening to arrest Ms. Molina.
“Doesn’t matter,” another said.
Mr. Beyer, the lawmaker, said in his statement that “the habitual dishonesty and dangerous and unjustified escalation seen in this video matches what we have seen from ICE agents across the country.”
He added that “this kind of misconduct and threat of force against members of our communities cannot be tolerated.”
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