In an instance of exceptional depravity, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a pregnant U.S. citizen just days before her due date, NBC News reported Tuesday.
Cary López Alvarado was detained by masked ICE agents Sunday, who claimed that she was obstructing an arrest of her partner and his co-worker, two undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, during a raid in Hawthorne, a city in Los Angeles County.
López Alvarado and her cousin Alberto Sandoval, who is also a citizen, were opening a gate to allow their truck into the parking lot of a private building when ICE agents arrived.
“They had us all surrounded,” she told NBC News in an interview from a hospital bed, her voice breaking. After being released by ICE shortly after her arrest, López Alvarado experienced sharp pains in her stomach, and was admitted to the hospital.
“I had lost my balance,” she tearfully told NBC. “He was kind of shoving me away from the door, and uh, that’s when I kind of just like leaned forward because I was kind of trying to protect the stomach.”
In a video of the incident obtained by the outlet, neighbors could be heard shouting “Let her go,” and She’s pregnant!”
In one video, López Alvarado can be heard explaining to the agents that they could not enter private property. The agents told her that the parking wasn’t private property, and that she was impeding their arrest, she said. “I wasn’t resisting or anything,” she said. “I can’t fight back; I’m pregnant.”
When López Alvarado tried to tell the officers that she was due June 17, she said they responded, “‘OK, your baby is going to be born here, but you’re from Mexico, right?’ And I told them no.”
López Alvarado told Telemundo 52 in Spanish that she was born in Los Angeles.
As part of its inhumane crackdown on immigration, the Trump administration has readily arrested U.S. citizens, deported families, and endangered sick children, leaving hollow promises to target individuals with criminal records in the rearview.
In a statement to NBC News, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that López Alvarado had been detained because she allegedly “obstructed federal law enforcement by blocking access to a car that had two Guatemalan illegal aliens in it.”
The statement claimed that the ICE agents had been assaulted during the incident and that “rioters” had thrown wrenches and batteries at the agents.
Sandoval still faces assault charges, though his mother, María Alvarado, told Telemundo 52 that he was innocent, and there was proof. “My son didn’t attack. He was attacked. There are videos. There’s evidence,” she said in Spanish.
A recent series of ICE arrests in Los Angeles have sparked massive protests there, and the Trump administration has been quick to fan the flames of unrest by calling in the National Guard and U.S. Marines, in possible violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. California has already moved to sue Trump for overreaching his authority, and California Governor Gavin Newsom warned Wednesday that the president had placed democracy “under assault.”
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