The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund is demanding the federal government pay $1 million in damages to a U.S. citizen who was arrested and detained while he was recording an immigration raid at a Home Depot in Los Angeles last month.
MALDEF put the government on notice of a coming civil lawsuit for what it says were assault, battery, false arrest and false imprisonment against Job Garcia, 37.
Garcia, a Ph.D. student and photographer, was tackled and thrown to the ground by agents in the Home Depot parking lot in Hollywood, arrested and held for more than 24 hours, MALDEF said.
It said Wednesday that it submitted the claim against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Border Patrol and other Department of Homeland Security agencies involved in Garcia’s arrest.
MALDEF also said that Garcia’s arrest and detention were racially motivated and that the government agents may have violated his constitutional protections for free speech, his right to remain silent, his freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and his right to due process.
MALDEF said the claim is a required administrative step before it files a lawsuit against the Border Patrol, ICE and the other DHS agencies.
“The Border Patrol and ICE agents unlawfully restrained and detained Mr. Garcia for more than 24 hours without any valid grounds for interfering with his liberty and freedom of movement and they did so based on legally prohibited grounds,” MALDEF said in its claim letter, dated Tuesday. MALDEF said he was released without arraignment or notification of a future court date.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Garcia assaulted and verbally harassed a federal agent and that he was subdued and arrested for the alleged assault. She repeated Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s warning that anyone who lays a hand on a law enforcement officer will be fully prosecuted.
Ernest Herrera, MALDEF’s Western regional counsel, said the claim sends a message to the federal government about punishing people for exercising their First Amendment rights “and for hurting bystanders and protesters, whether they be U.S. citizens or not during these raids that are happening in public places.”
Garcia regularly traveled to Los Angeles-area Home Depots for his job as a delivery driver for an online business. He and others saw agents making the arrests and started recording them on his smartphone, MALDEF said.
When Customs and Border Patrol agents surrounded a commercial light truck, he and other bystanders yelled to the driver not to open his door or window and to keep silent, according to MALDEF.
“All individuals that Border Patrol agents had detained up to this point appeared to be Latino or Latin American national origin. The driver of the light commercial truck also appeared to be Latino or of Latin American national origin,” it said.
MALDEF said a masked agent lunged at Garcia and tried to grab his phone, leading him to move backward. The agent who had lunged at him threw Garcia’s phone to the ground and tackled him. Other agents joined in, restraining him with their knees in his back and pressing his face into the asphalt, even though he did not resist, MALDEF said.
“Mr. Garcia felt that his breathing was restricted and momentarily feared that he may be killed in this position,” the claim says. An agent transferring Garcia tried to speak to him in Spanish “and was surprised when Mr. Garcia responded in English” but continued to try to speak Spanish to him.
Garcia was taken to Dodger Stadium in handcuffs. By that time, agents had confirmed that he was a citizen with no criminal warrants and that there was no information to suspect he had committed a crime, MALDEF said.
“During this time, Garcia said he heard the agents boasting about how many ‘bodies’ they had gotten that day and saw them celebrate with high-fives,” it said.
The claim also sends a message that “the American public does not approve of this sort of immigration enforcement action where people are terrorized, where certain people are targeted and agents themselves are bragging about how many bodies they got,” Herrera said.
Agents tried to interrogate Garcia after they read him his rights, MALDEF said. He refused to answer questions and was not read his rights when later attempts were made to interrogate him, it said. He was transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles and released the next day, without arraignment or any information about a future court date, MALDEF said.
“Border Patrol and ICE punished me for informing others of their rights and exercising my own rights,” Garcia said in the MALDEF statement.
MALDEF said Garcia sustained bruising on his back, neck, arms, face and legs from the tackling and restraint, that he is suffering emotional distress and that he lost out on more than four days of delivery work, costing him $2,500 to $3,000.
He also has stopped his academic work because of emotional distress and might not complete his program in a year, as expected, MALDEF said.
“When government engages in widespread violation of individual rights with respect to immigrants without status, the harm inevitably spills over and spreads to others; that is why we must insist, as a society, on respect for the rights of everyone,” Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF’s president and general counsel, said in a statement.
“Here, a citizen, acting in the best traditions of our democracy, was engaged in documenting government misconduct to encourage policy change; he was wrongfully arrested and detained because of his race and his heroic efforts,” Saenz said.
