Armed US immigration agents drive off with toddler after arrest of father
This article is more than 2 months old
‘Devastated’ family demands answers after one-year-old driven by armed agents from LA Home Depot parking lot
Masked, heavily armed federal immigration agents arrested a US citizen in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot store, then entered his car and drove away with his toddler, who is also a US citizen, in the backseat.
The child’s grandmother said the incident had left the whole family shaken. “I am devastated by what has happened to my son and demand an explanation,” she said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The 32-year-old father was picked up during a major enforcement operation at the Home Depot in LA’s Cypress Park neighborhood on Tuesday morning. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), five undocumented immigrants were also arrested.
Later that morning, Maria Avalos, the 32-year-old’s mother, got a call from an unidentified number. It was agents with the US border patrol, asking her to come pick up her one-year-old granddaughter. “We didn’t know what happened to her while she was in their care, and they wouldn’t give us information about when my son would be released or where he was,” Avalos said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Avalos said she still had not been able to speak to her son to find out where he is being held. The incident was captured on video and first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Avalos said she had to wait for hours at an immigration office in downtown Los Angeles to take custody of her granddaughter, and was made to provide a birth certificate. “My granddaughter didn’t even know what was happening. She’s too small. She didn’t know what was happening to her father,” she said.
The DHS has alleged that the 32-year-old “exited his vehicle wielding a hammer and threw rocks at law enforcement while he had a child in his car”. The agency did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about why agents drove away with the child rather than wait for another family member to come pick her up from the parking lot.
The agency added: “He was arrested for assault and during his arrest a pistol was found in his car, that is reported stolen out of the state of New York. The individual has an active warrant for property damage.”
Avalos did not comment on the agency’s accusations, and said that the family was searching for a lawyer to represent her son. She believes he was targeted because of the color of his skin, she said.
It frightened her, she added, to later see videos from bystanders who had recorded her son’s arrest. In a video reviewed by the Guardian, bystanders are heard yelling in alarm as several heavily armed agents seize the father, and then enter his car and drive away. The agent in the passenger seat is holding a gun in his hands.
At one moment, the father drops his weight to the ground, but masked agents pull him up and continue escorting him away from his daughter.
“I was sad to see my son throw himself on the floor to stop them from taking his daughter,’ she said. “He was protecting his daughter.” She was also alarmed to see masked agents, who were heavily armed, drive away with her granddaughter. “This is something very, very frightening, because it’s not clear who these people are,” she said.skip past newsletter promotion
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Immigrants’ advocates have raised alarm about the incident, which is one of several cases where agents have arrested parents or guardians in front of their children. This summer, officials in Waltham, Massachusetts, confirmed that a 13-year-old was abandoned on the street after an immigration raid. In southern California, a 19-year-old and a minor child were left behind after their father was arrested at a gas station.
“Surely there is a better way of enforcing their policies in a way that does not separate families or place tender-aged children like this child in questionable circumstances,” said Renee Garcia, the communications director at the legal aid non-profit ImmDef. “I think that it’s absolutely traumatizing for a child to be placed in that situation.”
“This is insane, what we are witnessing in this country,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, the communications director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (Chirla), an advocacy organization. “This should not be happening.”
Avalos said she was hoping her son will be able to return home soon. “My son is a good, quiet, hard-working person. He works in the restaurant industry and just got his new job. And his family is everything to him,” she said.
“He is the best dad. And his little girl follows him wherever he goes. She is safe now, though. She needs her father. And I need my son back.”
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Texas man arrested for making ‘terroristic threats’ against Mamdani
By Jacob Kaye
A Texas man was charged in Queens with making terroristic threats after he allegedly made several menacing phone calls and wrote Islamophobic and exploitative-laced emails to Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, earlier this year.
Jeremy Fistel, who was arrested in Plano, Texas last week before being picked up by the NYPD and brought to Queens, made at least three threatening phone calls to Mamdani’s district office in Astoria in June and July.
In multiple calls, Fistel called the Muslim mayoral candidate a “terrorist f–k” and said he hoped Mamdani and his family would be murdered.
Fistel allegedly said Mamdani “should go back to f–king Uganda” where the Queens lawmaker was born, adding that if he doesn’t leave, someone might shoot him “in the f–cking head and get rid of your whole family too.”
“You’re a terrorist piece of s–t, and you’re not welcome in New York or in America, neither is your f–king family so they should get the f–k out,” Fistel allegedly said in a June 17 message.
“Go on and start your car and see what happens,” he said in a different message, according to prosecutors. “And keep an eye on your house and your family. Watch your back every f–king second. Check your beeper, too, you terrorist f–k. Beep beep.”
Fistel’s arrest comes at a particularly tense time in the U.S., which has seen an increase in political violence over the past several years. Fistel was first arrested in Texas on Sept. 11, a day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot to death while speaking to college students in Utah.
“Let me be very clear – we take threats of violence against any office holder extremely seriously – and there is no room for hate or bigotry in our political discourse,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement.
Fistel was hit with a 22-count indictment on Thursday in Queens Criminal Court, which included charges of making a terroristic threat as a hate crime and aggravated harassment as a hate crime.
He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top count.
Fistel has few ties to New York City. Though his brother lives in Queens, Fistel spent much of his adult life in Massachusetts and recently moved to Texas because of a romantic relationship, prosecutors said.
Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term Administrative Judge Michelle Johnson ordered a $30,000 bail on Fistel, which was paid by his family. Fistel left the court with his attorney a little more than an hour after his arraignment.
While he pleaded not guilty to the charges on Thursday, prosecutors said Fistel previously took credit for the calls.
Prior to his arrest, he allegedly told investigators that he would stop making the calls and said that he had no interest in going to New York City, which he described as “an alcoholic that has to hit rock bottom.”
“If this is about phone calls, I just won’t make them any more,” Fistel allegedly told the police.
The Queens district attorney’s office said Fistel first called Mamdani’s district office on June 11, at around 11:30 a.m. The call came as Mamdani began to surge in the polls in the Democratic primary race for mayor.
Prosecutors said that Fistel said on the call that “Muslims don’t belong” in the United States.
Fistel allegedly said Mamdani was “not welcome in New York or America and neither is your f–king family” during the second call he allegedly made to Mamdani’s office on June 18, around 9:45 a.m.
Mamdani went on to win the Democratic primary race around a week after Fistel’s second call.
On July 8, Fistel allegedly sent an email to Mamdani’s office saying that he hoped the lawmaker got “terminal cancer.”
“I’d love to see an IDF bullet go through your skull,” Fistel allegedly wrote in the message. “Would be even better if you had to watch your wife and kids murdered in front of you before they end your pathetic miserable life.”
The message came from Fistel’s email address, according to prosecutors.
Fistel allegedly made a final call on July 23 around 1:45 p.m., saying that he hoped somebody would shoot Mamdani “in f–king face.”
“I hope you get raped and murdered as well,” he reportedly said.
Mamdani’s staff first reported the calls to the police on June 18.
Todd Greenberg, Fistel’s attorney, told the judge on Thursday that the Queens district attorney’s case was weak.
“It’s unpleasant speech,” Greenberg said. “But it’s free speech.”
The attorney also claimed that Fistel was facing hate speech charges because of “political positions” he held, but did not expand on what he meant when asked by reporters after the hearing.
Fistel declined to speak to reporters as he made his way out of the courthouse on Thursday.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Mamdani’s mayoral campaign said that they want to “reassure the community that Zohran and the team are safe.”
“We cannot and will not be intimidated by racism, Islamophobia, and hate,” the spokesperson said. “Zohran remains steadfast in his conviction that New York must be a city where every single person—regardless of faith, background, or identity — is safe, protected, and at home.”
“Unfortunately, threats of this nature are all too common—and they reflect a broader climate of hate that has no place in our city,” they added.
In March, Mamdani shared a recording of a voicemail left at his district office that included language similar to the messages allegedly left by Fistel.
“Go f–k yourself, you terrorist,” the message begins. “You’re going to wash my European feet, boy.”
When asked about Fistel’s arrest on Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams, who is polling last in the four-way race for mayor, said that he believed it was “ironic” that Mamdani was receiving NYPD protection during the campaign because of past statements he’s made about defunding the police.
“It just goes to show these officers carry out their job no matter who the individual is,” the mayor said. “No matter what people say about you, you’re still willing to protect them. He has that police detail because we don’t believe anyone should be the victim of violence, but we also believe that we hold a debt of gratitude to our police personnel, and we should show them some respect as they do their job.”
