On Saturday, Leonardo Garcia Venegas was coming back from a trip to a convenience store in Silverhill, Alabama, when he noticed a car following him. Soon, he was surrounded by seven or eight law enforcement officers, including those from ICE. They tackled him to the ground and shackled his arms and legs.
There was no reason for him to be detained by immigration agents. He’s a US citizen born in Florida. In fact, he tried to show the officers his Real ID and offered to get his American passport from the house, but they ignored him. He was eventually released, but not without having the car he was driving sniffed by dogs, according to a legal filing.
Amazingly, this wasn’t the first time Garcia Venegas, 26, was held by immigration. It wasn’t even the second time. This latest incident marked the third time this has happened to him in the span of a year. He had twice before been detained—and had his Real ID dismissed as possibly fake—after agents raided private construction sites where he was working.
“I live in constant fear that I will be subjected to further baseless detentions just for going about my daily life,” he wrote in a declaration filed as part of a civil lawsuit against the federal government seeking compensatory damages for the repeated arbitrary detentions. “I only wish to live my life in peace.”
Although Garcia Venegas’ case is an extreme one, he isn’t alone. At least 170 US citizens were held by immigration agents in the first nine months of the second Trump administration, according to an analysis by ProPublica from last year. You can read my full story about Garcia Venegas here.
—Isabela Dias
