Video shows the moment ICE agents smashed a car window and forcibly removed a man in New Bedford, Massachusetts on Monday. His attorney says he is not the man the agents were looking for.
Juan Francisco Mendez, 29, has no criminal record and was awaiting his final documentation to solidify his asylum status.
His attorney tells WBZ federal agents took the wrong person, mistaking her client for someone else.
“They said they were looking for a certain individual, by a different name,” said immigration attorney Ondine Galvez Sniffin. “I said that’s not my client… I know my client’s history, that is not him.”
Mendez’s wife, Marilu Domingo Ortiz, and 9-year-old son are protected under an asylum status after persecution in their home country of Guatemala.
Domingo Ortiz said it was terrifying to see ICE agents smash her husband’s window and forcibly grab him in front of her. “In that moment she was very shocked, she didn’t know what to do, what to think she was just there, just terrified,” said Domingo Ortiz, through a translator.
When agents approached Mendez in his car, they were asking for a man by the name of Antonio, someone who used to live in his building. Mendez told them that it wasn’t him.
Window smashed with axe
The agents demanded he get out of the car. He said he was waiting on his lawyer, and that’s when an agent smashed his window.
Ondine Galvez Sniffin
Community activist Adrian Ventura says he saw it all unfold. “They acted very violently,” he said through an interpreter. “I was there when that guy was carrying an axe, or a hammer and started to break the windows and it was like there was an explosion.”
By the time Mendez’s lawyer arrived on scene, he was already under arrest.
Sniffin says it’s a terrible misstep by the agents who carried out the actions, and now it’s leaving the Mendez family with difficult questions left unanswered.
“I don’t have any answers”
“She asked me when will he be coming home? and I don’t have any answers for her,” Sniffin said.
Sniffin says she has been able to locate Mendez, who is being held at a facility in Dover, New Hampshire. She hasn’t been able to receive any charges or a reason for why he’s still in the detention center.
“Right now, she desperately wants him home that she’s trying her best to be strong for her son because her son keeps asking where his dad is, and she’s trying to be strong for their son, but she needs him,” said Domingo Ortiz through the translator.
WBZ has reached out to ICE for more information, but they have not responded with any details about the Mendez’s arrest or his detention.
