Dramatic video shows masked agents in Detroit break window, pull immigrant from car

DETROIT, MI — “That’s the dude I saw earlier,” a masked law enforcement agent in shades and camouflage police gear said while peering at Erick Pena through a car window.

Pena, a 29-year-old Detroit resident, said he was just getting a ride to work when a dramatic scene unfolded and he was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Honduras native was in the backseat of a car driven by Nelson Garay, a member of Asamblea Popular Detroit, a humanitarian group aiding immigrants.

Cell phone video recorded by Garay and shared with MLive shows initial confusion as several masked agents from multiple federal agencies surrounded the stopped vehicle in southwest Detroit on the morning of Oct. 9.

“Call 911,” a woman in the car with Garay said, followed by Pena saying he was going to call the police.

“These are the police,” Garay corrected them.

“Don’t break that motherf—ing window,” the woman in the front passenger seat yelled out moments later as agents were getting ready to break a side window to remove Pena.

“Then open the door,” an agent responded. “It’s gonna get broke or open the door. You got about 10 seconds.”

About four seconds later, the agent told them, “I’m gonna break it right now.”

Garay, cursing, accused the agents of being racist and asked why they were masked. An agent warned them they had about five seconds before the window would be broken.

Less than a second later, an agent announced, “All right, here we go,” as the woman with Garay yelled, “Don’t break our window! Don’t break our window! I have s— back here!”

Agents gave them another opportunity to lower the window as the series of exchanges continued.

“Obey the law? What are you talking about?” the woman asked the agents.

“There’s no law — we don’t have to answer any questions about anyone’s status,” Garay told them.

He told an agent who wanted to identify Pena, “You don’t need to identify him. He wasn’t driving the car.”

As tensions escalated, Garay pleaded, “Do not break my window, man. There is no need,” while the woman yelled out amid commotion, “Nobody’s hiding anybody!”

After more tense exchanges, Garay demanded, “I want to see a badge number, and I want to see a name and a rank. Identify yourselves first. You can identify yourselves first.”

Before he finished asking, agents broke the window, reached in to open the door and aggressively pulled out Pena.

“How do I know this isn’t a f—ing kidnapping?” Garay asked. “This is a f—ing kidnapping!”

“There’s glass right there! Stop! Please!” the woman pleaded as Pena, in a T-shirt and sweatpants, was placed with his hands behind his back face down on the ground where there were shards of shattered glass.

“You are dragging him across f—ing glass!” Garay yelled. “F—ing fascist pieces of s—!”

“I hope you post that because that’s the evidence we need,” an agent told them as the recording continued.

Pena said ICE taking him from his family that day and placing him into lockup for three months made him feel like a criminal even though he has no criminal record.

“I was freaking out, I didn’t know what was going on,” he said of being processed and transported to an ICE jail, the North Lake Processing Center in northern Michigan. He stayed there from October into early January before successfully fighting in court for the right to be released on bond.

Pena came to the country as a child, met his U.S. citizen wife Synthea in school and they’ve been together over 12 years, they said. He has been seeking permanent resident status to stay in the country with her and their two young children, a 1-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, who also are U.S. citizens.

The day he was detained, ICE could see he already had a petition approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to go through the process of becoming a permanent resident by marriage, according to Pena and his attorney.

But the agency still chose to lock him up and put him in the deportation pipeline, his case now pending along with tens of thousands of others in Detroit Immigration Court.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

GoFundMe started for Detroit father fighting ICE to stay with his U.S. citizen family

Video of the incident shows agents from several agencies assisted or at least observed Pena’s apprehension, including the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, also known as the ATF.

A Michigan State Police spokesperson said an agent on the scene wearing a state of Michigan patch was not MSP. That officer was wearing a Homeland Security Investigations badge.

Garay said both Border Patrol and ICE were among the agencies involved — “all for a traffic stop.” His busted window cost $125 to fix, he said.

At Pena’s recent bond hearing, ICE alleged Pena was not cooperative and would be a flight risk and ICE didn’t want the immigration judge to give bond, said Brad Thomson, Pena’s attorney.

“And the immigration judge was like, ‘Well, did you have a judicial warrant to arrest him?’ And they’re like, ‘No.’ And he was like, ‘OK, well, I’m going to stop you right there,’ and offered bond at that point,” Thomson said.

Garay, who was accused of harboring an immigrant in the country without legal authorization during the Oct. 9 encounter with masked agents, said he’s not shocked by what happened during the traffic stop, but it still was awful. He wants people to keep in mind what happened to Pena is not unique.

“This is happening to our friends, neighbors and family members every single day, particularly in the metro Detroit area, southwest Detroit and many immigrant communities,” he said.

“We’re seeing this regularly,” he said, saying people like Pena who are trying to do the right thing and just going to work don’t deserve to be treated that way.

“In some ways, he’s one of the more lucky ones, because he was able to actually get out,” Garay said. “And there’s a lot of people who are still incarcerated or have already been deported.”

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