A Fullerton police officer intervened when he saw a man in plain clothes pointing a gun at a female driver on a busy street in Santa Ana. The man later identified himself as an immigration agent and accused the driver of “following him” during an “operation,” a refrain increasingly heard as agents push back on people recording their movements.
The brief, but tense encounter Sunday, caught partially on video, raises concerns as it joins a growing list of cases of masked and plainclothes agents being mistaken for criminals and vice versa.
The officer had just dropped off an inmate at the Orange County Jail and was returning to Fullerton when he noticed a man exit a vehicle at an intersection and draw his weapon on the driver behind him, according to a statement from the Fullerton Police Department.
“The officer immediately stopped to assist, not knowing the identify of the armed male or the circumstances unfolding in front of him,” according to the statement.
After the agent identified himself, the officer told him “he could not assist with someone following or recording him if no crime had occurred, and that local law enforcement was en route.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond for comment. The FBI recently issued a memo suggesting agents clearly identify themselves while they’re in the field after a string of incidents in which masked criminals posing as immigration officers robbed and kidnapped victims.
In a video posted on social media by a local journalist @izzymirez and apparently taken from the driver in Santa Ana, a bald man with sunglasses, a green T-shirt and black jeans with his badge, walks toward the driver holding a gun out. He points it down toward the ground as he walks up to the police officer who has pulled alongside the driver.
“What are you doing,” the woman‘s recording says. “What the f— is your problem?”
“Are you for real right now,” she said, before panning to show a Fullerton police vehicle. “And now these cops are helping them.”
The agent can be seen speaking to an officer.
“I’m just driving,” she said.
“You’re following us, ma’am, we are doing an operation,” the agent says.
“You are following me,” she responds.
“I thought cops aren’t supposed to collaborate with ICE, what the f — are you doing.”
“You can’t be following us like that,” the ICE officer shouts.
“I live here,” the woman yelled back.
Someone along the street shouts out “la migra.”
“It’s OK to pull your gun on a woman, what the f—,” the woman says.
The scene mirrors others across the country as immigration agents confront protesters and people recording, and local police are drawn into the confrontations.
Last month a U.S. congressional candidate said Customs and Border Patrol agents in Chicago — where the most intense crackdown has been — surrounded his vehicle, brandished a weapon and harassed him as he tried to warn neighbors about their presence.
In Southern California last month three women were indicted on charges of illegally “doxing” a U.S. Customs and Immigration agent after, according to the indictment, the women followed an ICE agent from the federal building on 300 North Los Angeles Street in downtown L.A. to the agent’s residence in Baldwin Park.