Council members Vanessa Fuentes, Jos\u00e9 Vel\u00e1squez and Zo Qadri initially confirmed three detentions in a joint statement Thursday afternoon. They said Austin police were not involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe condemn this weaponization of law enforcement in the strongest possible terms,\u201d the statement read. \u201cOur immigrant neighbors belong here. Period.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Council Member Mike Siegel\u2019s office also told the American-Statesman that it had confirmed ICE agents were at the scene. After publication, Qadri’s office confirmed that a fourth person was detained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Daniela Silva, who arrived on scene after the detentions, said she was at the Austin Central Library when she received messages in an immigrant advocacy group chat reporting that DPS troopers were making arrests outside City Hall.<\/p>\n
Minutes later, Silva said, she received another message saying ICE agents were near West Second and Guadalupe streets.<\/p>\n
Silva said she saw state trooper vehicles, troopers on bicycles and two unmarked vehicles \u2014 a white pickup and a black SUV.<\/p>\n
Silva and other advocates said the traffic stop occurred between about 9 and 10 a.m. after the driver reportedly traveled the wrong way on a one-way street. The Statesman has not independently verified the alleged traffic violation.<\/p>\n
Silva said the vehicle’s occupants were heading to a nearby construction site where they worked.<\/p>\n
Silva and other witnesses said they saw three to four men detained. Another person who was not detained drove the stopped vehicle away, they said.<\/p>\n
The Statesman contacted ICE, DPS and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for more information but had not received responses as of publication.<\/p>\n
Post publication, a DPS spokesperson confirmed that just before 9:30 a.m., troopers saw a vehicle driving the wrong way down Cesar Chavez and Guadalupe Street near city hall. They conducted a traffic stop, during which the driver did not have proper identification. The troopers determined that all four individuals in the vehicle lacked legal status. ICE was contacted for assistance and took custody of all four individuals. A citation for no driver’s license and a warning for driving the wrong way on the one-way street were issued to the driver.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is a developing story; check back for updates.<\/p>\n
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect an additional arrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Council members Vanessa Fuentes, Jos\u00e9 Vel\u00e1squez and Zo Qadri initially confirmed three detentions in a joint statement Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-399750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}