ICE agents forcibly enter a Portland home as a three-month-old baby cries in the background during a family raid.
A harrowing video from Portland, Oregon, shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents breaking down the door of a home and pointing guns at the family members that included a three-month-old baby.
The video, that was recorded by the mother, has gone viral online. It shows the ICE agents forcibly entering the bedroom of the family inside Gresham apartment, which is about 17 miles from Portland.
The terrified baby can be heard crying as a male member is told to put his hands up and dragged out the door.
“This is unfair… they scared my baby. We are not criminals to be treated that way, let alone have guns pointed at us,” the woman wrote while posting the video on Facebook.
The woman’s mother told The Independent that she was “traumatised” after the incident. “She is so traumatised that anything scares her; she’s shaking all the time.”
In the video, ICE agents can be heard shouting, “Police! Don’t move, hands up,” while pointing weapons at the family.
Since the operation, two male relatives were arrested and taken to a detention facility in nearby Tacoma, Washington.
A Department of Homeland Security official, the parent agency of ICE, said there were “no injuries” in the operation, which targeted “a previously removed violent criminal illegal alien from Mexico”. The main suspect remains at-large.
“ICE officers attempted to pull this criminal illegal alien over in a vehicle stop. He attempted to evade arrest and rammed into a United States Postal Service vehicle before fleeing on foot into an apartment. After refusals to come out, law enforcement entered the apartment. The target escaped and remains at-large. Two other aliens from Mexico were found inside the apartment and taken into ICE custody at the scene,” the official added.
The family, however, claims that they had entered the US legally.