Video shows Colombian TikToker Tatiana Martinez yanked from car during ICE arrest
Martinez was detained on Friday in Los Angeles while sitting inside her Tesla. She was streaming on TikTok when federal agents approached her vehicle, according to Newsweek.
Footage shows three agents pull Martinez, whose real name is Leidy Tatiana Mafla-Martinez, out of the car and place her facedown on the ground as she screams. In another video, a person yells for someone to call 911 as Martinez lies motionless on the ground.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that Martinez was detained because of a prior conviction of driving under the influence in Los Angeles.
McLaughlin said Martinez came to the United States in 2022 and "was RELEASED by the Biden administration."
"Under President Trump and @Sec_Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences," Homeland Security said in a post on X.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the social media videos.
During her arrest, Martinez complained about shortness of breath and was given medical treatment, McLaughlin said, and is being held at a facility in Calexico, California. It's not clear if she has obtained an attorney.
Martinez gained followers on TikTok after posting videos documenting the ICE raids under President Donald Trump's push for mass deportations, Newsweek reported. She also shared guidance on what people should do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement stop them.
McLaughlin said that as agents were detaining Martinez, another person "unlawfully towed a government police vehicle."
"He mocked and videotaped ICE officers chasing after him. Secretary [Kristi] Noem has been clear: Anyone who seeks to impede law enforcement will be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," McLaughlin said.
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NBC News
29 minutes ago
- NBC News
Japanese American groups blast use of Fort Bliss, former internment camp site, as ICE detention center
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The Trump administration hit back at the comparisons made between the use of the base during World War II and the current immigration climate, including those from the American Civil Liberties Union, which described the facility as 'another shameful chapter in Fort Bliss' history.' 'Comparisons of illegal alien detention centers to internment camps used during World War II are deranged and lazy,' Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. 'The facts are ICE is targeting the worst of the worst—including murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, and rapists.' The sprawling detention center, which cost roughly $1.2 billion to build, currently has the capacity to hold an estimated 1,000 people. More than 80 years ago, the base was an official U.S. Army facility that was used as a temporary internment camp, holding nationals from Japan, Germany and Italy, said Derrek Tomine, president of the National Japanese American Historical Society. The square facility contained two compounds, surrounded by barbed wire fences, Tomine said. Armed guard towers sat at the corners. Many of the individuals of Japanese descent, in addition to other immigrants who were detained there, were awaiting their hearing before an enemy alien hearing board, Tomine explained. 'Generally those held at the U.S. Army facilities were first-generation Japanese Americans detained early in World War II and who were then processed and shipped to other internment camps,' Tomine said. Both Tomine and Burroughs said that the comparisons between the immigrant detention facility of the present and the internment camp of the past are 'neither deranged nor lazy.' 'Entire communities, over 125,000 Japanese Americans, were forcibly removed from the West Coast in 1942 and today our immigrant brothers and sisters face the terror of ICE and CBP raids across the country,' Burroughs said. 'It was a miscarriage of justice then, and it is a miscarriage of justice now.' Tomine said he thinks the way that immigrants are being blamed for taking jobs, abusing government services and being the source of a host of societal issues smacks of the scapegoating of marginalized communities in the past, including during World War II. 'Many of these same immigrants fled their home countries to avoid being taken away and placed into camps without charges or due process,' Tomine said of the recent detentions. Though the administration said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been prioritizing the targeting of criminals, roughly 70% of the estimated 59,380 individuals held in ICE detention as of Aug. 10 have no criminal conviction, according to data collected by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an independent, nonpartisan data research organization. Texas, where Fort Bliss is located, is the state that has housed the most people during fiscal year 2025. Fort Bliss has been the center of widespread criticism, particularly in the local El Paso community. McLaughlin previously said in a statement that the facility will offer legal representation, a law library, access to visitation, medical treatment and recreational space. However, Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, who toured the facility Monday, criticized the massive amount of funding approved for the site, in addition to major concerns over the conditions in the center, which is being run by private contractors. 'I think it's far too easy for standards to slip when there are private facilities,' Escobar said during a news conference Monday. 'I think private facilities far too frequently are operating with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.' Many, including the ACLU, also brought up the facility's past as an intake shelter that housed almost 5,000 migrant children at its peak. 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Newsweek
29 minutes ago
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14-Ton Military Vehicle T-Bones SUV in DC Amid Trump's Troop Deployment
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘Psychological warfare': Internal data shows true nature of Alligator Alcatraz
A month into his detention at Alligator Alcatraz, Daniel Ortiz Piñeda faced a stark choice: continue his legal fight for asylum or give it up to hopefully put an end to his extended stay at the makeshift immigration detention camp in the Everglades. The Colombian national, with no criminal record, had the right to remain in the country while appealing the 2023 denial of his asylum request. But last week, the 33-year-old asked his attorney to drop his appeal, preferring repatriation to the possibility of indefinite detention. 'He feels like there's nothing here for him now,' Piñeda's mother said in an interview. Stories like Piñeda's have played out repeatedly at the Everglades detention camp. While it was promoted as a place where migrants with heinous criminal histories would be detained and quickly deported, records exclusively obtained by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times show it was largely used during its first month in operation as a holding pen and transfer hub for immigrants who were still fighting their cases in immigration courts. Hundreds, the records note, did not have criminal convictions or pending charges. At the end of July, when the number of detainees at the site was around its peak, only one in five of the roughly 1,400 detainees at the site had been ordered removed from the country by a judge, a Herald/Times review of the records found. That means hundreds of men were being detained there without final adjudication orders, despite Gov. Ron DeSantis' claims to the contrary. The records also show that nearly two out of every five immigrants listed in early July as being detained at the South Florida facility or headed there were still recorded as detainees at the facility at the end of the month. During that stretch, immigration attorneys claimed their clients had little to no access to the courts and were largely forced to communicate about cases over recorded lines. Lawyers also alleged their clients were pressured to abandon their immigration cases — without legal consultation — and agree to be deported. It wasn't until Saturday that lawyers for the federal government said a Miami immigration court had been designated as the responsible venue for handling Alligator Alcatraz cases. The number of people at Alligator Alcatraz fluctuates daily and has dropped drastically since the beginning of the month, as a federal judge weighs whether to shut down the site. But for detainees held throughout July in chain-link cages and tents the uncertainty created mental pressure that their attorneys and families say was worse than the prospect of being deported, even to a country where they fear persecution. 'Putting people in tents in the middle of the Everglades is a great tool to make them give up their cases,' said Mark Prada, an immigration attorney. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, disputed allegations that U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement is putting undue pressure on migrants when it comes to making decisions about their legal proceedings. She called such allegations 'false,' and said Alligator Alcatraz was 'cost-effective' and 'functioning as it was always intended — to assist with deportations and processing of illegal aliens.' The Florida Division of Emergency Management, which oversees Alligator Alcatraz operations, referred questions to ICE. 'Psychological warfare' When the state seized an airstrip in the Big Cypress National Preserve and began constructing a camp to hold thousands of migrants, DeSantis said the site would serve as a 'one-stop' shop for the Trump administration's needs for detention and deportation. Detainees with final orders of removal would be held in tents and quickly deported from an on-site runway, he said. To expedite deportations, DeSantis said qualified National Guard members would work as immigration judges on the site — an idea that President Donald Trump gave a thumbs up to during a July 1 visit. But the plans have yet to be implemented and immigration attorneys have complained for weeks that their Alligator Alcatraz clients have had hearings for their cases routinely canceled in federal Florida immigration courts by judges who said they did not have jurisdiction over the detainees in the Everglades. For hundreds of detainees, that meant weeks of uncertainty living inside tents, where the lights were turned on throughout the day and the only connection to the outside world was often a recorded landline. Attorneys have complained about staff at the facility pressuring their clients to sign voluntary removal orders without consulting an attorney and, in one case, deceiving a detainee with an intellectual disability by telling him he would need to 'sign some paper in exchange for a blanket' — and then deporting him after he had signed it, court filings show. Mark Hamburger, an attorney who has had several clients at the detention camp, said the conditions created a kind of 'psychological warfare' for detainees. 'They're being put to the test,' he said. 'How long can you stand this? A lot of people are folding.' That group of original detainees included Piñeda, who was taken into custody after showing up for a scheduled immigration meeting in Miami Lakes on July 7, according to his family members. 'To have somebody detained like this, pending an appeal, when they have not committed any crimes is unheard of,' said his attorney, Osley Sallent. Piñeda told his family members that when he entered Alligator Alcatraz, the guards told him and other new arrivals, 'As soon as you come in here, you don't have any rights.' It would be days before he could shower, and he said that he hadn't received adequate medical care for an ongoing ear infection and stomach ailment. He was moved to the Glades County Detention Center west of Lake Okeechobee in early August shortly after dropping his asylum appeal. Like Piñeda, the vast majority of detainees in the facility at the end of July had no final order of removal from a judge, according to the new data. That means that the immigration cases for most men at the facility were still ongoing. While the data shows that more than 100 of those detainees had been issued expedited orders of removal – which allows the government to deport them without going through the immigration courts – immigration lawyers said that these can still be appealed in some circumstances, such as when an immigrant is seeking asylum. 'Finality is a big deal,' Prada said. 'If it is not final, there is still a process to be done.' Where are they now? The Herald compared the two datasets, one of roughly 750 detainees from early July and the other of roughly 1,400 people from the end of the month. Reporters also searched for all of the detainees in the first list on ICE's detainee locator system. More than 40% of the 750 detainees in the initial list were sent not out of the country but to other ICE facilities, the Herald found. Another 40% were still at the detention center. Alligator Alcatraz detainees often did not appear in ICE's locator system, the Herald found and the fate of the rest — around 150 detainees — is unclear. Some of them were likely still at Alligator Alcatraz but others may have been deported. The numbers in both data sets are snapshots in time, and fluctuate as detainees enter and leave the facility. On Tuesday, there were just shy of 400 detainees at the Everglades detention camp — far below the roughly 1,500 people the makeshift camp is able to hold. In late July, DeSantis said the federal government had deported about 100 people who were held at the detention camp and that 'hundreds' of others had been transferred to deportation hubs in other parts of the country. The state and federal governments have yet to say if any deportation flights have taken off directly from the site and to foreign soil. Attorneys have welcomed the transfers – which make it easier for them to access their clients and advocate on their behalf. At least two detainees were released on bond last week after they were moved elsewhere, according to their attorneys. One detainee trying to leave the country voluntarily had to be transferred to another facility to be deported. Fernando Eduardo Artese, 63, was one of the first detainees to arrive at Alligator Alcatraz. From the start, he wanted to leave the United States voluntarily, but the process to self-deport was not easy in the weeks he spent at the state-run site, his family said .It was only after he was transferred to the federal Krome immigration detention center in Miami that he was able to begin the process of voluntarily leaving the country. Once at Krome, Artese was deported in less than a week, his daughter, Carla Artese, told the Herald/Times. The Argentinian-Italian was sent to Italy. Intentional or accidental It's not clear whether the difference between Alligator Alcatraz's promoted and practical uses was intentional or accidental. The facility was built with near biblical speed, completed in only eight days, and from its earliest days, detainees complained of toilets that don't flush, bugs and leaky tents. Attorneys quickly flagged that they had no way to speak confidentially with their clients. A federal judge questioned the facility's operation at a hearing in July for a lawsuit related to detainees' legal access. 'A lot of it looked to me like … a new facility not having their act together or getting up and running in the right way,' U.S. District Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II said last month in a court hearing. But critics of the facility say that the harsh conditions endured by detainees — and the rhetoric politicians have used to describe the site — are not by accident. DeSantis says reporting about terrible conditions has been inaccurate, but he's in no rush to dispel the narrative. 'Maybe it will have the intent or the effect of deterring people from going there,' the governor said. John Sandweg, the former acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, said the construction and location of the facility makes little sense. It's not near an immigration court or ICE's existing transportation infrastructure. But with backlogs in immigration courts presenting major roadblocks to the Trump administration's stated goal of deporting one million immigrants per year, Sandweg said he believes the purpose of the facility is to encourage undocumented immigrants – whether in custody or not – to bypass the immigration courts and voluntarily leave the country to avoid the possibility of being sent there. 'I think that the real goal of Alligator Alcatraz is to instill fear,' he said. Miami Herald reporter Siena Duncan contributed reporting. Solve the daily Crossword
