Latest news with #GuatemalanMayaCenter
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
He lived an immigrant's nightmare. One problem: He's a citizen, got his arrest on video
PALM BEACH COUNTY, Florida ‒ Kenny Laynez's cellphone camera captured every undocumented immigrant's nightmare on video when he was arrested. One problem: He is a U.S. citizen. The video, shot May 2, showed Florida Highway Patrol officers and Border Patrol agents stopping the 18-year-old landscaper and his three coworkers ‒ one of them his mother ‒ as they drove past luxury buildings to a job. The camera captured officers dragging his coworkers out of their van by their necks and twisting Laynez's arms and pushing him face down to the pavement. The video also recorded an officer shooting one of Laynez's coworkers with a Taser, saying he had resisted arrest. 'I have rights. I was born and raised here," Laynez told the officers, according to a copy of the video shared by the Guatemalan-Maya Center of Lake Worth Beach. "You don't have any rights here. You are a 'Migo,' brother,' the officer said, referring to his ethnicity. He hurried the 18-year-old into a van. Laynez was released from a Riviera Beach federal facility six hours later, with the video still on his cellphone. His coworkers, including the one who was tased, were undocumented and weren't as fortunate. They were transferred to the Krome Detention Center in Miami. Laynez said they are free on bail but fear they will be arrested if they show up in court. Deportations accelerate: Shock and anger: Florida immigrant communities react to 'Operation Tidal Wave' The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network, recently interviewed Laynez and made multiple attempts to contact FHP, ICE and Border Patrol for comment about the incident and the body-camera footage, as well as multiple requests for copies of the arrest reports. None of them responded. Laynez said he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction without violence simply to get the incident over with. He entered a pretrial diversion program on June 4. The state will drop the charges July 30 if he completes the program by then. "They treated us like dogs they picked up in the street," Layzez said. "They are just pulling over people and kidnapping people who are hard-working." "We are not criminals. We were just heading to work." Trump at 'Alligator Alcatraz': Facts on Florida Everglades immigration detention center ICE arrests spread fear among immigrants Videos like Laynez's showing federal agents arresting day laborers have left immigrant families across Palm Beach County and the rest of the country in fear. Even families in which some members are documented have laid low, sometimes not going to school or church. West Palm Beach attorney Jack Scarola has reviewed Laynez's footage and has talked with him about the incident. He said the footage shows how FHP and Border Patrol agents are under "extreme pressure" to meet daily arrest and deportation quotas and that the response has led to a "reckless disregard" of the rights of both undocumented and legal immigrants and even the rights of U.S. citizens. 'All of us should be not only offended, but outraged by that misconduct,' Scarola said. 'And if we fail to appropriately respond to that outrageous disregard of the civil rights of others, all of our civil rights are in serious jeopardy.' Stopped while heading to work Kenny Laynez was born in 2005 at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach to a Guatemalan single mother who is in the U.S. legally but is not a citizen. He attended Palm Beach Lakes High School and got a job at the landscaping company where his mother drove crews to work sites. Neither Laynez nor his mother works for the company any longer. Laynez said he and his mother met two coworkers on May 2 at a gas station and drove to a landscaping job near North Palm Beach. The coworkers, Esdras and Marroquin, are undocumented but neither had criminal records, Laynez said. The Post is withholding their last names to protect their families. Although his mother wasn't speeding, just after they crossed the bridge on Singer Island, they heard a police siren. An officer rolled down a tinted window and signaled to her to pull over. The officer asked where they were headed. Laynez said they were going to work and the officer took his mother's license and the truck's registration and insurance. The officer returned and said his mother's license was suspended, to all their surprise. Laynez said he asked the officer why he pulled them over. He didn't see how the officer could have known his mother's license was suspended by running the company truck's license plate. Laynez said the officer asked if they were "illegal." Laynez said they were not and asked what that had to do with the license. A van pulled up and more armed agents swarmed the truck. A female officer approached his window and ordered them in Spanish to shut off their phones. Laynez said that at that moment, he started recording with his phone instead: "I assumed something was going to happen.' The video of the raid What he captured on video begins with a question. "Who in here is illegal?' The officer asked in Spanish. "Whoever takes longer to answer will get more charges and spend more time in jail.' Esdras, who is seen clenching a towel in his hands, raised his hand. The male agent ordered them to open the door. Laynez grabbed onto the handle. 'Wait, hold up,' Laynez said. 'You don't have the right to do that.' 'I don't have a right?' the officer said with a laugh. He reached inside the car and popped the door open. The video shows an agent grabbing Marroquin by the hair and placing his neck in the crook of his arm. Another agent pulled Esdras, called Kevin by his coworkers, by the leg and tightened his hands around his neck. The video then shows Laynez stepping out of the car, but an officer who had ordered him to get on the ground pushes him from behind, twisting his arms and kneeling him to the pavement. Esdras stood rigidly as three officers tried to force him to the ground. They told him in English to lie down, while Laynez urged him in Spanish not to resist. 'Aye! What are you doing? That is not how you arrest people,' Laynez said. The video shows an officer pulling out a yellow Taser and firing twice into Esdras' stomach. Laynez saw his body and legs spasm before he slammed onto the pavement, crying. An agent pressed his knee on Laynez's back and forced him face down to the pavement. An officer later ordered Laynez to stand up, but he said he was too scared to move. 'I am not going to get up because you are going to do to me whatever you were doing to Esdras,' Laynez said. 'That is not how you arrest people." 'Be quiet,' an officer said, cutting him off and picking him up. 'I've got the right to talk,' Laynez said. 'I was born and raised here.' 'You have no rights here. You are a 'Migo,' brother," the officer said in a comment Laynez said sounded like racial profiling. Laynez's mother can be heard crying in the background. Video records officers laughing at immigration arrest Laynez's phone continued recording on the sidewalk and captured a conversation between the agents over the next four minutes. 'Once she got the proper spread on him, he was done,' the officer said. "You're funny, bro.' 'It was funny,' an agent said, laughing. 'It was,' another chimed in with laughter. Another agent said more people are resisting their immigration arrests. "They are starting to resist now," an agent said. "We're going to end up shooting someone." On the video, an agent recounted how Laynez said they didn't have the right to come in the door and says: 'I already told you to come out. If you don't come out, I'll pull you out.' 'God damn. Wow,' the officer cheered. 'Nice!' 'Just remember you can smell too with a $30,000 bonus,' another officer chimes in. It was not immediately clear to what bonus the officer referred. On the tape, an officer is heard saying that Laynez's coworker was resisting arrest, so he should be charged. 'He was being a d*** right now. That is why we tased,' an agent said. The phone recording stopped shortly after that exchange, its memory out of storage. The agents confirmed Laynez's mother had legal status and issued her a ticket for driving with a suspended license. Laynez said she told them he was a U.S. citizen and showed them a picture of his Social Security card. They still took Laynez into custody. Laynez said that before leaving, the officers held his mother's driver's license to her face and tore it in half. U.S. citizen spent six hours in detention facility: What he saw Once at the Riviera Beach facility, Laynez said he saw rows of men. Most spoke Spanish and wore construction clothes like his own. Two looked like they were his age, 17 or 18. Laynez said he appeared to be the only one inside the packed room who spoke English. He said the men told them they had been detained for hours without water or food. Laynez wanted to use the bathroom, but the only toilet available was out in the open, without any doors or covers. After almost four hours, the female officer who detained them took Laynez to a room and asked for his date of birth three times, even though he had already written it down for another officer. Finally, she came out with a ziplocked bag with his phone, wallet and headphones. In Spanish, she asked him to unlock it. Laynez said she told him she needed to see if he had filmed videos of the arrest. Laynez said he unlocked his phone, closed all his apps and locked it again. He said he declined to open it and set it down on the table. He said she told him they would wait in that room until he opened it. She asked again for his date of birth. Laynez said he trembled. That was his password. Laynez said the officer threatened to press charges if he didn't unlock his phone, but then a person who appeared to be a supervisor interrupted them. Laynez said the supervisor said Laynez wasn't supposed to be in that room because he is a U.S. citizen. The supervisor took Laynez's fingerprints and said it was only to leave a record that he had been in the facility. Then he told Laynez he couldn't leave without signing some paperwork and that he would have to show up in court. "What did I do?' Laynez said he asked while signing. "I didn't do anything. Why do I have to present myself in court?' The arrest report said Laynez was being charged with nonviolent police obstruction. In a copy of the report that Laynez provided to The Palm Beach Post, officers wrote that Esdras had resisted his arrest. Laynez is not mentioned. After six hours, Laynez said he walked out the door of the Riviera Beach building and ordered an Uber home. He had almost 100 missed calls from his mother. Laynez said the footage of the arrests haunts him, but he doesn't regret filming. "I would basically have nothing, no evidence,' Laynez said. 'And no one would believe what happened or how they escalated the situation. "There might be even more happening that is not being recorded." Email Valentina Palm at vpalm@ and follow her on X at @ValenPalmB. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: ICE raids Florida: Citizen lived immigrant nightmare of being arrested
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
He lived an immigrant's nightmare. One problem: He's a citizen, got his arrest on video
PALM BEACH COUNTY, Florida ‒ Kenny Laynez's cellphone camera captured every undocumented immigrant's nightmare on video when he was arrested. One problem: He is a U.S. citizen. The video, shot May 2, showed Florida Highway Patrol officers and Border Patrol agents stopping the 18-year-old landscaper and his three coworkers ‒ one of them his mother ‒ as they drove past luxury buildings to a job. The camera captured officers dragging his coworkers out of their van by their necks and twisting Laynez's arms and pushing him face down to the pavement. The video also recorded an officer shooting one of Laynez's coworkers with a Taser, saying he had resisted arrest. 'I have rights. I was born and raised here," Laynez told the officers, according to a copy of the video shared by the Guatemalan-Maya Center of Lake Worth Beach. "You don't have any rights here. You are a 'Migo,' brother,' the officer said, referring to his ethnicity. He hurried the 18-year-old into a van. Laynez was released from a Riviera Beach federal facility six hours later, with the video still on his cellphone. His coworkers, including the one who was tased, were undocumented and weren't as fortunate. They were transferred to the Krome Detention Center in Miami. Laynez said they are free on bail but fear they will be arrested if they show up in court. Deportations accelerate: Shock and anger: Florida immigrant communities react to 'Operation Tidal Wave' The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network, recently interviewed Laynez and made multiple attempts to contact FHP, ICE and Border Patrol for comment about the incident and the body-camera footage, as well as multiple requests for copies of the arrest reports. None of them responded. Laynez said he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction without violence simply to get the incident over with. He entered a pretrial diversion program on June 4. The state will drop the charges July 30 if he completes the program by then. "They treated us like dogs they picked up in the street," Layzez said. "They are just pulling over people and kidnapping people who are hard-working." "We are not criminals. We were just heading to work." Trump at 'Alligator Alcatraz': Facts on Florida Everglades immigration detention center ICE arrests spread fear among immigrants Videos like Laynez's showing federal agents arresting day laborers have left immigrant families across Palm Beach County and the rest of the country in fear. Even families in which some members are documented have laid low, sometimes not going to school or church. West Palm Beach attorney Jack Scarola has reviewed Laynez's footage and has talked with him about the incident. He said the footage shows how FHP and Border Patrol agents are under "extreme pressure" to meet daily arrest and deportation quotas and that the response has led to a "reckless disregard" of the rights of both undocumented and legal immigrants and even the rights of U.S. citizens. 'All of us should be not only offended, but outraged by that misconduct,' Scarola said. 'And if we fail to appropriately respond to that outrageous disregard of the civil rights of others, all of our civil rights are in serious jeopardy.' Stopped while heading to work Kenny Laynez was born in 2005 at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach to a Guatemalan single mother who is in the U.S. legally but is not a citizen. He attended Palm Beach Lakes High School and got a job at the landscaping company where his mother drove crews to work sites. Neither Laynez nor his mother works for the company any longer. Laynez said he and his mother met two coworkers on May 2 at a gas station and drove to a landscaping job near North Palm Beach. The coworkers, Esdras and Marroquin, are undocumented but neither had criminal records, Laynez said. The Post is withholding their last names to protect their families. Although his mother wasn't speeding, just after they crossed the bridge on Singer Island, they heard a police siren. An officer rolled down a tinted window and signaled to her to pull over. The officer asked where they were headed. Laynez said they were going to work and the officer took his mother's license and the truck's registration and insurance. The officer returned and said his mother's license was suspended, to all their surprise. Laynez said he asked the officer why he pulled them over. He didn't see how the officer could have known his mother's license was suspended by running the company truck's license plate. Laynez said the officer asked if they were "illegal." Laynez said they were not and asked what that had to do with the license. A van pulled up and more armed agents swarmed the truck. A female officer approached his window and ordered them in Spanish to shut off their phones. Laynez said that at that moment, he started recording with his phone instead: "I assumed something was going to happen.' The video of the raid What he captured on video begins with a question. "Who in here is illegal?' The officer asked in Spanish. "Whoever takes longer to answer will get more charges and spend more time in jail.' Esdras, who is seen clenching a towel in his hands, raised his hand. The male agent ordered them to open the door. Laynez grabbed onto the handle. 'Wait, hold up,' Laynez said. 'You don't have the right to do that.' 'I don't have a right?' the officer said with a laugh. He reached inside the car and popped the door open. The video shows an agent grabbing Marroquin by the hair and placing his neck in the crook of his arm. Another agent pulled Esdras, called Kevin by his coworkers, by the leg and tightened his hands around his neck. The video then shows Laynez stepping out of the car, but an officer who had ordered him to get on the ground pushes him from behind, twisting his arms and kneeling him to the pavement. Esdras stood rigidly as three officers tried to force him to the ground. They told him in English to lie down, while Laynez urged him in Spanish not to resist. 'Aye! What are you doing? That is not how you arrest people,' Laynez said. The video shows an officer pulling out a yellow Taser and firing twice into Esdras' stomach. Laynez saw his body and legs spasm before he slammed onto the pavement, crying. An agent pressed his knee on Laynez's back and forced him face down to the pavement. An officer later ordered Laynez to stand up, but he said he was too scared to move. 'I am not going to get up because you are going to do to me whatever you were doing to Esdras,' Laynez said. 'That is not how you arrest people." 'Be quiet,' an officer said, cutting him off and picking him up. 'I've got the right to talk,' Laynez said. 'I was born and raised here.' 'You have no rights here. You are a 'Migo,' brother," the officer said in a comment Laynez said sounded like racial profiling. Laynez's mother can be heard crying in the background. Video records officers laughing at immigration arrest Laynez's phone continued recording on the sidewalk and captured a conversation between the agents over the next four minutes. 'Once she got the proper spread on him, he was done,' the officer said. "You're funny, bro.' 'It was funny,' an agent said, laughing. 'It was,' another chimed in with laughter. Another agent said more people are resisting their immigration arrests. "They are starting to resist now," an agent said. "We're going to end up shooting someone." On the video, an agent recounted how Laynez said they didn't have the right to come in the door and says: 'I already told you to come out. If you don't come out, I'll pull you out.' 'God damn. Wow,' the officer cheered. 'Nice!' 'Just remember you can smell too with a $30,000 bonus,' another officer chimes in. It was not immediately clear to what bonus the officer referred. On the tape, an officer is heard saying that Laynez's coworker was resisting arrest, so he should be charged. 'He was being a d*** right now. That is why we tased,' an agent said. The phone recording stopped shortly after that exchange, its memory out of storage. The agents confirmed Laynez's mother had legal status and issued her a ticket for driving with a suspended license. Laynez said she told them he was a U.S. citizen and showed them a picture of his Social Security card. They still took Laynez into custody. Laynez said that before leaving, the officers held his mother's driver's license to her face and tore it in half. U.S. citizen spent six hours in detention facility: What he saw Once at the Riviera Beach facility, Laynez said he saw rows of men. Most spoke Spanish and wore construction clothes like his own. Two looked like they were his age, 17 or 18. Laynez said he appeared to be the only one inside the packed room who spoke English. He said the men told them they had been detained for hours without water or food. Laynez wanted to use the bathroom, but the only toilet available was out in the open, without any doors or covers. After almost four hours, the female officer who detained them took Laynez to a room and asked for his date of birth three times, even though he had already written it down for another officer. Finally, she came out with a ziplocked bag with his phone, wallet and headphones. In Spanish, she asked him to unlock it. Laynez said she told him she needed to see if he had filmed videos of the arrest. Laynez said he unlocked his phone, closed all his apps and locked it again. He said he declined to open it and set it down on the table. He said she told him they would wait in that room until he opened it. She asked again for his date of birth. Laynez said he trembled. That was his password. Laynez said the officer threatened to press charges if he didn't unlock his phone, but then a person who appeared to be a supervisor interrupted them. Laynez said the supervisor said Laynez wasn't supposed to be in that room because he is a U.S. citizen. The supervisor took Laynez's fingerprints and said it was only to leave a record that he had been in the facility. Then he told Laynez he couldn't leave without signing some paperwork and that he would have to show up in court. "What did I do?' Laynez said he asked while signing. "I didn't do anything. Why do I have to present myself in court?' The arrest report said Laynez was being charged with nonviolent police obstruction. In a copy of the report that Laynez provided to The Palm Beach Post, officers wrote that Esdras had resisted his arrest. Laynez is not mentioned. After six hours, Laynez said he walked out the door of the Riviera Beach building and ordered an Uber home. He had almost 100 missed calls from his mother. Laynez said the footage of the arrests haunts him, but he doesn't regret filming. "I would basically have nothing, no evidence,' Laynez said. 'And no one would believe what happened or how they escalated the situation. "There might be even more happening that is not being recorded." Email Valentina Palm at vpalm@ and follow her on X at @ValenPalmB. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: ICE raids Florida: Citizen lived immigrant nightmare of being arrested
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You've got no rights.' He secretly recorded his brutal arrest
On the morning of 2 May, teenager Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach with his mother and two male friends when they were pulled over by the Florida highway patrol. In one swift moment, a traffic stop turned into a violent arrest. A highway patrol officer asked everyone in the van to identify themselves, then called for backup. Officers with US border patrol arrived on the scene. Video footage of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men*, two of whom are undocumented. They appear to use a stun gun on one man, put another in a chokehold and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio: 'You've got no rights here. You're a migo, brother.' Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use 'funny' and quipping: 'You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.' The footage has put fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used by US law enforcement officials as the Trump administration sets ambitious enforcement targets to detain thousands of immigrants every day. 'The federal government has imposed quotas for the arrest of immigrants,' said Jack Scarola, an attorney who is advocating on behalf of Laynez-Ambrosio and working with the non-profit Guatemalan-Maya Center, which provided the footage to the Guardian. 'Any time law enforcement is compelled to work towards a quota, it poses a significant risk to other rights.' The incident unfolded at roughly 9am, when a highway patrol officer pulled over the company work van, driven by Laynez-Ambrosio's mother, and discovered that she had a suspended license. Laynez-Ambrosio said he is unsure why the van was pulled over, as his mother was driving below the speed limit. Laynez-Ambrosio hadn't intended to film the interaction – he already had his phone out to show his mom 'a silly TikTok', he said – but immediately clicked record when it became clear what was happening. The video begins after the van has been pulled over and the border patrol had arrived. A female officer can be heard asking, in Spanish, whether anyone is in the country illegally. One of Laynez-Ambrosio's friends answers that he is undocumented. 'That's when they said, 'OK, let's go,'' Laynez-Ambrosio recalled. Laynez-Ambrosio said things turned aggressive before the group even had a chance to exit the van. One of the officers 'put his hand inside the window', he said, 'popped the door open, grabbed my friend by the neck and had him in a chokehold'. Footage appears to show officers then reaching for Laynez-Ambrosio and his other friend as Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard protesting: 'You can't grab me like that.' Multiple officers can be seen pulling the other man from the van and telling him to 'put your fucking head down'. The footage captures the sound of a stun gun as Laynez-Ambrosio's friend cries out in pain and drops to the ground. Laynez-Ambrosio said that his friend was not resisting, and that he didn't speak English and didn't understand the officer's commands. 'My friend didn't do anything before they grabbed him,' he said. In the video, Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard repeatedly telling his friend, in Spanish, to not resist. 'I wasn't really worried about myself because I knew I was going to get out of the situation,' he said. 'But I was worried about him. I could speak up for him but not fight back, because I would've made the situation worse.' Laynez-Ambrosio can also be heard telling officers: 'I was born and raised right here.' Still, he was pushed to the ground and says that an officer aimed a stun gun at him. He was subsequently arrested and held in a cell at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) station for six hours. Audio in the video catches the unidentified officers debriefing and appearing to make light of the stun gun use. 'You're funny, bro,' one officer can be overheard saying to another, followed by laughter. Another officer says, 'They're starting to resist more now,' to which an officer replies: 'We're going to end up shooting some of them.' Later in the footage, the officers move on to general celebration – 'Goddamn! Woo! Nice!' – and talk of the potential bonus they'll be getting: 'Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] $30,000 bonus.' It is unclear what bonus they are referring to. Donald Trump's recent spending bill includes billions of additional dollars for Ice that could be spent on recruitment and retention tactics such as bonuses. Laynez-Ambrosio said his two friends were eventually transferred to the Krome detention center in Miami. He believes they were released on bail and are awaiting a court hearing, but said it has been difficult to stay in touch with them. Laynez-Ambrosio's notice to appear in court confirms that the border patrol arrived on the scene, having been called in by the highway patrol. His other legal representative, Victoria Mesa-Estrada, also confirmed that border patrol officers transported the three men to the border patrol facility. The Florida highway patrol, CBP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment before publication. Laynez-Ambrosio was charged with obstruction without violence and sentenced to 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course. While in detention, he said, police threatened him with charges if he did not delete the video footage from his phone, but he refused. Scarola, his lawyer, said the charges were retaliation for filming the incident. 'Kenny was charged with filming [and was] alleged to have interfered with the activities of law enforcement,' he explained. 'But there was no intended interference – merely the exercise of a right to record what was happening.' In February, Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, signed an agreement between the state and the Department of Homeland Security allowing Florida highway patrol troopers to be trained and approved by Ice to arrest and detain immigrants. While such agreements have been inked across the US, Florida has the largest concentration of these deals. Father Frank O'Loughlin, founder and executive director of the Guatemalan-Maya Center, the advocates for Laynez-Ambrosio, says the incident has further eroded trust between Florida's immigrant community and the police. 'This is a story about the corruption of law enforcement by Maga and the brutality of state and federal troopers – formerly public servants – towards nonviolent people,' he said. Meanwhile, Laynez-Ambrosio is trying to recover from the ordeal, and hopes the footage raises awareness of how immigrants are being treated in the US. 'It didn't need to go down like that. If they knew that my people were undocumented, they could've just kindly taken them out of the car and arrested them,' he said. 'It hurt me bad to see my friends like that. Because they're just good people, trying to earn an honest living.' The Guardian is granting anonymity to Laynez-Ambrosio's mother and the men arrested in the footage to protect their privacy
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You've got no rights.' He secretly recorded his brutal arrest
On the morning of 2 May, Florida teenager Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach with his mother and two male friends when they were pulled over by the Florida highway patrol. In one swift moment, a traffic stop turned into a violent arrest. A highway patrol officer asked everyone in the van to identify themselves, then called for backup. Officers with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrived on the scene. Video footage of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men*, two of whom are undocumented. They appear to use a stun gun on one man, put another in a chokehold and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio: 'You've got no rights here. You're a migo, brother.' Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use 'funny' and quipping: 'You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.' The footage has put fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used by US law enforcement as the Trump administration sets ambitious enforcement targets to detain thousands of immigrants every day. 'The federal government has imposed quotas for the arrest of immigrants,' said Jack Scarola, an attorney who is advocating on behalf of Laynez-Ambrosio and working with the non-profit Guatemalan-Maya Center, which provided the footage to the Guardian. 'Any time law enforcement is compelled to work towards a quota, it poses a significant risk to other rights.' The incident unfolded at roughly 9am, when a highway patrol officer pulled over the company work van, driven by Laynez-Ambrosio's mother, and discovered that she had a suspended license. Laynez-Ambrosio said he is unsure why the van was pulled over, as his mother was driving below the speed limit. Laynez-Ambrosio hadn't intended to film the interaction – he already had his phone out to show his mom 'a silly TikTok', he said – but immediately clicked record when it became clear what was happening. The video begins after the van has been pulled over and the border patrol had arrived. A female officer can be heard asking, in Spanish, whether anyone is in the country illegally. One of Laynez-Ambrosio's friends answers that he is undocumented. 'That's when they said, 'OK, let's go,'' Laynez-Ambrosio recalled. Laynez-Ambrosio said things turned aggressive before the group even had a chance to exit the van. One of the officers 'put his hand inside the window', he said, 'popped the door open, grabbed my friend by the neck and had him in a chokehold'. Footage appears to show officers then reaching for Laynez-Ambrosio and his other friend as Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard protesting: 'You can't grab me like that.' Multiple officers can be seen pulling the other man from the van and telling him to 'put your fucking head down'. The footage captures the sound of a stun gun as Laynez-Ambrosio's friend cries out in pain and drops to the ground. Laynez-Ambrosio said that his friend was not resisting, and that he didn't speak English and didn't understand the officer's commands. 'My friend didn't do anything before they grabbed him,' he said. In the video, Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard repeatedly telling his friend, in Spanish, to not resist. 'I wasn't really worried about myself because I knew I was going to get out of the situation,' he said. 'But I was worried about him. I could speak up for him but not fight back, because I would've made the situation worse.' Laynez-Ambrosio can also be heard telling officers: 'I was born and raised right here.' Still, he was pushed to the ground and says that an officer aimed a stun gun at him. He was subsequently arrested and held in a cell at a CBP station for six hours. Audio in the video catches the unidentified officers debriefing and appearing to make light of the stun gun use. 'You're funny, bro,' one officer can be overheard saying to another, followed by laughter. Another officer says, 'They're starting to resist more now,' to which an officer replies: 'We're going to end up shooting some of them.' Later in the footage, the officers move on to general celebration – 'Goddamn! Woo! Nice!' – and talk of the potential bonus they'll be getting: 'Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] $30,000 bonus.' It is unclear what bonus they're referring to. Donald Trump's recent spending bill includes billions of additional dollars for Ice that could be spent on recruitment and retention tactics such as bonuses. Laynez-Ambrosio said his two friends were eventually transferred to the Krome detention center in Miami. He believes they were released on bail and are awaiting a court hearing, but said it has been difficult to stay in touch with them. Laynez-Ambrosio's notice to appear in court confirms that the border patrol arrived on the scene, having been called in by the highway patrol. His other legal representative, Victoria Mesa-Estrada, also confirmed that border patrol officers transported the three men to the border patrol facility. The Florida highway patrol, CBP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment before publication. Laynez-Ambrosio was charged with obstruction without violence and sentenced to 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course. While in detention, he said, police threatened him with charges if he did not delete the video footage from his phone, but he refused. Scarola, his lawyer, said the charges were retaliation for filming the incident. 'Kenny was charged with filming [and was] alleged to have interfered with the activities of law enforcement,' he explained. 'But there was no intended interference – merely the exercise of a right to record what was happening.' In February, Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, signed an agreement between the state and the Department of Homeland Security allowing Florida highway patrol troopers to be trained and approved by Ice to arrest and detain immigrants. While such agreements have been inked across the US, Florida has the largest concentration of these deals. Father Frank O'Loughlin, founder and executive director of the Guatemalan-Maya Center, the advocates for Laynez-Ambrosio, says the incident has further eroded trust between Florida's immigrant community and the police. 'This is a story about the corruption of law enforcement by Maga and the brutality of state and federal troopers – formerly public servants – towards nonviolent people,' he said. Meanwhile, Laynez-Ambrosio is trying to recover from the ordeal, and hopes the footage raises awareness of how immigrants are being treated in the US. 'It didn't need to go down like that. If they knew that my people were undocumented, they could've just kindly taken them out of the car and arrested them,' he said. 'It hurt me bad to see my friends like that. Because they're just good people, trying to earn an honest living.' The Guardian is granting anonymity to Laynez-Ambrosio's mother and the men arrested in the footage to protect their privacy
The Guardian
18-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Ice raids while the wealthy party next door': the migrants living in the shadow of Mar-a-Lago
Lake Worth Beach, a small coastal city of about 45,000, sits in the shadows of Donald Trump's Florida residence, Mar-A-Lago. A 10 minute drive from 'Maga' HQ, it is sometimes optimistically referred to as 'mini San Fran', with a largely progressive, white middle class occupying its beachfront bungalows and a local economy built on tourism, retail and construction. It is also home to many undocumented and temporary visa migrants, who work at fruit farms and restaurants, landscape gardens and support the area's affluent households. Though data on undocumented people is notoriously hard to collect, the 2024 census estimates that nearly half of the city's residents are Hispanic and include Guatemalans (many of whom are Indigenous Maya), Mexicans and Venezuelans. The day after Trump's January inauguration, 'a switch flipped' in Lake Worth, says Mariana Blanco, director of operations at the local non-profit the Guatemalan-Maya Center (TGMC). Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) cars began patrolling the streets, raiding grocery stores, churches and schools, as well as working with the local police to make arrests. 'If you say you're going after criminals, you don't have [agents] sitting outside a construction site all day waiting for workers to come out,' says Blanco. 'You don't do that unless you're planning to arrest poor, brown, working-class men from disenfranchised communities.' She estimates that about 70% of center users who attend their regular immigration check-ins or court dates have been deported, detained, or given an ankle bracelet and 90 days to 'self-deport'. The anti-immigration sentiment has grown in the city. The center regularly receives abusive phone calls and, earlier this month, they scrubbed the words 'fuck u' off the building's exterior wall. In February, residents who took part in a Latinos Unidos protest against mass deportations were met by Maga counter-protesters. TGMC has been the beating heart of the local migrant community since it opened 30 years ago, supporting about 16,000 families each year. In a sprawling building on the edge of a highway, mothers and children convene for everything from youth groups and essential healthcare services to breastfeeding sessions, food banks and 'know your rights' classes. Since Trump returned to the White House, however, the center and the surrounding streets have become eerily quiet, as locals keep a low profile for fear of being arrested or deported. Many in the community also feel vulnerable to a host of secondary factors. When a teenager in the community recently died by suicide, the community center newsletter described him as 'isolated and cast down in the wake of the current crisis'. 'He was a 14-year-old who had been expelled from his school back in December and moved to a different school,' Blanco says. 'His mom didn't feel like he would be safe in school if Ice came. They kept him home from January to April and we lost him in May. When you're living in a household where everybody is fearful of law enforcement, where you're not opening the windows, that plays a huge role in your mental health.' The impact of Trump's deportation crackdown on Lake Worth Beach has been devastating. 'It's such a different reality that is divided by a bridge, only a few miles away,' says Blanco. 'That's what's so dystopian about it. While Trump comes to host opulent dinners at Mar-a-Lago, across the bridge families are being tormented by Ice. They are being ripped apart literally from their children's arms as the wealthy party next door.' Here, five Lake Worth Beach residents, including a gardener, a teacher, an interpreter, a community center worker and a priest, tell their stories of survival. Cristian Alvarado, 45, Gardener, Guatemalan with a US working permit At 7am in March I was heading to my gardening job with five workmates when two Ice cars pulled us over. They asked to see my license and everyone's IDs. They reviewed my record and told me I would be detained. I told them I had gone through court and done everything necessary to be here on a working permit so I didn't understand why they were arresting me. But it's hard to speak to them when they're being so aggressive. They told me that I was suspected of having gang affiliations. I had been detained in 2011, before I had my work permit. It was in a poor area of West Palm Beach where there was a lot of gang violence, so it was on my record that I was part of that, which is not true at all. I was able to call my wife before they took my phone. All she could hear was people shouting at me to sit down. I said: 'I've been arrested by Ice' and then hung up. I was taken by bus to Krome detention center in Miami. We all had handcuffs on our wrists and chains around our waists and feet. They left us on the bus all night. When they finally let us off, they put 38 of us in a room for 20 people. We asked to make phone calls and they refused. There were no beds or sheets. We slept on the floor with this extreme air conditioning hitting us that they wouldn't turn off. It felt as though they were doing it on purpose. We were all wearing what we were arrested in. I got sick while I was there and to this day I have problems with my throat. There was a rumor among the detainees that two people had died from the cold. The officers would bring in food and then quickly leave, like we were animals. There were two toilets out in the open in the room. Nobody cleaned them the whole time I was there. Some officers were fine, some were aggressive. I never felt as though any of them would actually help me. We would ask what was going on and they wouldn't respond. After five days they allowed us to leave the room for the first time. We had six minutes to take a shower and three minutes to call home. That was the first time I got to speak to my family. I was very emotional, but happy because I could hear the voices of my wife and five children. I couldn't tell them it was going to be OK, because I didn't know. The whole time I was in Miami I was allowed to call home three times. All calls were capped at three minutes. On 31 March, very late at night, they transferred me to Texas on a flight, in shackles again. I was there for 15 days. My lawyer finally arranged a jail bond of $1,500. Ice had my wallet, permit, visa and phone; when my lawyer tried to get it back they told him: 'That stuff is long gone.' So when they let me out I had no money in my pocket, no phone, no ID. My passport was here in Florida. My lawyer arranged a taxi from the detention center. When I got to the airport, I had to borrow phones from random people who were willing to help. My 19-year-old daughter flew to Texas, found me, gave me my passport and brought me back. We had to pay for all of those flights. I was very happy to see my family again when I got back to Lake Worth. It's the biggest blessing. An immigration charity is helping me try to get my papers back. I can't get a driving license without the papers to prove I have a work permit. I'm back working and I have a constant fear that I will be pulled over by Ice. I still don't know why I was detained, so there's nothing to say it won't happen again. Lorena Felipe, 22, TGMC clinic coordinator, Guatemalan-heritage US citizen For me Lake Worth is home. It's like one big family. I love living here. But right now I don't feel safe. In my job at the center I help uninsured patients navigate the health system and get access to things like pap smears and prenatal care. Every day now we hear about people being detained, families being separated, kids being left behind. The other day a woman came in with an ankle monitor. She'd received an email out of the blue telling her to check in at the immigration office. We did some research for her and it turned out she'd signed her own deportation order while she was there, without even knowing it. She has children here. She now has 90 days to leave the country. I have worries at home too. My parents came here as asylum seekers from Guatemala when they were 14 years old. My dad is a supervisor and does landscaping maintenance and my mom works in a factory washing hospital and restaurant sheets. When my dad remembers what happened back in the Guatemalan genocide, he cries. In 1980 they murdered my grandpa and my newborn baby uncle. His right ear got messed up because of the bombs. My mom says: 'I know I was born in Guatemala, but if I pass away, bury me here.' America is home for them. They have status but, with everything that's going on right now, they have a fear of being sent back. We recently had a whole conversation, my dad telling me what he wanted me to do if he got detained. That night, I went out at two or three in the morning. I parked at a gas station and just started crying. I couldn't hold it in anymore. That's when I had my own personal experience with current law enforcement and it was so shocking. Some cops came over and I was so upset I couldn't speak; I was just shaking. They took me to the hospital and put me on a psychiatric ward under the Baker Act [a Florida law that allows involuntary commitment for 72 hours of people who are considered to be an imminent danger to themselves or others]. I was there for more than 24 hours, in a room with lots of other people screaming and yelling. I didn't want to tell anybody I was there and I wasn't allowed to leave. But I ended up calling my mom and dad to get me out. I didn't want to stress them out but I was terrified I would be transferred to detention in Fort Pierce. I just remember looking around at where I was and thinking, 'How did I end up here?' Esperanza, 44, housekeeper and volunteer at TGMC, Guatemalan, undocumented I volunteer as an interpreter and people call me from detention. They often don't understand what the immigration officers are saying and I try to explain. They're so excited to have someone answer the phone but they don't realize that I can't actually help them. I have to explain that I'm not a lawyer and I can't promise them anything. You can hear their voice change. It's so sad. They are desperate. At TGMC I take care of anything that's needed. That's how we do things here. I'm the boss for the people. I organize the volunteers. I clean. Everything. I came here by myself from Guatemala when I was 17 years old. It took two weeks to cross the desert. I was very scared and the coyotes [people smugglers] tried to abuse me. But when you're dreaming of something, you just focus on how you can go and get a better life. That's how you do it. I now have three children between the ages of 20 and 12. They were all born here so they have status. But Trump keeps making new decisions. He might take away their citizenship. I'm worried I'll be separated from them if I get caught. So TGMC helped me to do a power of attorney – the center are doing it for all undocumented parents now. It feels so hopeless to have to do it. I told my children that if something happens to me they can live with their godmother. But they text me all the time. They say 'Mommy, mommy, be careful because the police is coming' or 'Mommy, are you OK?' I tell them: 'Don't stress, just focus on your school.' All of the kids now are so stressed, they say they don't want to go to school. They're worried that while they're at school their mum and dad will be picked up. Kathleen Cuellar, 30, bilingual school psychologist, Nicaraguan naturalized US citizen I do something called comprehensive psycho-educational evaluations. During Covid, in our write-ups we might have said something like: 'This child is affected by the current circumstance, this may not be a true representation of their ability.' I don't know the full fall-out yet because we're so in it, but what we're going through now feels like a similar event for kids with mixed immigration status or who are concerned about their parents being taken away. We're not going to know for maybe a year or two just how badly this has affected them academically and developmentally. I also tutor at TGMC, where we offer extra English help to children who speak Spanish or a Mayan language at home. There were swatting calls [hoax phone calls to report serious crimes or emergencies] being made, reporting that something dangerous was happening in one of the buildings, which would bring lots of armed officers in without a warrant. [Swatting calls allow law enforcement to enter a building without a warrant.] It's a scare tactic. That safe space that used to be for the kids doesn't feel so much like a safe space any more. So the kids just aren't coming into the classes. It's happening in the schools as well. At some point we have to recognize that this is a really big issue, our kids being truant. Currently there is no explicit guidance that tells schools how to handle these situations. That leaves staff to feel very vague about what kind of help you can give to these families. If kids aren't coming, what do we do? Teachers can't promise parents that Ice wont show up at their kid's school, because there's every possibility that they will. The child who committed suicide recently was going through extreme stress. There was no response by the school because he had not been attending for a while. School is where these children are spotted. Teachers are experts at noticing and passing that information on. If the kids aren't in school, I can't help them. Father Frank O'Loughlin, 83, founder and executive director of TGMC, Irish-born US citizen When I first came here from Ireland as a priest 60 years ago, the only time the migrants would see the border patrol was when they would show up on behalf of the growers to move the workers to the upcoming crop in North Carolina. I remember when I was the new guy in a parish in West Palm Beach, a group of five or six men came knocking on my door with a baby in their arms to ask if a priest would do a funeral. I had virtually no Spanish, but we said our prayers. At that time the families of the workers were sleeping in the warehouses where the chemicals were kept, so the pesticides were killing babies. I started working with a group of young lawyers who had dedicated themselves to the migrant cause. The first time we made it into court, it was with a woman whose father had been shot dead and brothers tortured – or as she would put it, 'skinned alive' – by the Guatemalan military in the 80s. They used her baby sibling 'as a soccer ball' and raped both her and her mother. The woman and her mother managed to escape, but they lost each other in the cornfields. She had found her way to Indiantown, near Lake Worth, in the vain hope of finding her mother. When she told this story in court, you cannot imagine the anguish. At the end of it all the judge said: 'So your father's dead, your mother's gone. But what is your case?' So it's much easier to come here and exist as a worker under the radar than it is to make a real claim. That's what people have always done. They've lived these underground clandestine lives. We want to pretend that we ended slavery. Look at a state like Florida and it is patently obvious that all we did was find a way around it. It now feels as though it's something to cherish that we were once a part of international accords that assured people's safety. Those international accords don't seem to register with the new regime. This is where we've got to in 2025. Last night we were driving around Lake Worth, clearing the streets as people were coming home from work. I have very little voice anymore, but we were shouting out the car windows: 'The Migra are on B street,' where there was an Ice raid going on. We cleared the streets of people, but there was nothing more we could do. Unfortunately we've seen a lot of family separations lately. In March we received a call from a concerned staff member at the local school about a 12-year-old boy named Amílcar whose father – who had no criminal history – had been deported. We're always grateful when people let us know, because when parents of undocumented children get deported the foster care system won't take them in. If nobody tells us, then the kids get lost in the system, which is really scary. Amílcar was looked after by his father's co-worker while we worked with the Guatemalan consulate to get permission for him to travel without a passport. He was all smiles at the Miami airport until he realized he would be boarding the plane alone. His panicked reaction caught the attention of a woman sitting nearby who said she would stay with him at the airport in Guatemala. He kept asking her if she would take him home with her if his father wasn't there to meet him. She reassured him several times that she would stay with him until he was in his father's care. That little boy was so vulnerable, but it was lovely to see his spirit and the kindness of the strangers who helped him. A generation of innocents are being met by the most primitive of reactions. Every day I witness new braveries in the face of this oppression.
