Shock Video Shows ICE Agent Assaulting Woman Who Asked If He’s A Good Christian
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers forcibly detained a father and his two children in southwest Colorado on Monday while they were on their way to middle school, sparking a mass protest outside the agency’s Durango field office in an effort to get the kids released back to their mom.
Video from the protest outside the facility shows masked and unidentified federal officers tear-gassing protesters on Tuesday afternoon as they stood in the street and attempted to prevent transport vans from entering the facility.
Earlier in the day, an ICE agent threw a woman to the ground in a shocking moment captured by bystanders amid the otherwise peaceful protest.
The victim, 57-year-old Franci Stagi, told HuffPost the agent snapped when she asked him “what would Jesus do” and if he was “a good Christian.”
Video shows he responded by snatching her phone from her hands and then violently assaulting her when she attempted to retrieve it, grabbing her by the hair and putting her in a chokehold before ultimately throwing her down an embankment on the opposite side of the street.
Stagi acknowledged she brushed his shoulder while trying to grab her phone back but said he should never have grabbed her phone in the first place. More shocking to her is how these agents have been emboldened to act with absolute impunity.
“People were like, ‘You gotta press charges,’ and I’m like, ‘Against who?’”
“I don’t know who he was. He didn’t have a badge. He wouldn’t give us a name. He wouldn’t talk to us. There’s no recourse,” she said.
“I
think I’m getting attention simply because I’m an older white lady,” she
reflected. “The other side of it, too, is that somebody can say they’re
ICE and just come and pick up anyone they want. There’s no way that we
can prove anything.”
Franci Stagi, circled in red, moments before the ICE agent snatched the phone from her hands and violently assaulted her when she tried to retrieve it. Courtesy Franci Stagi
Leaders of a local nonprofit organization that works with immigrants said the family is from Colombia and is in the country on an asylum claim.
“This family has done everything by the book,” Matt Karkut, the co-executive director of Compañeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center, said in a statement.
“They are following the legal immigration process exactly as our system requires, and instead of protection, they are met with punishment. This is a cruel and senseless abuse of power.”
The center identified the family as father Fernando Jaramillo Solano, 12-year-old daughter Jana Michel Jaramillo Patiño and 15-year-old son Kewin Daniel Patiño Bustamante. Wife and mother Estella Patiño has not been detained.
According to the center, Kewin last spoke with his mom Monday night, telling her that he and his father “had been beaten, handcuffed and forced to sign documents.” Jana, meanwhile, has reportedly not been heard from.
When the Durango Police Department attempted to reunite the children with their mother, ICE declined to release them despite having claimed earlier to have attempted to do exactly that, the city said.
“On multiple occasions, Durango Police requested to facilitate the release of the children to their mother, but were unsuccessful,” the city said in a statement.
“On Tuesday, the Police Department received a report that one of the children may have been in distress and potentially experiencing abuse. In response, officers attempted to conduct a welfare check and to bring food. Unfortunately, federal agents denied officers entry to the facility.”
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to questions from HuffPost regarding the whereabouts of the Patiño family or the conduct of its officer.
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