Immigration lawyer says ICE officer who pushed her fractured her foot

An immigration lawyer said she fractured her foot after being pushed to the ground by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer as she followed her client, a 3-year-old boy, into an ICE building in Kansas City, Missouri.

The lawyer, Andrea Martinez, said she and a colleague were trying to accompany the child, Noah Bautista-Mayorga, into the ICE office at around 3am on Tuesday. Noah’s mother, Kenia Bautista-Mayorga, had been detained since May.

The family had entered the country illegally in February 2016 and was to be deported to Honduras on Tuesday morning.

Ms Martinez said she and the other lawyer were pushed forcefully by the ICE officer as he tried to block her from entering the building. The encounter was captured on a widely circulated video, which showed a brief scuffle between the two lawyers and an ICE officer, with Ms Martinez tumbling to the ground after she approached the door to the building.

“I’m traumatised,” Ms Martinez said. “As attorneys, we expect ourselves to be strong for our clients. When you get physically battered by an ICE officer, it also takes a toll emotionally; we’ve been in shock and in tears.”

She declined to say whether she had filed a complaint with ICE.

In an emailed statement, an ICE official said the agency took “allegations against ICE personnel very seriously” and it was “looking into the matter”. The official declined to comment further until the agency completed a review of the evidence.

Ms Martinez said she had announced Ms Bautista-Mayorga’s deportation on a message board for lawyers, and on Tuesday morning, dozens of immigrant rights advocates and members of the news media gathered outside the ICE office.

Ms Martinez said that if an officer was willing to push a lawyer while cameras were rolling, then “imagine how ICE is treating immigrants behind closed doors when nobody is watching".

Ms Bautista-Mayorga, who is pregnant, said she was fleeing an abusive relationship with Noah’s father in Honduras. Her case had already received some media attention.

This month, the administration dropped asylum protections for victims of domestic abuse, and ICE said it would detain pregnant women on a case-by-case basis, shifting away from a policy that assumed all pregnant women should be released.

The encounter comes more than a year after a series of executive orders by Donald Trump broadened the focus of immigration enforcement beyond gang members and violent and serious criminals. Mr Trump’s press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, described the policy shift as a move to “take the shackles off” ICE agents.

Ms Martinez said Ms Bautista-Mayorga and Noah had been arrested in February 2016 after illegally entering the United States near Eagle Pass, Texas. She missed an immigration court hearing later that year, and an immigration judge issued an order for her deportation in November 2016.

In May, Ms Bautista-Mayorga was arrested in Missouri as she, Noah and her partner, Luis Diaz-Inestroza, were driving to Iowa to visit Mr Diaz-Inestroza’s son.

On Monday, an emergency motion to stop Ms Bautista-Mayorga’s deportation was denied, and ICE agents set up a meeting early on Tuesday to reunite Noah and his mother before their deportation.

Ms Martinez said ICE agents at the Kansas City facility initially said the family’s reunion would be outside the building but then moved it inside the building.

She said that Mr Diaz-Inestroza, who is also an unauthorised immigrant, was holding Noah when an ICE officer took his arm and directed Mr Diaz-Inestroza inside. At that point, the scuffle between the officer and the two lawyers began and Ms Martinez was knocked to the ground, fracturing her foot.

She was then allowed to enter the building, where she spoke with the family for 15 minutes before Noah and Ms Bautista-Mayorga were deported.

Ms Martinez said the ICE agents detained Mr Diaz-Inestroza and have started deportation proceedings against him.

The New York Times