An immigration attorney says she was locked up and left with a broken foot after being “knocked to the ground and bloodied” by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer while trying to reunite a three-year-old child with his mother at a facility in Kansas City, according to a Tuesday report from the Daily Beast.
As the site’s Betsy Woodruff reported:
Andrea Martinez told The Daily Beast she was dropping off a 3-year-old immigrant at an ICE facility to be reunited with his mother before they are to be deported to Honduras. Martinez said she was accompanying the boy, his pregnant mother, and his father into an ICE field office but Martinez was denied access. That’s when Martinez said she was “knocked to the ground and bloodied” by an ICE officer.
Martinez said she was accompanying the young boy, his pregnant mother, and her partner to the ICE facility, expecting them to reunited the child with his mother, all three of whom are undocumented. As local news affiliate KCTV reported, the woman, whom the station identified as Kenia Bautista, hadn’t seen her son Noah in more than a month when they were finally reunited early Tuesday morning. Bautista, who is reportedly six months pregnant, fled her native Honduras to escape an abusive relationship, where she said she feared for the lives of her and her son. Now, they’ll be deported, as domestic violence is no longer grounds for asylum.
The story was accompanied by a photo from Martinez showing a very swollen ankle and foot. Martinez said she suffered a fracture in her right foot.
In a statement to the Beast, Martinez said the officer refused her medical treatment and didn’t allow her to call emergency services.
“This was because he was mad that he had so many cameras filming him in the ICE parking lot as he was deporting my 3-year-old client and his pregnant mother,” she said in the statement.
She also said she was locked in an office before ICE called Federal Protective Services and that the officer “continually looked at my phone to make sure I wasn’t recording him.”
In video from a vigil held for the detained mother and child outside the facility which was posted on Facebook, a woman can be seen struggling with a man who appears to be an officer. That post said that Martinez repeatedly identified herself as the family’s attorney before being knocked to the ground.
ICE did not comment to the site about the incident. Splinter has also reached out about the report and will update this post if we hear back.