A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the bottom and arrested after filming federal brokers at Residence Depot on Thursday mentioned he was held for greater than an hour close to Dodger Stadium, the place brokers boasted about what number of immigrants they arrested.
“What number of our bodies did you guys seize at present?” he mentioned one agent requested.
“Oh, we grabbed 31,“ the opposite replied.
“That was day at present,” the primary agent responded.
The 2 high-fived, as Garcia sat on the asphalt beneath the solar, he mentioned.
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Job Garcia was launched on Friday from a downtown federal detention middle. No obvious prison expenses have but to be filed. He’s one among a number of U.S residents arrested throughout enforcement operations in current days. Division of Homeland Safety officers say some have illegally interfered with brokers’ jobs.
In response to questions on why Garcia was arrested and if he’d been charged, a spokesperson for the U.S. legal professional’s workplace in L.A. beneficial a reporter contact the Division of Homeland Safety.
DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol didn’t reply to a request for remark
Job Garcia in his house in Silver Lake Friday, June 20, 2025 in Los Angeles, CA. Garcia, an American citizen, was arrested and held throughout a raid at a Los Angeles are Residence Depot on Thursday, June 19, 2025. He was launch at 8:30 a.m. Friday morning.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Occasions)
Garcia mentioned he was shaken by what he heard whereas he was detained.
“They name them ‘our bodies,’ they cut back them to our bodies,” he mentioned. “My blood was boiling.”
Garcia, a photographer and doctoral pupil Claremont Graduate College had been selecting up a supply at Residence Depot, when somebody approached the shopper desk and mentioned one thing was unfolding exterior.
“La migra, La migra,” he heard as he walked out. He rapidly grabbed his cellphone and adopted brokers across the parking zone, telling them they had been “f— ineffective” till he got here to a bunch of them forming a half-circle round a field truck.
A Border Patrol agent radioed somebody after which slammed his baton towards the passenger window, his video exhibits. Glass shattered. He unlocked the door as individuals shouted.
Within the video, a shocked man could be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door.
It’s unclear from the footage what occurred subsequent, however Garcia mentioned an agent lunged towards him and pushed him.
“My first response was to love push his hand off,” he recalled. Then, he mentioned, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his again and threw his cellphone.
The agent introduced him to the bottom and three different brokers jumped in, Garcia mentioned
“Get the f— down sir” and “give me your f— hand. You need it, you bought it, sir, you f— obtained it. You need to go to jail, high quality. You bought it,” an agent could be heard saying within the video.
“You needed it, you bought it,” the person yelled.
An agent handcuffed him so exhausting “that there was no circulation operating to my fingers,” Garcia mentioned.
Pinned down, Garcia had problem respiratory.
“That second, I believed I may in all probability die right here,” he mentioned.
The agent put Garcia’s cellphone again in his pocket. The recording stored operating.
As Garcia was put right into a automobile, his video captured an agent twice saying: “I’ve obtained one again right here.”
“You bought one what?” Garcia shot again. “You bought one what?”
He mentioned an agent instructed him in damaged Spanish to “wait right here,’ although it couldn’t be heard on the video.
“I f— converse English, you f— dumbass,” he clearly shouts again.
No agent requested if he was an American citizen, he mentioned. No one requested for identification.
“They assumed that I used to be undocumented,” he mentioned later in an interview.
The video ends after about 4 minutes, whereas he’s ready within the van.
Garcia requested an agent to get his pockets from his automobile, so he may show he was a U.S. citizen. One other agent retrieved his ID, however he remained handcuffed.
They had been so tight, his palms started to swell.
The brokers switched him to handcuffs that appeared like shoelaces. They took off round a nook, stopped to shuffle him into one other van and sped off down the 101 Freeway.
“I smeared my blood of their seat,” he mentioned. And he thought, “They’re going to recollect me.”
With him within the van was a Mexican man, face downcast, who mentioned his spouse was six months pregnant.
“My spouse instructed me to not go to work at present,” the person mentioned. “One thing doesn’t really feel proper,” he mentioned she instructed him.
“It broke my coronary heart,” Garcia mentioned. “I want he was the one who obtained away after they had been making an attempt to seize me.”
On what he described as a ramp going into Dodger stadium close to Lot Okay, Garcia was taken out of the automobile and instructed to take a seat on the asphalt as brokers shuffled detainees into totally different vans and processed them for about an hour. A girl ran his background for prison offenses.
It felt surreal and enraging.
“They had been making an attempt to construct some form of case,” Garcia mentioned. He instructed The Occasions he was arrested at 17 for driving with no license.
After they transported him, brokers later fingerprinted him and tried to interrogate him.
The agent mentioned they needed to “take your facet of the story.”
Garcia declined.
He mentioned he overheard an agent inform somebody, “Trump is basically working us.”
Whereas held at a downtown detention facility, he met Adrian Martinez.
Martinez, a 20-year-old Walmart employee and likewise a U.S. citizen, had been arrested on Tuesday whereas he tried to cease the arrest of a person who cleaned a shopping mall in Pico Rivera. The 2 spoke for about 10 minutes, as Martinez waited to go to courtroom.
“You’re the Walmart child, proper?” he requested him.
Garcia instructed him what had unfolded exterior the Residence Depot.
“That’s precisely what occurred to me,” he mentioned Martinez instructed him. “They had been bullying this older man. I didn’t like that so I went and confronted them they usually put their palms on me and I pushed their palms off.”
U.S. Atty. Invoice Essayli posted a photograph of Martinez on X and mentioned he “was arrested for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent within the face after he tried to impede their immigration enforcement operation.” Martinez was charged in a prison grievance with conspiracy to impede a federal officer.
The grievance makes no reference to a punch, however alleges that Martinez blocked brokers’ autos together with his automobile after which later a trash can.
“A grievance usually accommodates one cost and doesn’t embrace the total scope of a defendant’s conduct, or the proof that shall be offered at trial,” mentioned Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. legal professional’s workplace in L.A. “Contemplating that is an lively case, we is not going to be offering additional feedback exterior of courtroom proceedings.”
Martinez was launched Friday on a $5,000 bond.
“U.S. Legal professional Essayli and U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino outrageously alleged that Adrian assaulted a federal agent,” Martinez’s attorneys mentioned in an announcement. “Nonetheless he has not been charged with an assault cost as a result of he didn’t assault anybody, and the proof of that’s clear.”
Garcia mentioned his cellmate was frightened about these protests. He requested, “Don’t you suppose the protesters who’re on the market destroying property, rioters, is a foul look?”
“Rioting is the language of the unheard,” he mentioned, riffing on a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
