A confrontation captured on video between a woman who shouted insults at Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducting immigration enforcement action in Northern Virginia escalated when one of the officers pointed a gun at her on Monday.
Incident Details
The woman, Carolina Molina, is a licensed mental health therapist who was visiting immigration lawyers in Bailey’s Crossroads for her work when she saw ICE agents taking people into custody, she said at a news conference Wednesday. Molina said she saw more agents as she continued to the attorney’s office and yelled, “You’re a [expletive]” and “you’re [expletive] up” to the agents.
Video from her dashboard camera shows she turned her car around to avoid drawing attention to the attorney’s office “where possibly immigrants could be,” according to an Instagram post in which she shared the dashcam footage. Masked federal agents pulled up in a gray SUV in front of her and jumped out, with one shouting “are you following us?” and saying she “almost ran us over,” according to the dashcam footage and video Molina shot on her phone.
One of the agents threatened to arrest Molina and pointed a gun in her direction. The gun was out for much of the encounter, according to the video footage. Molina said Wednesday she felt “the situation changed” once she started recording on her cell phone, and the agent claimed she was trying to run them over. “That is not the case. I was actually trying to leave,” Molina said during the news conference.
Government Response
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson described the woman in a statement as “an anti-ICE agitator” who drove her car “in circles around our ICE officers and then attempted to harm officers by weaponizing her vehicle against them—all in an attempt to help illegal immigrants get away.” The agency also said the woman was trying “to help illegal immigrants get away” and “could face criminal prosecution as a result of her actions.”
DHS said in the statement to CNN that the agents were conducting an “operation targeting criminal illegal aliens, whose crimes included a hit and run and drug trafficking, and illegal aliens with final orders of removal.”
Original reporting: 40/29 / KHBS (NW Arkansas) — read the source article.
