ICE agents have been accused of using a Guatemalan family’s five-year-old daughter as a tool to pressure her father into surrendering.
Edward Hip was driving with his autistic five-year-old daughter last Tuesday when he called his wife and told her ‘he thinks someone is chasing him,’ she told Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra.
Hip allegedly returned home as ICE agents swarmed the area. According to his wife, he ran into the back parking lot of their house, but federal agents were able to grab his daughter.
Video obtained by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra shows the distressed family attempting to retrieve the five-year-old outside of their Leominster home.
The Guatemalan family said the federal agents confronted Hip, who has lived in the US for 22 years, to ‘leave his home’ for his daughter.
The distraught mother pleaded in the video to ‘give her daughter back’ and ‘she’s special, she has autism.’
The mother ordered her daughter to be returned in a standoff with the agents, according to NBC Boston 10.
Tense video showed the moment ICE agents detained a Guatemalan family’s 5-year-old daughter to pressure her father to surrender
The agents returned to the home two days later and arrested the man, the family said he is currently being held at an ICE detention center in Plymouth
Video showed an ICE agent asking ‘Is that your daughter? Come here so I can see those IDs.’
The man in the video responded ‘Hey, I can give it through the door.’
‘You can do it right here,’ the federal agent retorted, motioning him to come forward.
The mother told Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra that she reported the officers for ‘alleged harassment.’
She added the officers allegedly threatened them, saying they would ‘enter the house if the door was not open within 15 minutes.’
The Leominster police later arrived at the home to intervene. They returned the five-year-old girl to her family.
But two days later, on Hip’s wife’s birthday, ICE agents returned at the home, pulled him out of the car and arrested him.
The video shows the ICE agent asking ‘Is that your daughter? Come here so I can see those IDs’
‘Officers came out behind my house, arrested him, took him away,’ the mother said, adding ‘we are not criminals.’
The family reported the daughter is ‘in good condition’ and her father is currently held at an ICE detention center in Plymouth.
According to NBC Boston 10, the parents have an active asylum claim and have two children born in the US.
The Daily Mail reached out to ICE for comment.
