Video shows ICE separating family during arrest in Minneapolis, despite wife's pleas to be deported together
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests are still happening in Twin Cities neighborhoods, even with word of a rollback. New video shows the emotional scene as agents separated a family despite one woman's pleas to be deported together.
Video from a parking lot in northeast Minneapolis shows federal agents pounding on a car window, then taking the man inside into handcuffs. A second man was also arrested.
Jenny was holding her daughter in the backseat of their vehicle as federal agents detained her husband and her cousin. She says both are undocumented and from Ecuador.
"I was yelling at them to take me with him, but they didn't want to take me and our daughter with him," Jenny said.
Jenny, who did not want WCCO to use her last name, also didn't want to show her face during the interview, telling WCCO she is also undocumented.
"My daughter was very frightened and is going to miss her father," she said.
As the agents told her to go home, Jenny tried pleading with them.
A short time later, the video shows her walking to the open door and appearing to help her cousin, who had just been arrested, get out of the car. He's on the run for a short time before an agent takes him down.
"We just want to provide for our family and make sure they lack nothing, that's why we crossed into this country," Jenny said. "But they see us as criminals."
Over the weekend, a top ICE official said federal agents had carried out roughly 3,400 arrests in Minnesota.
Jenny, distraught over her husband's arrest, was ready to leave with him.
"I was asking them to deport me because I don't want to be left alone with my daughter. I don't have a job — only my husband does — and now I don't know what we're going to do," Jenny said.
It's not clear why Jenny wasn't taken along with the two men. WCCO has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for more information about the arrests.