Video shows a Venezuelan man tackled in a New Hampshire courthouse. He was then sent by ICE to Texas.
A Venezuelan man facing misdemeanor charges in New Hampshire was tackled inside a courthouse by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who also knocked over an older bystander in the process. The man has since been detained in Texas, according to online records.
Recently released security camera footage from Nashua Circuit Court shows two agents throwing Arnuel Marquez Colmenarez to the floor and handcuffing him on Feb. 20. An older man using a cane to walk also ended up flat on his back.
Marquez Colmenarez, 33, had been charged on Feb. 9 with drunken driving, driving without a license and failing to provide information after an accident. He was heading to his arraignment on those charges when he was apprehended, Nashua Police say.
Jared Neff, the court liaison officer for the Hudson Police Department, said he was in the prosecutor's office when he heard a loud commotion near the elevators.
"There were voices yelling 'Stop!' and then a loud 'bang' which sounded like people had fallen on the ground and were actively fighting and struggling," he wrote in an incident report.
Neff said he helped restrain Marquez Colmenarez, whom he described as actively resisting attempts to handcuff him. The agents were working on orders to detain immigrants in the country illegally, Neff said. They told Neff they had tried to detain Marquez Colmenarez quietly in the elevator, but he had fled.
A judge later issued a bench warrant after he failed to appear for his arraignment. The prosecutor handling the case wasn't contacted by federal agents before the arraignment and didn't witness the arrest, police said.
As of Monday, Colmenaraz was being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas, according to an online database. The agency did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Immigration officers were a growing presence at courthouses during President Trump's first term, prompting pushback from judges and other local officials. The president has gone further in his second term.
As part of Mr. Trump's immigration crackdown, his administration in its first days repealed a policy initially put in place by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2011, which directed agents to avoid making arrests in "sensitive" locations like schools, houses of worship and hospitals, and expanded under former President Joe Biden to include courthouses and other places where immigrants may be trying to "access essential services."
Under current policy, immigration officials can make arrests "in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present" and as long as they are not prohibited from doing so by state or local law. After the Biden-era rule was terminated, the Homeland Security Department issued a statement saying the new Trump administration "will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense."
In Boston, an ICE agent was held in contempt last month after he detained a suspect while he was on trial. The man detained, originally from the Dominican Republic and living with family in Massachusetts at the time, was on trial for allegedly pretending to be someone else in his driver's license application, CBS News Boston reported. The man's lawyers said ICE agents did not identify themselves and put him in a pickup truck as he was leaving court. He was taken into custody and detained in Plymouth, Massachusetts, according to the station.
