HOUSTON
Leo Garcia Venegas was working at a construction site in Alabama when two immigration agents ran up to him and wrestled him to the ground. “I’m a citizen. I’m a citizen,” he told them.
They didn’t believe it. He was handcuffed and detained for an hour before being released — with no apology, according to his lawyers.
“The officers have no warrant, they didn’t know who Leo was and haven’t seen him breaking any laws,” said Janae Wilkerson of the public-interest Institute for Justice (IJ), which partnered with Garcia Venegas in filing a class action lawsuit in Alabama last week.
“When the officers checked Leo’s Alabama-issued Real ID, they called it fake.”
The incident occurred in May, in an area of Alabama where there is hot demand for new homes. In June, it happened again.”I was in one of the houses with headphones on.
I felt someone behind me. It was an immigration agent who came through the garage,” Garcia Venegas said in a video produced by IJ. “I told him that I was a citizen. They told me I had to follow them to the car to verify whether I was a citizen or no,” he said.
Garcia Venega’s lawyers say the Department of Homeland Security’s current policies allow agents to arrest anyone they believe may be undocumented, until they prove otherwise.
That violates the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects citizens against “unreasonable searches and seizures” and warrantless arrests.
“They arrested me twice for being Latino, for working in construction,” said Garcia Venegas, a 25-year-old man born in Florida to Mexican parents. “I live in fear every day that when I get to work it will happen again.”
