In her daughter's memory, everything remains intact: it happened on Thursday morning at an intersection in Vista, California, between San Clemente and San Diego.
The 12-year-old girl and her father were on their way to school when two agents claiming to be from ICE stopped them.
"I'm an ICE officer, I have an arrest warrant for you," said one of the agents, while the other translates the same phrase into English, addressing the girl: "I'm letting you know," he assured her.
Everything was recorded on video.
"You have to get off or we're going to break it (the glass). What do you want to do?", they are heard saying, while the teenager cries in anguish.
'Arturo' and his 12-year-old daughter in an interview with correspondent Francisco Fajardo.Noticias Telemundo
"Here is my daughter, they are scaring her," replies the immigrant, who asked us to call him
Arturo
for fear of being identified.
"Call your godmother," she asks the girl.
Francisco Fajardo, a journalist for Noticias Telemundo, spoke with them this Friday, one day after what happened.
—Did you start recording that video when minutes of a conversation between you had already passed?
—Yes, when he started to get a little more aggressive, he said that he was going to break the glass if I didn't lower it more.
—When they tell you that they have an arrest warrant, did they show it to you at some point before?
"No, at no time.
They didn't talk to me, they just told me that they were ICE agents and that they had an arrest warrant for me.
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"It was giving me a lot of anxiety"
The recording shows how
Arturo
responds to them and tells them: "I'm not going to get off here until you show me the sheet."
Thus he made it clear to them that he was not planning to get out of his truck.
After several attempts, the officers left.
But her daughter panicked.
She says that at times she couldn't breathe.
"That's where I was starting to get scared, I was getting very anxious, I was having a crisis, I couldn't think clearly," recalls the teenager in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
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Activists immediately contacted the father and daughter to offer help.
Benjamin Prado, from the committee of American friends, assured that
Arturo
"was pushed aside, terrified, his family intimidated. And with the threat that they will return."
Recommendations from a lawyer
Immigration lawyer César Luna, not related to the case, assured in an interview with Noticias Telemundo that the immigrant "is correct" and assures that in a situation of this type there are recommendations:
Do not say anything that could be used against you.
Request any document that the police could be using against that person.
You can ask to contact a lawyer.
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Noticias Telemundo contacted the ICE agency but, as of the publication of this story, had not received a response.
With the constant fear that they will come back for him,
Arturo
prays to the virgin.
His daughter does not want to go back to school for fear that the event will repeat itself.
"I'm 12, imagine a 4 or 5-year-old boy, there in the back seat, looking at his parents there," says the teenager.
Meanwhile, her father hugs her and assures her that "everything will be fine."
