{"id":143888,"date":"2025-08-14T01:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143888\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T01:55:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:55:10","slug":"l-a-teen-and-mother-speak-out-after-he-was-detained-by-immigration-agents-at-high-school-the-traumas-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143888\/","title":{"rendered":"L.A. teen and mother speak out after he was detained by immigration agents at high school: “The trauma’s there”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Los Angeles mother and her 15-year-old son with special needs are speaking out for the first time after his mistaken detainment by federal immigration agents<\/a> outside of Arleta High School on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The trauma’s there,” said Andreina Mejia. She recounted the moments that her 15-year-old son Nathan Mejia was allegedly pulled from her car and placed in handcuffs while they waited for his sister to complete registration for the new school year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She says that their vehicle was swarmed by unmarked SUVs while they were parked outside of the school in the morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I kind of panicked … All I saw was a bunch of men getting out with guns, pointing them at me and my son,” she said, speaking with CBS News Los Angeles in Spanish.<\/p>\n

Her son, who actually attends another high school, also spoke about what happened.<\/p>\n

“At the moment they opened our door, my mom just told me to not move or anything,” Nathan Mejia said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pair says that the Department of Homeland Security agents pulled the boy from the car’s passenger seat and handcuffed him in front of onlooking students and parents outside of AHS.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I was just terrified and was like, ‘Can I go to my son?’ and they told me no,” Andreina Mejia said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said that the agents showed her a picture of a person who resembled her son, but that it wasn’t actually him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So they were like, ‘We’re looking for somebody. Your son looks like somebody.’ and they showed me the picture and I’m like, ‘That’s not my son,'” she recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement shared with CBS News Los Angeles<\/a> on Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection officials said they were actually “conducting a targeted operation on criminal illegal alien Cristian Alexander Vasquez-Alvarenga\u2014a Salvadoran national and suspected MS-13 pledge with prior criminal convictions in the broader vicinity of Arleta.”<\/p>\n

Mejia says that after he was let go, the agent didn’t offer them an apology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The guy was like, “Oh, just you know, confused you with somebody else and at least you’re going to have an exciting story to tell your friends when you go back to school,'” Nathan said. “I looked at him and in my head I’m all like, ‘What do you mean something exciting? There’s nothing exciting about having a gun pointed at your face.'”<\/p>\n

He says that the incident is still affecting him.<\/p>\n

“I cannot sleep or anything,” the teen said. “It lowkey kind of felt scary when they pointed their guns.”<\/p>\n

His mother said that the agents had made them “feel like we were criminals,” noting that she and both of her children are U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Unified School District officials addressed the incident during a news conference on Monday<\/a>, which was originally planned to announce a series of measures taken to make families feel safe as their students returned to school amidst ongoing immigration enforcement operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While their intended message of protection was clear, Andreina Mejia says that as a mother, the damage has already been done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“When you have a special kid, you just want to protect them from everybody,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CBS News Los Angeles has reached out to DHS and CBP officials to learn more information on the detainment but has not yet heard back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A full interview with the family, conducted in Spanish, can be viewed on YouTube<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Los Angeles mother and her 15-year-old son with special needs are speaking out for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":143889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-143888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115024634188487077","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}