{"id":1693,"date":"2025-06-21T07:09:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T07:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1693\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T07:09:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T07:09:11","slug":"detained-citizen-says-agents-bragged-after-arresting-dozens-at-home-depot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1693\/","title":{"rendered":"Detained citizen says agents bragged after arresting dozens at Home Depot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot<\/a> on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many bodies did you guys grab today?\u201d he said one agent asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, we grabbed 31,\u201c the other replied. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a good day today,\u201d the first agent responded.<\/p>\n

The two high-fived, as he sat on the asphalt under the sun, Job Garcia said. <\/p>\n

Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officials say some have illegally interfered with agents\u2019 jobs.<\/p>\n

In response to questions about why Garcia was arrested and if he\u2019d been charged, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in L.A. recommended a reporter contact the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment <\/p>\n

\" <\/p>\n

Job Garcia in his apartment in Silver Lake Friday, June 20, 2025 in Los Angeles, CA. Garcia, an American citizen, was arrested and held during a raid at a Los Angeles are Home Depot on Thursday, June 19, 2025. He was release at 8:30 a.m. Friday morning.<\/p>\n

(Luke Johnson \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Garcia said he was shaken by what he heard while he was detained. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey call them \u2018bodies,\u2019 they reduce them to bodies,\u201d he said. \u201cMy blood was boiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia, a photographer and doctoral student Claremont Graduate University had been picking up a delivery at Home Depot, when someone approached the customer desk and said something was unfolding outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cLa migra, La migra,\u201d he heard as he walked out. He quickly grabbed his phone and followed agents around the parking lot, telling them they were \u201cf\u2014 useless\u201d until he came to a group of them forming a half-circle around a box truck. <\/p>\n

A Border Patrol agent radioed someone and then slammed his baton against the passenger window, his video shows. Glass shattered. He unlocked the door as people shouted. <\/p>\n

In the video, a stunned man can be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear from the footage what happened next, but Garcia said an agent lunged toward him and pushed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first reaction was to like push his hand off,\u201d he recalled. Then, he said, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his back and threw his phone. <\/p>\n

The agent brought him to the ground and three other agents jumped in, Garcia said<\/p>\n

\u201cGet the f\u2014 down sir\u201d and \u201cgive me your f\u2014 hand. You want it, you got it, sir, you f\u2014 got it. You want to go to jail, fine. You got it,\u201d an agent can be heard saying in the video.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wanted it, you got it,\u201d the man yelled.<\/p>\n

An agent handcuffed him so hard \u201cthat there was no circulation running to my fingers,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n

Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat moment, I thought I could probably die here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The agent put Garcia\u2019s phone back in his pocket. The recording kept running.<\/p>\n

As Garcia was put into a vehicle, his video captured an agent twice saying: \u201cI\u2019ve got one back here.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cYou got one what?\u201d Garcia shot back. \u201cYou got one what?\u201d <\/p>\n

He said an agent told him in broken Spanish to \u201cwait here,\u2019 though it could not be heard on the video. <\/p>\n

\u201cI f\u2014 speak English, you f\u2014 dumbass,\u201d he clearly shouts back. <\/p>\n

No agent asked if he was an American citizen, he said. Nobody asked for identification. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey assumed that I was undocumented,\u201d he said later in an interview. <\/p>\n

The video ends after about four minutes, while he is waiting in the van.<\/p>\n

Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed.<\/p>\n

They were so tight, his hands began to swell. <\/p>\n

The agents switched him to handcuffs that looked like shoelaces. They took off around a corner, stopped to shuffle him into another van and sped off down the 101 Freeway. <\/p>\n

\u201cI smeared my blood in their seat,\u201d he said. And he thought, \u201cThey\u2019re going to remember me.\u201d<\/p>\n

With him in the van was a Mexican man, face downcast, who said his wife was six months pregnant. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife told me not to go to work today,\u201d the man said. \u201cSomething doesn\u2019t feel right,\u201d he said she told him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt broke my heart,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cI wish he was the one who got away when they were trying to grab me.\u201d<\/p>\n

On what he described as a ramp going into Dodger stadium near Lot K<\/a>, Garcia was taken out of the car and told to sit on the asphalt as agents shuffled detainees into different vans and processed them for about an hour. A woman ran his background for criminal offenses. <\/p>\n

It felt surreal and enraging. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey were trying to build some sort of case,\u201d Garcia said. He told The Times he was arrested at 17 for driving without a license. <\/p>\n

After they transported him, agents later fingerprinted him and tried to interrogate him. <\/p>\n

The agent said they wanted to \u201ctake your side of the story.\u201d <\/p>\n

Garcia declined.<\/p>\n

He said he overheard an agent tell someone, \u201cTrump is really working us.\u201d<\/p>\n

While held at a downtown detention facility, he met Adrian Martinez. <\/p>\n

Martinez, a 20-year-old Walmart worker and also a U.S. citizen, had been arrested on Tuesday<\/a> while he tried to stop the arrest of a man who cleaned a shopping center in Pico Rivera. The two spoke for about 10 minutes, as Martinez waited to go to court.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re the Walmart kid, right?\u201d he asked him.<\/p>\n

Garcia told him what had unfolded outside the Home Depot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what happened to me,\u201d he said Martinez told him. \u201cThey were bullying this older guy. I didn\u2019t like that so I went and confronted them and they put their hands on me and I pushed their hands off.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted a photo of Martinez on X and said he \u201cwas arrested for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent in the face after he attempted to impede their immigration enforcement operation.\u201d Martinez was charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to impede a federal officer.<\/p>\n

The complaint makes no reference to a punch, but alleges that Martinez blocked agents\u2019 vehicles with his car and then later a trash can.<\/p>\n

\u201cA complaint generally contains one charge and does not include the full scope of a defendant\u2019s conduct, or the evidence that will be presented at trial,\u201d said Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in L.A. \u201cConsidering this is an active case, we will not be providing further comments outside of court proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinez was released Friday on a $5,000 bond.<\/p>\n

\u201cU.S. Attorney Essayli and U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino outrageously alleged that Adrian assaulted a federal agent,\u201d Martinez\u2019s attorneys said in a statement. \u201cHowever he has not been charged with an assault charge because he didn\u2019t assault anyone, and the evidence of that is clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia said his cellmate was worried about these protests. He asked, \u201cDon\u2019t you think the protesters who are out there destroying property, rioters, is a bad look?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRioting is the language of the unheard,\u201d he said, riffing on a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2322,2330,2332,2329,2334,2323,2327,51,2321,2333,2089,2324,50,2331,52,2326,2328,2325],"class_list":{"0":"post-1693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-agent","9":"tag-border-patrol","10":"tag-car","11":"tag-criminal-complaint","12":"tag-enforcement-operation","13":"tag-garcia","14":"tag-hand","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-home-depot","17":"tag-homeland-security-official","18":"tag-man","19":"tag-martinez","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-phone","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-u-s-attorney","24":"tag-van","25":"tag-video-show"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114720103801826606","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693","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=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}