Notices were posted across Silver Lake Friday, warning the community of the presence of federal agents after a man was detained outside his home.<\/p>\n
Video shared with NBC4 from the incident on Jan. 7 shows several masked agents struggling to detain the man who family identified as 64-year-old Rafael Vela.<\/p>\n
Vela managed to get to the doorstep of his home before being detained and taken in an unmarked car.<\/p>\n
“They went up the stairs and caught my godfather and took him away,” recounted Vela’s goddaughter, Jenny Vargas.<\/p>\n
Vela is heard on video shouting, “Vivian!” the name of his partner for 30 years, as he is being taken away.<\/p>\n
“Vivian, Vivian! That\u2019s what he calls me in Spanish, Vivian. But it was too late,” said Vivian Argueyo.<\/p>\n
Neighbors described Vela as a friendly man who picked up recyclables and did small jobs in the community. Several witnesses express their frustration about how the arrest took place.<\/p>\n
“To have three people on one man over 60 years old is ridiculous,” said witness Lilly Graves. “I\u2019m sure he was in pain and they were on top of him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 64-year-old was born in El Salvador and has been in the U.S. for over 40 years. Vela thought he had a permanent resident status, but a letter found later confirms he does not, something he apparently did not understand, according to his family.<\/p>\n
“I don’t understand why they did that. They just came here to this address, why?” said Vargas.<\/p>\n
In August last year, Vela was arrested over a dispute with an acquaintance, according to Vargas. Information from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department shows he was released without charges.<\/p>\n
“It’s terrible to watch someone while you feel helpless. There’s nothing else to do but record it and tell the community ice was here,” said Graves.<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Vela’s case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Notices were posted across Silver Lake Friday, warning the community of the presence of federal agents after a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":508890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,409,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-508889","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-immigration","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115877444912810672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508889","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=508889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}