Trump immigration crackdown turns rogue as officials smash window, detain ’wrong person’ again: Video

Amid US President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents reportedly detained a Guatemalan national in New Bedford on Monday, despite his claim of having no criminal record. A newly released video, recorded by his wife and shared with NewsCenter 5 by his attorney, captures the moment agents smashed Juan Francisco Mendez's car window to take him into custody.

His lawyer claims that officals took the wrong person, mistaking her client for someone else. "They said they were looking for a certain individual, by a different name," “I said that's not my client... I know my client's history, that is not him,” CBS news quoted him as saying.

Mendez has been living in the United States for two years and has a pending asylum application, which has not yet been approved. His wife, however, has already been granted asylum.

The couple was sitting in their car on Monday when ICE agents approached and took Mendez into custody. Mendez and his wife told NewsCenter 5 that they were waiting for their lawyer to arrive when ICE agents shattered the car window.

Mendez is currently being held at a facility in New Hampshire.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia's ‘Wrongful Deportation’
 

In a similar incident, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old man from El Salvador who had lived in the United States for 14 years, was deported under the Trump administration in what has now been described as an “administrative error.” Garcia had entered the U.S. illegally in 2011, worked in construction, and built a life with his wife and children.

In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that Garcia could not be returned to El Salvador due to credible threats from a local gang targeting his family’s pupusa business. However, he could be deported to another country. Despite this ruling, Garcia was arrested in March this year after Trump-era officials accused him of being an MS-13 gang member based on unnamed “reliable sources.”

He was deported to El Salvador, where he was immediately placed in the CECOT mega prison. The Trump administration later acknowledged the deportation as an administrative mistake. Garcia and his family filed a lawsuit, and U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled the deportation illegal, ordering his return by March 31.

However, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele refused to send him back, stating that doing so would be akin to “smuggling a terrorist” into the United States. Bukele maintained he lacked the authority to return Garcia, leaving him trapped between two governments unwilling to take responsibility.