A Fullerton police officer intervened when he saw a plainclothes man pointing a gun at a female driver on a busy Santa Ana street. The man later identified himself as an immigration agent and accused the driver of “following” him during an “operation,” a refrain heard increasingly as officers shove people recording their movements.
Sunday's brief but tense encounter, partially captured on video, is raising concerns as it joins a growing list of cases of masked and plainclothes officers being mistaken for criminals and vice versa.
The officer had just dropped off an inmate at the Orange County Jail and was returning to Fullerton when he noticed a man getting out of a vehicle at an intersection and pointing his gun at the driver behind him, according to a statement from the Fullerton Police Department.
“The officer immediately stopped to assist, without knowing the identity of the armed man or the circumstances unfolding in front of him,” according to the statement.
After the officer identified himself, the officer told him he “couldn't help someone follow him or record him if no crime had occurred, and that local police were on the way.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The FBI recently issued a memo suggesting that agents clearly identify themselves while in the field after a series of incidents in which masked criminals posing as immigration agents robbed and kidnapped victims.
In a video posted on social media by local journalist @izzymirez and apparently taken from the driver in Santa Ana, a bald man wearing sunglasses, a green t-shirt, and black jeans with his license plate on it walks toward the driver with a gun in his hand. He points toward the ground as he walks toward the police officer who has stopped next to the driver.
“What are you doing?” says the woman recording. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“Are you serious right now?” he said, before panning to show a Fullerton police vehicle. “And now these police officers are helping them.”
The agent can be seen talking to an officer.
“I'm just driving,” he said.
“You are following us, ma'am, we are carrying out an operation,” says the agent.
“You're following me,” she replies.
“I thought cops aren’t supposed to collaborate with ICE, what the fuck are you doing?”
“They can't be following us like this,” the ICE officer shouts.
“I live here,” the woman shouted.
someone in the street shouts “la migra.”
“It's okay to point your gun at a woman, what the fuck?” the woman says.
The scene mirrors others across the country as immigration agents confront protesters and people filming and local police become involved in the confrontations.
Last month, a U.S. congressional candidate said Customs and Border Patrol agents in Chicago, where the most intense crackdown has occurred, surrounded his vehicle, brandished a gun and harassed him as he tried to warn neighbors of their presence.
In Southern California last month, three women were charged with illegally “doxxing” a U.S. Customs and Immigration agent after, according to the indictment, the women followed an ICE agent from the federal building at 300 North Los Angeles Street in downtown Los Angeles to the agent's residence in Baldwin Park.
