Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents reportedly stole a teenage boy’s phone — and then seemingly pawned it afterwards for cash.
That detail comes from alarming new reporting from ProPublica that documents more than forty cases of ICE agents putting civilians in chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing.
One of these civilians was tenth grader Arnoldo Bazan, who was getting McDonald’s with his father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, when they were pulled over by masked agents. According to Arnoldo, after several agents violently tackled his father — who is undocumented — to the ground, with one pressing a knee into his neck, another put the 16-year-old in a suffocating chokehold. When he told the agent that he was a citizen and a minor, the agent didn’t stop.
“I started screaming with everything I had, because I couldn’t even breathe,” Arnoldo told ProPublica. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die.”
Arnoldo took footage of the encounter, but his phone was confiscated after he was taken into custody. Later, when he used the Find My feature to track down his device, it led him to a vending machine for used electronics several miles away and near an ICE detention center, according to the reporting. Someone — we can only guess who — had apparently sold Arnoldo’s phone after ICE had confiscated it.
The idea of ICE stealing and then selling somebody’s phone is jarring.
“Not the key part of this story, obviously,” wrote tech journalist Mike Masnick in response, “but they *sold* his phone?”
“Yes,” ProPublica clarified, writing that “immigration agents not only took Arnoldo’s phone, the 10th grader had to use Find My Phone to locate it — in a vending machine for used electronics, close to an ICE detention center.”
Arnoldo’s story comes after the killing of a woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week becoming a flashpoint for ICE’s increasingly visible presence in several US cities, where they have brutalized civilians, wantonly detained both citizens and non-citizens alike, and clashed with onlookers and protestors. The woman, 37-year-old Renee Good, was shot by veteran ICE agent Jonathan Ross in her car after Good began turning her vehicle away from the officer. Moments after gunning her down, the agent can be heard calling Good a “f**king b**ch.”
President Trump defended the actions and accused Good of behaving “horribly,” and even asserted that she didn’t simply try to run the agent over, but had actually done so, despite every available shred of video evidence to the contrary.
After being detained and released by ICE, Arnoldo’s family took him to Texas Children’s Hospital, where staff moved him to a trauma unit after identifying signs of the chokehold, according to ProPublica. Records show that doctors ordered dozens of CT scans and x-rays, including for his head, neck, and spine. His family says that the agents threatened to charge Arnoldo with assaulting an officer if his dad didn’t agree to be deported. The father is now in Mexico.
More on ICE: ICE Is Now Wandering the Streets, Scanning People’s Faces to Check If They’re Citizens
