The Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies are taking a toll on more than just the undocumented aliens they are targeting.
On Sunday, Cary López Alvarado, an American citizen born in Los Angeles who is nine months pregnant, was hospitalized after being released from federal custody one week before her due date. López Alvarado said she started experiencing sharp pains in her abdomen after she lost her balance when agents “shoved her” while attempting to arrest her undocumented coworkers. “I crouched down and held my belly, because I was scared they would hurt me,” she told Telemundo 52, NBC’s sister station in Los Angeles.
López Alvarado was detained after attempting to block two masked Border Patrol agents from entering her place of work without a warrant. While performing maintenance work in a building in Hawthorne, California, on Sunday, she and her cousin—also an American citizen—opened the parking gate to allow López Alvarado’s partner, Brian Najera, and another co-worker to enter. Najera and the co-worker—who are both undocumented—had been followed in a marked U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle. López Alvarado blocked the agents from entering the gated parking lot and captured her interactions with them on video while telling the agents: “I’m going to need you guys to leave. This is private property.”
Agents said the parking wasn’t private property and asked López Alvarado to either show documentation that she owned the property or move out of the way. When she refused to move, the agents forced her out of the way, causing her to lose her balance. She, along with her husband, co-worker, and cousin, were subsequently arrested, during which time López Alvarado told agents her due date was June 17. “‘OK, your baby is going to be born here, but you’re from Mexico, right?’ And I told them no,” she said on NBC News. “I was born here.”
López Alvarado was released later that day and told by agents they would contact her at a later date about obstruction allegations.
In an email sent to NBC News, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said, “Cary Lopez was arrested because she obstructed federal law enforcement by blocking access to a car that had two Guatemalan illegal aliens in it.” She also noted that “ICE enforcement officers are facing a 413% increase in assaults,” which McLaughlin says is “disgraceful.”
This incident illustrates how quickly interactions with federal agents can become complicated. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures where there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Whether a parking lot is considered private, and therefore requires either a valid warrant or permission for authorities to enter, depends on multiple factors. Although López Alvarado believed she was within her rights to deny federal immigration authorities entrance to a gated parking lot on private property without a judicial warrant, agents believed differently.
Trump’s onslaught of immigration enforcement has raised many questions regarding due process for undocumented people living in the United States. Now, the same questions are being raised for American citizens.
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