Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona congressperson, said she was “sprayed in the face” during a protest against a federal immigration raid at a Mexican restaurant in Tucson on Friday.
In a video filmed after the incident, Grijalva said she joined a group of protesters assembled outside Taco Giro, a “small mom-and-pop” restaurant in Tucson Grijalva said she visits weekly. By the time she arrived, she said, the protesters had “stopped” a squadron of dozens of mostly masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
The protesters, Grijalva said, were “afraid that they were taking people without due process”.
A second video shared by Grijalva’s official account on social media shows a chaotic standoff between federal agents in tactical gear and protesters carrying anti-ICE signs. In the footage, Grijalva, a progressive Democratic representative, who has been sharply critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, can be seen approaching the officers, as an agent sprays an orange chemical in the direction of the protesters alongside her. She then urges the officers to “calm down” and “get out” as she coughs. The agent holding a spray can orders the group to “get out of the way” as protestors yell.
In a video clip taken from another angle, a projectile lands behind Grijalva, producing a cloud at the her feet as she steps toward an officer.
“When I presented myself as a Member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed aside and pepper sprayed,” she wrote.
In a statement, DHS said immigration agents’ actions were not aimed at the representative.
“If her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel,” the DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said. “But they’re not true. She wasn’t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who was pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement.”
McLaughlin said two law enforcement officers were “seriously injured” during the clash.
“Presenting one’s self as a ‘Member of Congress’ doesn’t give you the right to obstruct law enforcement,” she added, promising “more information forthcoming”.
In a statement, Fernando Burgos, an ICE spokesperson, said special agents as well as officers from the agency’s homeland security investigations were “executing 16 search warrants” across southern Arizona as part of a “years-long investigation into immigration and tax violations”. Multiple individuals were taken into custody during the operation, he said.
In a video filmed shortly after the incident, Grijalva, still coughing, says she arrived on the scene because she believed it was “important for me to have eyes on what’s happening here”.
“I literally was not being aggressive, I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she said, adding: “I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else.”
Grijalva and other local officials praised the Tucson police department for helping to calm the situation.
In a joint statement, Regina Romero, the Tucson mayor and Lane Santa Cruz, the vice-mayor, both Democrats, said the enforcement operation in Tucson had “rapidly escalated into violence against the public”.
“Their disproportionate use of force, smoke grenades and pepper balls against the public, including our own Representative Adelita Grijalva, is not justified and cannot be tolerated,” they wrote, encouraging bystanders to share video and photographs of the incident for “potential investigation and follow-up”.
Arizona Democrats rallied around Grijalva. The representative Greg Stanton denounced the incident as “outrageous” while the representative Yassamin Ansari called it “absolutely unacceptable”. Senator Ruben Gallego wrote: “Pepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period.”
At a town hall in Tucson later that day, senator Mark Kelly called it “horrific”.
Grijalva was elected to Congress in September, winning a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of her father, the late representative Raúl Grijalva. However, she was not sworn in as a member of Congress until last month, after the House returned from a weeks-long recess during the federal government shutdown.
“If federal agents are brazen enough to fire pellets directly at a Member of Congress,” Grijalva wrote on Friday, “imagine how they behave when encountering defenseless members of our community.”
