Kenia Guerrero was driving to church on Mother’s Day with her husband and their three young children when masked agents in unmarked cars surrounded them on the streets of a Boston suburb.
In footage captured on bystander video, the officers smashed her car windows and dragged Daniel Flores Martinez from the passenger seat and slammed him on the ground while his wife and children screamed in terror.
The incident, which unfolded within minutes, is now at the center of a federal lawsuit against Donald Trump’s administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, who are accused of illegally deploying “smash and grab” tactics to target immigrants and their families, including Guerrero, who is a U.S. citizen.
“We were getting ready to celebrate Mother’s Day. By afternoon, my children were crying, asking why masked men broke into our car and took their father away,” Guerrero said in a statement shared with The Independent Thursday, just hours before DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was fired by President Donald Trump.
“I told them I didn’t know,” she said. “No mother should ever have to say that. This wasn't justice. This was violence. And my children will never forget what they saw.”
On May 11, Flores Martinez and his 3-year-old noticed two unmarked cars in their neighborhood, according to the lawsuit.
The family — including children ages 3, 12 and 14 and their grandmother — headed to church at 11:30 a.m. The children are all U.S. citizens.
Several unmarked cars surrounded them a few blocks from their home, and about five armed, plain-clothes agents approached the vehicle on both sides, according to video of the scene. None of the agents identified themselves or told the family what agency they worked for, according to the lawsuit.
Agents then began asking the family about their identities and signaled for Flores Martinez, who was sitting in the passenger seat, to roll down his window. Agents then threatened to break the glass while Guerrero pleaded with the agents against using violence, telling them that three children were in the vehicle, according to the lawsuit.
Video shows officers breaking the passenger side window.
Agents then “aggressively yanked” Flores out of the car, brought him to the ground, and put him in handcuffs, according to the lawsuit. Flores did not resist and told the agents that he was not resisting, lawyers said.
“Mrs. Guerrero cried out: ‘Why are you doing this with my children here?!’” the lawsuit states.
“Aren’t you a mother?” she told a female officer, according to the lawsuit.
When Guerrero tried to get out of the car to see what was happening to Flores Martinez, she was “restrained against her vehicle” by another officer and “was forced to witness the other ICE officers brutalize her husband,” according to the lawsuit.
The children — one of whom is diagnosed with epilepsy, hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy — were “forced to witness” their father being attacked, lawyers wrote.
ICE “disappeared” Florez Martinez into unmarked cars, and the family only learned later that he was moved to an ICE detention center, according to the lawsuit.
The family alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as false imprisonment, assault and battery and seeks compensatory damages.
The complaint from Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights on behalf of Guerrero and her family is among a wave of lawsuits alleging unlawful arrests and abuse. The arrest of Flores Martinez was among nearly 1,500 in Massachusetts that month.
“There is no justification for what happened to the Guerrero family,” said Mirian Albert, senior attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights. “This was not enforcement. It was state-sanctioned cruelty, unleashed on a family without warning, without cause, and without conscience. The government must answer for the trauma it inflicts on children.”
The incident “was not the result of isolated or rogue misconduct” but reflects a “pattern and practice sanctioned and ratified by ICE leadership,” according to the lawsuit. “This is a central feature of ICE’s enforcement regime.”
The Independent has requested comment from Homeland Security.
