Flagstaff activists say agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained a man outside his Flagstaff apartment Wednesday morning.
It’s the first known ICE operation in the city since the agency opened a local field office earlier this year.
Immigration advocates say the 34-year-old Mexican national was preparing to take his two children to school when agents approached him near his apartment on East Cortland Boulevard.
They detained him and took the man to Phoenix shortly after.
KNAU has opted not to use the family’s names over safety concerns.
The arrest comes as the Trump administration continues to crackdown on undocumented immigration across the country.
The family of the detained man has been in Flagstaff for at least two years, says Maria Castillo Rincon, a spokesperson for the family.
Photos posted to social media show law enforcement standing around several SUVs in the apartment’s parking lot Wednesday morning.
“[Agents] approached him as he was getting into the vehicle to warm up the vehicle to take the children to school. The children were not in the vehicle yet,” Castillo Rincon says. “So they saw from the window that the father was being handcuffed and taken and put in a vehicle by these ICE agents.”
Castillo Rincon says the family had requested asylum in the U.S. after fleeing violence in Mexico. But a judge denied their application earlier this summer and issued a deportation notice.
Castillo Rincon says after ICE detained the man they contacted his wife, a 32-year-old Mexican national.
“ICE had called the wife and had told the wife, if she didn't go to Phoenix and turn herself in, then they were going to come in and raid her home,” she says. “The wife's nephew took her to Phoenix, and she and her children turned themselves in.”
The woman and her children, a 14-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl, drove to Phoenix later on Wednesday to self-deport.
Castillo Rincon says the family believes ICE was targeting the family based on their deportation order and that agents originally set out to detain another family member in Flagstaff.
But those plans changed when the agents instead encountered the 34-year-old man. ICE has not confirmed any information about the operation or who their target was and did not respond to KNAU’s request for comment.
Castillo Rincon says other members of the family are planning to self-deport following Wednesday's events.
Castillo Rincon, who also works with the immigrant advocacy organization Keep Flagstaff Together, says she worries the ICE arrest could be the first of many in Flagstaff.
She says many mixed-status families, in which some family members are citizens or have legal status while other family members do not, could be impacted.
“I'm very concerned because, what they told us that they're going to do, they're doing. They told us that they are going to come in to pick up people that have deportation orders, and that's what they're doing,” Castillo Rincon says. “I’m very, very worried, not only worried for the persons that are undocumented, but for the people that are citizens that are legally here.”
In a video taken by Flagstaff resident Jeff Duncan and later shared to social media by Keep Flagstaff Together, ICE agents were seen staging in a parking lot at Fort Tuthill County Park in Flagstaff at about 7 a.m. Wednesday.
“We're ICE officers,” an agent says in the video. “We're conducting a law enforcement operation.”
“It was really uncomfortable to see them,” Duncan tells KNAU. “I don't think they should be here. I don't think they should be in any town. I don't think they're real officers. I don't think they have the training or the authority, but they have the administration that doesn't give a d*mn about any of us. So, it just makes me sad.”
In a post to Facebook, Coconino County Supervisor Jeronimo Vasquez said the county was not aware ICE agents had utilized the county lot.
Flagstaff Police spokesperson Jerry Rintala said the department was only made aware of ICE’s actions through social media posts and reports by the public after it occurred.
“The Flagstaff Police Department was not involved in any capacity with any ICE operation in the area. As a practice, we do not typically comment on other agencies’ activities or operations. Additionally, ICE does not generally provide us advance notice before conducting such operations,” Rintala wrote in an email to KNAU.
