US marine veteran says he feels ‘betrayed’ after father arrested by Ice agents

A US marine veteran has described feeling “betrayed” after Trump administration immigration agents beat and arrested his father at his landscaping job, the latest example of immigrant agents targeting the family members of American military personnel with no criminal records.

In an interview Monday with CNN, Alejandro Barranco recounted how his father, Narciso Barranco, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents two days earlier while doing landscaping at an International House of Pancakes (IHop) restaurant in Santa Ana, California.

Narciso Barranco moved to the US from Mexico without documentation in the 1990s and has no criminal record, Alejandro Barranco told CNN.

“He was always a good dad,” he said. “He always made sure we had food on the table. He always taught us to respect, to love our country, to always give back.”

The Barrancos’ plight is the latest example to contradict Donald Trump’s claims that his immigration crackdown has prioritized targeting dangerous criminals.

Another US marine veteran, Adrian Clouatre, went public recently about how Ice agents detained his wife, Paola, despite the fact that the couple have a 2-year old son and a 3-month-old daughter who is still breastfeeding. The 25-year-old Paola Clouatre was brought to the US by her mother while seeking asylum more than a decade ago, and had applied for legal permanent residence, her husband told the Associated Press.

The US marines have promoted enlistment as protection for family members lacking legal status. But Adrian Clouatre said Paola was detained at a late May appointment pertaining to her green card application process, with officials claiming that she was subject to a deportation order because of her mother’s failure to appear at an immigration hearing in 2018.

Being in the US without legal status is a civil violation, not a criminal offense. Nonetheless, recent data shows people with no criminal history have been increasingly targeted by immigration agents, despite the Trump administration’s claims that it is mainly focused on criminals with adjudicated final orders of removal.

In Narciso Barranco’s case, video obtained by CNN of his arrest showed several masked men in tactical gear subduing him against the ground as well as repeatedly striking his head and neck. The men – clad in vests reading “US border patrol police” – held Barranco’s arms behind his back and forced him into an unmarked vehicle.

His son said Barranco later called him from a detention facility and asked him to collect his landscaping tools and finish the job he was on when arrested. He told the AP that his father was crying during the call, saying he was in a lot of pain.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, gave a statement to CNN that accused Barranco of twice trying to swing “a weed whacker directly at an agent’s face”. The agency published a video online of Barranco holding a weed whacker, and McLaughlin also said Barranco “fled through a busy intersection” and “refused to comply” with agents’ commands.

Alejandro Barranco said he believed his father had simply run upon being frightened by “masked men” who wielded “big guns” and didn’t “identify themselves”.

“He just got scared,” he said to CNN, adding to AP: “It’s uncalled for, not appropriate or professional in the way they handled that situation.”

Regarding the video, he said: “It looks like he’s putting up resistance on the ground but that’s a natural human reaction, and I think anybody would do that to defend themselves when they are being beaten.”

Barranco told CNN his father had been afraid of being arrested over his immigration status, but kept going to work because he felt the need “to provide for himself” and his family.

Alejandro Barranco’s LinkedIn says he became a mechanical engineer for the US marines in October 2019. He told CNN that he served for four years and that his two brothers were active-duty marines.

“We joined the Marine Corps because we love our country and want to give back,” he told AP, adding to CNN: “It’s hard. We feel hurt. We feel betrayed.”