A local immigration group has filed a federal complaint against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on behalf of a Chelsea family for the violent arrest of their mother. Hilda Ramirez Sanan is a legal permanent resident who was detained in September.
“Everything has changed,” Ramirez Sanan said of life for her and her children after her arrest. “We are suffering a trauma, and we’re not ourselves. We have suffered psychologically, and haven’t been able to get over it.”
On Sept. 26, Ramirez Sanan, 50, was accompanying a family member to a court hearing in Chelsea with her son in the backseat. A group of multiple unmarked vehicles surrounded and blocked Ramirez Sanan’s car two blocks from the courthouse, and eight armed and masked officers surrounded the car.
In a video of the incident, masked agents tell Ramirez Sanan, a green card holder, to get out of the car and she refuses. The agents eventually smash the car glass, pull Ramirez Sanan out and forcibly restrain her.
They also unbuckled the seat belt and pulled her 13-year-old, who has autism, out of the car, asking him about his legal status. When Ramirez Sanan’s eldest daughter arrived at the scene, she was physically blocked from talking to her mother and brother. She’s shown in another video being kept away.
“ICE’s treatment of the Ramirez Sanan family was not just illegal, it was despicable,” said Jillian Lenson, an attorney for Lawyers for Civil Rights, which filed the complaint. “ICE illegally stopped and violently restrained the family, arrested a 50-year-old mother who has legal status directly in front of her terrified children, both of whom are U.S. citizens and one who has a serious disability.”
The son, who has trouble communicating verbally, witnessed the entire arrest. Agents grabbed him by the shoulder and kept him against the fence, his mother said.
“They were questioning him, threatening to arrest him if he didn’t answer,” said Lenson.
According to the complaint, one of the agents kicked Ramirez Sanan and slammed her face first on the ground as they continued to twist her arms to handcuff her. “Her legs gave out because she was in so much pain,” Lenson said. “The whole time she was crying out that she was in pain and that she had legal status and even as her legs gave out they continued to drag her and tried to force her into the vehicle.”
Local authorities from the Chelsea police and fire departments arrived on the scene and requested that ICE agents check Ramirez Sanan’s identification and green card. At that point, ICE did review her identification and released Ramirez Sanan from custody.
An ambulance then took her and her children to a hospital emergency room for further medical evaluation.
The police department, city and fire department didn’t reply to a request for comment about the situation. ICE did not immediately return a request for comment.
“My son feels sad. He’s afraid to leave, afraid to get into the car, the same car, saying, ‘I don’t know if those people will come back and hurt you, Mom,’” Ramirez Sanan said. “He gets up from nightmares screaming, ‘Don’t kill Mom, don’t do it,’ and sometimes we have to wake him up.”
The complaint is filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which lets people sue the government for injuries caused by federal employees acting negligently or improperly within their jobs. Lenson said the tort claim is filed on constitutional grounds and for violating the agency’s own protocols and standards.
“ICE violated the family’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights by illegally seizing and detaining them and violating their liberty throughout the entire interaction,” she said.
The Department of Homeland Security has six months to respond to the complaint. If they don’t respond, the family can pursue federal litigation.
