ICE agents used a 5-year-old girl as a hostage in an attempt to arrest her father in Massachusetts, according to their family.
Video shows a group of immigration agents surrounding the girl outside a home in Leominster and negotiating with a man inside.
“Is that your daughter? Come here so I can see those IDs,” one agent says in the video, obtained Monday by local Telemundo affiliate WNEU.
“They took my daughter, she’s 5 years old. She has autism spectrum,” a woman says in Spanish in the video. “Give me my daughter back.”
Edward Hip, a Guatemalan man who has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, was inside the house with his wife, she told the station. The couple have two children who were born in the U.S.
Hip was driving with his daughter when he noticed the agents following him, his wife told WNEU. She said he got home and sprinted out of the car, so the agents surrounded his daughter.
“They threatened us, saying that if we didn’t open the door within 15 minutes, they would enter the house,” Hip’s wife told the station.
The couple called local police who arrived, picked up the child and brought her to her family, the station reported. However, ICE agents returned two days later and arrested Hip, hauling him off to a holding facility in Plymouth.
ICE and the local cops have not publicly commented on the incident, which occurred on Sept. 16.
