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With federal agents conducting more immigration-related arrests throughout Southern California, residents have been active too, capturing on camera those detentions in their communities. LAist cannot offer legal counsel, but we have turned to civil rights experts for guidance on how to document these detentions safely and effectively.
Video footage can be used to keep government employees accountable. Earlier this month, for instance, Border Patrol officers detained a 20-year-old U.S. citizen, and the federal government later claimed he was arrested for punching officers. But after watching video footage,. Since then, agents in L.A. County have made dozens of arrests, in part by concentrating on places that are easily accessible, including parking lots and carwashes.With federal agents conducting more immigration-related arrests throughout Southern California, residents have been active too, capturing on camera those detentions in their communities — by Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for First Amendment rights at the ACLU of Southern California, said community members have a constitutional right to record government officials engaging in public duties: “Doesn’t matter if it’s LAPD, the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, ICE or Border Patrol.”LAist cannot offer legal counsel, but we have turned to civil rights experts for guidance about how to document these detentions safely and effectively.intensified in southeastern L.A. County, local resident Eric Eztli has been monitoring Home Depot parking lots and car washes. He keeps an eye out for suspicious vehicles, as well as for people who, in his view, are racially profiling and unfairly detaining his community members. Earlier this week, Eztli went to a Home Depot in Huntington Park, bearing witness as men in sage green uniforms, with Border Patrol patches affixed to their sleeves, chased a day laborer. The agents’ faces were covered.One of the agents tackles the day laborer to the ground. Then, three agents hold down the day laborer and handcuff him. As they tie his arms behind his back, one agent pushes the day laborer’s face into the dirt, first with his hand, then with his knee. Eztli repeatedly asks the day laborer for his name. The man manages to say “Jorge” before agents drag him away. “Jorge what?” Eztli shouts after him, trying to get his last name. As the agents’ unmarked vehicles pulled away from the parking lot, Eztli recorded their license plate numbers. The scene hurt to watch, he told LAist, but he wanted to gather as many details as he could. Some of it might be of use to Jorge.Eztli also meant to get a contact number so he could reach out to Jorge’s family and let them know he’d been detained. Full names and birth dates are also required to search for people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s inmate locator system. “I think it's important for the community to exercise their right to record and make sure that are being held accountable,” Eztli added. “But it's hard because they are hiding behind anonymity, so they can do whatever they want — that's why it feels so scary.”, a nonprofit devoted to using video evidence to expose injustice, recommends gathering images of any documents that agents present, including warrants. Community members can also record badges, weapons and uniforms. Video of the context in which detention takes place — including street signs, landmarks and any cameras that might be affixed to nearby buildings — can be used to authenticate the footage and corroborate community members’ experiences.How far away must community members be while recording interactions between agents and detainees? “There's no tape measure rule,” Eliasberg said. “You have a right to record, and you have a right to be pretty close. You just can't get in the way so much that you're interfering with what the officer's trying to do.” Eliasberg also noted that there may be public safety reasons for law enforcement to close off an area, including crime scenes and disaster zones. But “if the agents tell you to stop filming, you can tell them: ‘I am exercising my right to document this arrest,” a Witness instructional video adds. And if agents ask you to step back, “document yourself complying.”“The public has a right to ask: ‘Who are you? What is your name?’” he added. “They may not get an answer, but they have an absolute right to ask that question.” If community members don’t get answers, Eliasberg said, “trying to take a photograph of the badge to see the name is a perfectly appropriate response.”At the ACLU of Southern California, he added, “we are hearing stories all the time where people are saying: ‘I have no idea what happened to my family member.’ I mean, literally, they've been snatched off the street, or they don't even know. They just don't come home one night.”Community members also have the right to tell people who are being arrested that they have rights, Eliasberg said. This includes the right to remain silent and not to sign any documents.What if officers try to take my phone? Witness and Eliasberg emphasized that agents cannot take your phone if you're simply trying to record what's happening. They also can’t force you to delete your footage. But they may try anyway. To help create a barrier, Witness recommends that community members lock their phones with a passcode, which are protected under the Fifth Amendment. “The problem,” Eliasberg said, “is we don't necessarily have the resources to help everybody.”The morning of June 17, Oscar Preciado went to a Walmart in Pico Rivera to pick up merchandise for his work as an Instacart shopper. That day, 20-year-old Adrian Martinez was detained and taken by Border Patrol — even though he’s a U.S. citizen.In a conversation with LAist, Preciado said he and other community members were recording the agents’ vehicles and license plates when he noticed that “they were throwing someone to the ground.”“It was horrifying to witness,” he added. “The kid weighs 110 pounds, maybe, and he was being thrown around by these big guys.”
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