A Massachusetts family says federal immigration agents used their 5-year-old autistic daughter as leverage to pressure her father into surrendering during an attempted arrest outside their home.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), however, disputes the family’s account, calling the child’s brief separation a rescue effort.
The incident unfolded last Tuesday, Sept 23, in Leominster, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents attempted to take Edward Hip Mejia, a Guatemalan immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for roughly 25 years, into custody.
A video obtained by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra shows the couple’s daughter sitting beside an SUV with three ICE agents nearby, while her mother pleads for her return.
“They took my daughter, she’s 5 years old. She has autism spectrum. Give me my daughter back,” the mother is heard saying in the video.
According to Mejia’s wife, her husband called her just before the encounter, saying he feared he was being followed. She said he drove home, ran into the house, and their daughter ended up outside with the agents.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin offered a starkly different version of events, saying Mejia refused to pull over when agents activated their emergency lights, drove back to his home, and “abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car.”
McLaughlin added:
“Officers helped rescue the child and called local police to report the abandonment.”
The video, however, appears to capture agents attempting to engage Mejia from outside the home, with one agent heard asking, “Is that your daughter? Come here so I can see those IDs.”
Local police later arrived, retrieved the child, and returned her safely to her family. She is reportedly doing well.
Two days later, ICE agents returned and arrested Mejia, according to his wife. He is now being held at an ICE detention center in Plymouth.
“Officers came out behind my house, arrested him, took him away. We are not criminals,” she told Telemundo.
The case has sparked outrage among immigrant rights advocates, who say the episode highlights the human cost of aggressive immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump’s crackdown.
The family insists Mejia has no criminal history and that their U.S.-born children are being traumatized by his detention. Advocates warn that incidents like this erode community trust and leave vulnerable children in distress.
As of now, ICE has not disclosed further details about Mejia’s case, and the Leominster Police Department has not responded to media requests for comment.
