Jose Castro should have been at work on July 30th.
Instead, he and his family have spent every day since that Wednesday trapped in their home, following several full days of stalking and harassment from alleged Border Patrol agents, in what could be a violation of the temporary restraining order filed against the Department of Homeland Security.
Castro was on his way to work when several vehicles blocked his path on the road near his home. Another car struck his car from behind, and he found himself swarmed. He panicked, managed to make a U-turn despite being trapped, and sped back home as the vehicles chased him into the parking lot of his apartment complex. Video footage from security cameras outside his home shows him escaping into his house with barely a second to spare.
Video footage shared by the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice shows two unmasked men dressed in law enforcement attire attempting to kick down his door.
“If they had a warrant to go into his house, they could have just gone in there, but it’s clear to us that there is no warrant, which signals that they could be violating the judge’s order of not doing these warrantless arrests,” says Javier Hernandez, executive director for the ICIJ, an immigrant rights coalition of over 35 organizations in the Inland Empire.
The order he’s referring to is the temporary restraining order against the unconstitutional tactics used by federal agents employed by the DHS, ordered by Judge Maame E. Frimpong last month and upheld this past Friday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.