Adrian Andrew Martinez was released from federal detention last week.
But now the Huntington Park-born 20-year-old finds himself without a job after he was violently arrested in a Walmart parking lot in Pico Rivera on June 17, and spent several traumatizing days in custody, his body covered in cuts and bruises.
According to his lawyer, the young man’s terrifying ordeal began when he tried to question armed men whom he saw detain an elderly man in the parking lot where the Walmart Martinez worked at is located.
That’s when he stepped in, still in his blue Walmart vest, to question the federal agents about their aggressive treatment of the man, a janitor there at the Pico Rivera Towne Center.
“ He couldn't speak up for himself,” Martinez said. “He didn't understand what they were saying … he just seen a big man with a mask and a gun running towards him. When I pull up, I see just him running across the street in front of my car and this big old man come and grab him by the arms, like yank him.”
He didn’t know the man that was being detained. But he had seen him working there and knew he was a hard worker.
Video footage captured by Oscar Preciado shows what appear to be four to five federal agents tackling Martinez to the ground, and forcing him into the truck by the neck.
After Martinez was forced into the truck, he was taken to a parking structure, where the agents put him into a van. The janitor he had stepped in to protect was inside that van, too. Despite a language barrier, they had a chance to talk.
“He felt it was his fault, 'cause he knew I was going there to defend him,” Martinez said. “ I was just trying to make sure that he knows that don't feel bad for me. You know I’m here because I want to be.”
Martinez was held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Downtown Los Angeles, an environment he compared to a dog shelter.
“These are hardworking people, and they have 'em worse than like animals,” he said. “Rounding them up in shackles and chains.”
Martinez was suffering from his own injuries stemming from his arrest at the time.
“I had a big gash on my shoulder from, like, when they were grabbing me,” Andrew told L.A. TACO. “Bruises on my arm from, they would grab me … a big bruise on, like, between my bicep and my back.”
“On my spine, I had little, like, dots and bruises, from the conditions of the beds I was sleeping on there,” he continued.
Martinez said that he was too scared to ask for medical help while in custody. When agents saw that he had a gash on his knee that was bleeding, they cleaned it with alcohol and put a Band-Aid on it. Despite the bandage, he was bleeding through the white gown that he wore.
“If it weren't for, like, the inmates and their giving me clothes and socks and underwear, I would still be in the same stuff,” said Martinez.
He is now wearing a full leg brace because he suffered a significant contusion to his leg, which is now sprained.
The entire time the young man was in federal custody, he was never allowed to make a phone call, he said.
Agents did not share any information with him during his detention, and many of the individuals being held in ICE detention did not speak English, he added.
He says he did not speak to ICE agents until they started to ask him questions. They asked him his name, where he was born, and if he had proof of his U.S. birth. He asked if he could make a call to get his birth certificate, and agents rejected the request.
“That's when a little hours later my mom shows up and then I find out now that they're lying to her saying that she, you know, they don't know where her son's at and the whole time they, they, they know,” he said.
“ At least tell me he's here,” said Myra Martinez, Adrian’s mother. “But not even that. They weren't even giving me that.”
Martinez’s lawyers say that his employer, Walmart, fired him on June 18, the day after he was taken into custody by ICE. Simply due to the fact that he’d been arrested.
“I want to work. I don't want to be out of work. I was working full time,” he said.
Andrew was not arrested on assault charges. He is being charged with conspiracy to interfere or impede law enforcement.
Martinez was later transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he was released from federal custody last Friday, June 20, on $5,000 bail.
Watch our interview with Adrian Andrew Martinez below for more information.
