A Maryland mother from El Salvador was taken from her car and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, even though they had no deportation order—an essential step before starting deportation proceedings. The officers refused to show her a warrant for her arrest.
On March 31, Elsy Berrios, an asylum-seeker and mother of two, was driving with her daughter when two men who appeared to be ICE agents approached her car. The incident, which her daughter recorded, shows one of the men telling Berrios to get out of the car without explaining why or showing a legal order for her arrest.
Both Berrios and her daughter demanded that the agents show an order of deportation, but the agents did not provide one. At that point, one of the men broke the window, opened the door, and forcibly removed her from the vehicle.
“Don’t worry my love, I’m okay,” Berrios told her daughter, who was crying and still recording as Berrios was handcuffed.
Berrios is an asylum seeker who holds a work permit, which allows her to work legally in the U.S. She has no criminal record, her lawyer told Noticias Telemundo. After the arrest, Berrios was taken to an ICE detention center in Pennsylvania. A court hearing on April 14 will decide whether she will be released or kept in detention.
Her case is another example of the Trump administration’s controversial tactics to meet mass deportation goals, sometimes bending the law to do so.
In March, civil rights lawyers in Chicago filed a motion claiming that ICE had made illegal arrests without proper warrants, violating guidelines that require agents to have evidence of probable cause. The lawyers argued that ICE’s actions violated the 2018 Nava Settlement, which allows ICE to make warrantless arrests only if agents can prove a person is likely to flee.
This case follows a disturbing trend of the administration using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport migrants, including hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, which has faced accusations of human rights violations.
Just last week, the Trump administration admitted to a mistake when a Maryland father was deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.” The error was the first time the administration publicly acknowledged a mistake in its deportation flights to El Salvador. The filing noted that on March 15, ICE deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia despite knowing he was protected from removal.
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