A family says their new life in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare when immigration agents stormed their home—guns drawn, lights off—only to find out they had the wrong people.
Marisa, a mother who had just moved from Maryland to Oklahoma City with her daughters, said they came looking for peace and safety. What they got instead was chaos and fear.
“I was like, ‘OK, Oklahoma’s my home now,’” she told KFOR.
But just two weeks after arriving, that hope was shattered when nearly 20 armed agents from multiple federal agencies burst into their rental home early Thursday morning.
“I don’t know who they were,” Marisa said, still shaken. “It was dark. All the lights were off.”
The agents claimed they had a search warrant—but the names on it weren’t hers, or anyone in her family.
“They said, ‘We have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”
Marisa says her daughters were forced out into the rain wearing only their underclothes.
“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments — her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”
The names on the warrant, she later realized, matched mail left behind by previous tenants.
“We just moved here from Maryland,” Marisa said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. ‘We’re citizens.’”
But it didn’t matter.
“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals.”
The agents tore apart the house, went through every bag, and took everything of value: their phones, laptops, and all the cash the family had saved to start over.
“I told them before they left, I said, ‘You took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,’” she said. “’I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around.’ Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”
Before leaving, one agent told her it must’ve been “a little rough.”
“It was so denigrating,” she said. “That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was ‘a little rough?’ You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life.”
Marisa’s husband, still in Maryland, wasn’t there to help. Now, the family has nothing—and no answers.
“I said, ‘When are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months.”
No one gave her a business card. No contacts. No next steps.
She still doesn’t know which agency took their belongings—or how to get them back.
Officials are now pointing fingers. The U.S. Marshals Service told KFOR they weren’t involved, though they were “aware of the operation.” The FBI first said they assisted, then later claimed they weren’t at the scene. Homeland Security said they’d look into it—but never followed up.
Meanwhile, Marisa is left with trauma, silence, and questions.
“What if I would have been armed?” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed — that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women?”
“A little bit of mercy,” she added. “Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen. We bleed too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We’re scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified.”
“What makes you more worthy of safety? Of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?”
Watch the report below from Oklahoma’s News 4:
