An undocumented immigrant didn’t know where to turn when he found his car with a wheel lock apparently deployed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The undocumented Carlsbad man said two people dressed as officers came to his home Monday but neither showed any identification. After they left, he went outside and found the boot, marked with an ICE sticker, on his car.
NBC 7 reached out to ICE to see if the wheel lock was placed by ICE agents or if ICE uses wheel locks like it.
Ice spokesperson Lauren Mack said ICE is not familiar with that style of lock and that it doesn’t appear to be one that ICE uses. She also said Homeland Security Investigations does not use any other type of wheel lock.
The Carlsbad man consulted with immigration attorney Narciso Cruz, who agreed with ICE.
“Immigration does not put boots on cars. I verified this with other colleagues in our field, immigration, and none of them have ever seen anything like this. Some of my colleagues have contact with immigration officers who enforce immigration laws here, none of them have ever verified something that happens like this,” Cruz said.
Cruz is now wondering who put the boot on the man’s car. He thinks someone may have put the lock on the car to scare the owner.
California
News from across California
Cruz is encouraging people who see something like this to report it to the police, and is reminding people that it is against the law to impersonate a federal agency.
