ICE agents have been accused of using a Guatemalan family’s five-year-old daughter as a tool to pressure her father into surrendering. Edward Hip was driving with his autistic five-year-old daughter last Tuesday when he called his wife and told her ‘he thinks someone is chasing him,’ she told Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra.
Hip allegedly returned home as ICE agents swarmed the area. According to his wife, he ran into the back parking lot of their house, but federal agents were able to grab his daughter. Video obtained by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra shows the distressed family attempting to retrieve the five-year-old outside of their Leominster home.
The Guatemalan family said the federal agents confronted Hip, who has lived in the US for 22 years, to ‘leave his home’ for his daughter. The distraught mother pleaded in the video to ‘give her daughter back’ and ‘she’s special, she has autism.’ The mother ordered her daughter to be returned in a standoff with the agents, according to NBC Boston 10.
The mother told Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra that she reported the officers for ‘alleged harassment.’ She added the officers allegedly threatened them, saying they would ‘enter the house if the door was not open within 15 minutes.’
The Leominster police later arrived at the home to intervene. They returned the five-year-old girl to her family.
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