A U.S. Border Patrol agent kneed a man at least five times in the face while several other agents held him pinned facedown on the pavement in south Minneapolis on Friday, according to multiple witnesses who shared videos with the Reformer.
Yarrow Tkachuk-Kedziora, a Minneapolis resident, heard a horn blaring and looked out a second-floor window onto Chicago Avenue near 24th Street. They saw a black Chevrolet Suburban driven by a U.S. Border Patrol agent going the wrong way and then hit a gray Buick Encore head on.
An agent then jumped out of the Suburban, smashed in the driver’s window of the Encore and pulled the driver out of the car.
“It was almost faster than I could process,” Tkachuk-Kedziora said. “They took a baton out and smashed it in … and immediately, from what I could tell, started beating him.”
Monica Bicking was at work as a nurse at a nearby homeless shelter when she heard residents and staff yelling ICE was outside.
She ran out and started recording. Her video shows five Border Patrol agents on top of a man in the middle of Chicago Avenue.
One officer knees the man in the head at least five times as he cries out in pain. Bicking can be heard in the video yelling, “Stop kneeing him in the face! That’s his face! Stop it!”
“It was completely unnecessary and uncalled for,” Bicking said in an interview.
Then a masked agent with a vest reading “Border Patrol Federal Agent” approaches Bicking and tells her to back up or she’ll be arrested.
Three officers then pick up the man and carry him to the back of the Chevy — parked the wrong way, front-to-front with the man’s Buick.
On the video, bystanders who have come out to film the scene ask the injured man what his name is, and he replies over blaring whistles, “Juan Carlos. Juan Carlos,” as an agent tells him, “Get in the f*cking car.”
A GoFundMe set up for the man says he is a U.S. resident and was observing ICE activity when he was stopped. He was detained at the Whipple Federal Building before being transported to the hospital for medical treatment because he was having trouble breathing.
The Reformer has not verified the man’s identity, but received a copy of the car’s purchase contract for a man with the first and middle names Juan Carlos.
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