ICE facing fierce backlash after video apparently shows unconscious man clutching child during arrest | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) faced tough questions after a video showing a man losing consciousness while holding a young child while being arrested went viral, with authorities accusing the man of faking a medical emergency to stop his wife’s arrest.

imagesFootage obtained by the Boston Globe shows wild mayhem inside a vehicle in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, on Thursday. The helpless woman in the passenger seat, with a crying child in the middle, tries to wake up the man in the driver’s seat. People can be heard shouting, “He’s having a seizure.” A police officer is seen trying to remove passengers from the vehicle, while a Fitchburg police officer repeatedly orders the crowd to “stand down.”

“They are trying to tear the baby apart” [his] Hand,” says another eyewitness.

ICE said the video did not accurately reflect the situation. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said on social media that emergency medical personnel at the scene “could not find a legitimate medical event” and that the family refused medical care. “Imagine faking a seizure to help the criminal evade justice,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrote in a statement on social media.

The man in the video is Carlos Sebastian Zapata, he told the Boston Globe on Friday He said that he lost consciousness because he was afraid that his wife would be taken into custody. “I wasn’t leaving my wife because they wanted to take her away,” Zapata told the newspaper.

He said agents pushed him, hit him in the ribs and put pressure on his neck during the arrest attempt. “That’s when I left my wife,” Zapata said. “I had a convulsion or something.”

ICE confirmed that the operation focused on the man’s wife, who was accompanying him at the time. It was learned that the woman, whose name was identified as Ecuadorian Juliana Milena Ojeda-Montoya, was detained on Thursday.

Local authorities issued a warrant for Ojeda-Montoya’s arrest on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after he allegedly stabbed a co-worker and threw a trash barrel at himself, authorities said.

ICE agents reportedly conducted a traffic stop on the family at 7 a.m., which turned into an “attempt to apprehend.” Agents contacted Fitchburg police around 8:03 a.m. and advised that the growing crowd was posing a threat to agents.

According to statements made to the police boston.comAn officer, a chief, and a captain were dispatched to the scene and “confirmed that a crowd had gathered and the situation was hostile”.

The incident occurred during Trump’s intensified deportation campaign, which included a large-scale enforcement effort in Massachusetts in September known as Operation Patriot 2.0. This operation led to the detention of many people 1,400 people In the state for immigration reasons.

Earlier this week, another ICE-related incident involving a toddler occurred when masked and heavily armed federal immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot store, then got into his car and drove away with his one-year-old child, also a U.S. citizen, in the backseat.