Rep. Adelita Grijalva mentioned Friday she was pepper-sprayed and pushed round during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Tucson, Arizona, a declare that the Department of Homeland Security swiftly disputed.
The Arizona Democrat mentioned in a video on X the incident occurred close to a restaurant she frequents and that she stumbled on a scene of “maybe 40 ICE agents, most of them masked, in several vehicles” who had been “stopped” in the road by individuals who she mentioned “were afraid they were taking people without due process.”
Grijalva mentioned she “was sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent” and “pushed around by others,” though she mentioned she had not been aggressive. “I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she mentioned.
Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, said on X in a response to the congresswoman’s video that the claims are “not true.”
“If her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel. But they’re not true. She wasn’t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who *was* pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin mentioned.
“In fact, 2 law enforcement officers were seriously injured by this mob that @Rep_Grijalva joined. Presenting one’s self as a ‘Member of Congress’ doesn’t give you the right to obstruct law enforcement.”
Grijalva later posted video to X that reveals uniformed officers spraying right into a crowd of individuals, together with what seem like protesters, Grijalva and her workers. Grijalva might be seen saying, “You guys need to calm down and get out.”
The congresswoman mentioned in the primary video she posted that after she launched herself as a member of Congress, she assumed it might have been calmer, “but there was literally only one person that was trying to speak to me in any kind of civil tone, and everyone else was being rude and disrespectful.”
“I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else,” she mentioned.
Grijalva denounced the Trump administration’s dealing with of immigration enforcement.
“I think that this is one of the problems – the biggest problem that we have in this community is that we have Trump that has no regard for any due process, the rule of law, the Constitution,” Grijalva mentioned in the video. “They’re literally disappearing people from the streets. They arrested two people. We have no idea where they’re going.”