A pregnant U.S. citizen who was detained by federal agents approximately two weeks ago has since given birth to a healthy baby girl, but her boyfriend is now being held out of state and her problems are far from over.
Cary López Alvarado told Nexstar’s KTLA that she “tried to remain strong” during the scary ordeal, which took place outside a building where her boyfriend and cousin were doing maintenance work on June 8. She was nine months pregnant at the time.
Video taken by López depicts her struggling with a masked agent wearing a Border Patrol uniform asking to see her identification as she was protecting a truck carrying her boyfriend Brayan Nájera and cousin Alberto Sandoval — the latter of whom is also a U.S. citizen.
All three of them were eventually detained. Further footage posted on social media shows agents detaining López after they had pinned her truck between a wall.
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The then-soon-to-be-mother was taken to a processing facility in San Pedro, where, according to her, the agents automatically assumed she was undocumented.
“[They said] ‘But you’re from Mexico, right?’ And I’m like ‘No, I’m from here,’” López said. “[They asked] … ‘Where’s here?’ and I’m like, ‘Here, the U.S., Los Angeles.”
“They put us in chains, so I had a chain from my hands under my belly that went all the way to my legs,” she added. “Every now and then, I would fix my hands because I felt like I would be putting too much pressure because the chain went under my belly.”
López was released after complaining of stomach pain and went straight to a hospital where she started having contractions, which she believes were caused by the stress of what she had gone through.
https://thehill.com/latino/5359169-pregnant-us-citizen-border-patrol-agents