ICE agents storm Brooklyn restaurant and douse detainee with pepper spray

March 9, 2020

THREAD – This is video (6min total) from an ICE raid at a RESTAURANT in Flatbush. I am enraged and heartbroken. These agents pepper sprayed the woman they detained, blocked the worker from recording, & made no effort to explain what was happening to her in Spanish. (1/4) pic.twitter.com/dUpSEhwDdG

— Senator Zellnor Y. Myrie 米维 (@zellnor4ny) March 7, 2020

ICE enforcement operations continue to provoke controversy. Last week, San Francisco officials blasted Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the courthouse arrest of an undocumented immigrant.

Wes Parnell of the New York Daily News reports on another ICE operation that has touched off controversy. ICE agents stormed a Brooklyn restaurant and released pepper spray to subdue an undocumented immigrant worker, unsettling video of the bust shows.

The agents barged into La Cabana, a Spanish eatery on Flatbush Ave. near Beverly Road in Prospect Park South on March 1 and nabbed Maria De Los Angel Sanz Pimentel, a Dominican immigrant.

On the video — posted on Twitter — Pimentel can be heard coughing and seen on the ground surrounded by ICE agents. Onlookers are seen scrambling to record the event.

“They entered where she was, they threw her to the floor and two men were on top of her and they sprayed her with pepper spray,” alleged Pimentel’s sister, Jenny Sanz. “The violence isn’t necessary. I don’t why they were using so much force.”

“The fact that officers would barge in and pepper spray her is outrageous,” said Brooklyn Democratic state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who posted the video on Saturday. “They came here to work and be a productive part of this community… It’s so incredibly painful this is where we are at… we have arrived at a point where if we as a society do not condemn these sorts of actions we will be in trouble.”