<\/p>\n
Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona<\/a> congressperson, said she was \u201csprayed in the face\u201d during a protest against a federal immigration raid at a Mexican restaurant in Tucson on Friday.<\/p>\n In a video filmed after the incident<\/a>, Grijalva said she joined a group of protesters assembled outside Taco Giro, a \u201csmall mom-and-pop\u201d restaurant in Tucson Grijalva said she visits weekly. By the time she arrived, she said, the protesters had \u201cstopped\u201d a squadron of dozens of mostly masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.<\/p>\n The protesters, Grijalva said, were \u201cafraid that they were taking people without due process\u201d.<\/p>\n A second video shared by Grijalva\u2019s official account on social media shows<\/a> a chaotic standoff between federal agents in tactical gear and protesters carrying anti-ICE signs. In the footage, Grijalva, a progressive Democratic representative, who has been sharply critical of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration policy, can be seen approaching the officers, as an agent sprays an orange chemical in the direction of the protesters alongside her. She then urges the officers to \u201ccalm down\u201d and \u201cget out\u201d as she coughs. The agent holding a spray can orders the group to \u201cget out of the way\u201d as protestors yell.<\/p>\n In a video clip taken from another angle, a projectile lands behind Grijalva, producing a cloud at the her feet as she steps toward an officer.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I presented myself as a Member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed aside and pepper sprayed,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n In a statement, DHS said immigration agents\u2019 actions were not aimed at the representative.<\/p>\n \u201cIf her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel,\u201d the DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said. \u201cBut they\u2019re not true. She wasn\u2019t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who was<\/em> pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n McLaughlin said two law enforcement officers were \u201cseriously injured\u201d during the clash.<\/p>\n \u201cPresenting one\u2019s self as a \u2018Member of Congress\u2019 doesn\u2019t give you the right to obstruct law enforcement,\u201d she added, promising \u201cmore information forthcoming\u201d.<\/p>\n In a statement, Fernando Burgos, an ICE spokesperson, said special agents as well as officers from the agency\u2019s homeland security investigations were \u201cexecuting 16 search warrants\u201d across southern Arizona as part of a \u201cyears-long investigation into immigration and tax violations\u201d. Multiple individuals were taken into custody during the operation, he said.<\/p>\n In a video filmed shortly after the incident, Grijalva, still coughing, says she arrived on the scene because she believed it was \u201cimportant for me to have eyes on what\u2019s happening here\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI literally was not being aggressive, I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cI just can only imagine if they\u2019re going to treat me like that, how they\u2019re treating everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n Grijalva and other local officials praised the Tucson police department for helping to calm the situation.<\/p>\n In a joint statement<\/a>, Regina Romero, the Tucson mayor and Lane Santa Cruz, the vice-mayor, both Democrats, said the enforcement operation in Tucson had \u201crapidly escalated into violence against the public\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir disproportionate use of force, smoke grenades and pepper balls against the public, including our own Representative Adelita Grijalva, is not justified and cannot be tolerated,\u201d they wrote, encouraging bystanders to share video and photographs of the incident for \u201cpotential investigation and follow-up\u201d.<\/p>\n Arizona Democrats rallied around Grijalva. The representative Greg Stanton denounced<\/a> the incident as \u201coutrageous\u201d while the representative Yassamin Ansari called it \u201cabsolutely unacceptable<\/a>\u201d. Senator Ruben Gallego wrote<\/a>: \u201cPepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n At a town hall in Tucson later that day, senator Mark Kelly called it \u201chorrific\u201d.<\/p>\n Grijalva was elected to Congress in September, winning a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of her father, the late representative Ra\u00fal Grijalva. However, she was not sworn in as a member of Congress until last month, after the House returned from a weeks-long recess during the federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n \u201cIf federal agents are brazen enough to fire pellets directly at a Member of Congress,\u201d Grijalva wrote on Friday, \u201cimagine how they behave when encountering defenseless members of our community.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Arizona #congresswoman #pepper #sprayed #protest #ICE #ICE #Immigration #Customs #Enforcement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona c… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}