The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!):

On Saturday, Narciso Barranco was arrested while working as a landscaper at an IHOP in Santa Ana.

David González (ABC 7):

Multiple videos shared on social media show a [inaudible 00:00:19] man being punched by border patrol agents as they try to detain him in the middle of a busy intersection in Santa Ana.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You can feel it. You can see it on the faces of people, you can see it in their eyes. The terror is real, and that’s the whole point of these raids. That’s the whole point of this campaign from the Trump administration. These are working people.

These are people like Narciso Barranco, a landscaper who’s been living and working in this community for 30 years. He has three sons who have all served in the military, and one day, he just gets beaten and abducted, and disappeared.

Speaker 4:

[inaudible] get back in your vehicle.

Speaker 6:

Hey, leave him alone, bro.

Alejandro Barranco:

Yeah, so I’m Narciso’s son. We’re at the IHOP location where all this attack happened. He was just working right behind here, doing the weed eating job, the weed whacker. I think they approached him from behind, no type of ID. My dad had never done anything wrong, so he is confused, scared. Where he got attacked was around here in this area.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s be clear here. Your dad, who’s been here for over 30 years, was doing his job, and then a bunch of masked guys who don’t announce themselves start trying to kidnap him. Naturally, he runs away and then they tackle him and they beat the shit out of him. That’s what happened, right?

Alejandro Barranco:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I don’t think it was right at all. Very unprofessional. It doesn’t look like they had any type of training to handle this type of situation. They just felt powerful and just started beating on a guy while three, four other people were holding him down.

I don’t think it’s right at all. I believe he was racially profiled. Like I said, my dad has never done anything wrong. They had no warrant for him. He didn’t know why they were there.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I spoke to some day laborers outside the Home Depot, right next to where Narciso Barranco was abducted, including one man who saw the whole thing with his own eyes.

Maximillian Alvarez: 

Muy brutal, no? 

Really brutal, no? 

Day Laborer 1:

Muy feo, muy brutal, lo golpearon muy feo, él nunca se resistió para nada y allí lo estaban golpeando entre 4 muchachos (agentes) hasta que el señor del bus miró todo. Y ahí se paró todo el tráfico y fue cuando empezaron a pitar todos. Y si lo golpearon muy feo al señor.

They beat him really badly, really brutally, and he didn’t resist at all, and so these four men just beat him to the ground. Even the bus driver saw everything. Traffic stopped and then everyone started honking. And they beat the hell out of him.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary McLaughlin said, and I quote, “The illegal alien,” referring to your father, “Refused to comply every step of the way, resisting commands, fighting handcuffs, and refusing to identify himself.” Now, that’s pretty damn rich coming from a department where the masked agents weren’t identifying themselves to your dad

Alejandro Barranco:

Just the fact that they said-

Maximillian Alvarez:

That he attacked him with the weed whacker?

Alejandro Barranco:

Nowhere in the video does it show that. There’s tons of videos where these guys are just pointing guns at him, pointing guns at the public, super unprofessional. They’re running with guns in their hands, fingers on the trigger. That’s not professional at all.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You and your brothers are… you served in the military. You’re a Marine. What do you see when you see these guys with guns, terrorizing the community this way?

Alejandro Barranco:

I see no training, no discipline, nothing. It just looks like they’re out here just playing games. That’s what it looks like. They don’t have any warrants for these people. They’re just coming out here, looking at you, racially profiling, and then just running towards you, harassing you.

Maximillian Alvarez:

We’re standing here, just yards away from where one of our community members, Narciso Barranco, was beaten and abducted by masked agents of the state just a few weeks ago. This is our home. You live here. I grew up here. Can you tell people who don’t live here, what’s actually been happening over the past few weeks and months?

Jose Francisco Negrete:

It’s been a pseudo-style military guerrilla occupation. Unlike Gaza in the West Bank in historical Palestine, where you see the military, it’s a full-on occupation. Out here, it’s more of a guerrilla style occupation. We don’t know when they’re going to come out. We’re in front of a Home Depot right here, and they’ve been targeting Home Depots. They raid that, and ICE has a formula or a system of how they do it.

They park the car here, and then if they see nine or 10 more day laborers, they come and attack. It’s fear and terror. Some people don’t want to get out. I live in an apartment in Anaheim, and some of my neighbors, they only leave their house if they really have to. Other than that, they don’t because of the fear. You see it at indoor swap meets or in plazas, that you don’t see people out. It’s taking a hit on the community. The community doesn’t feel safe to go to a supermarket, or if they don’t feel safe going anywhere.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Amidst all this horror and tragedy, we have gotten a little bit of good news about your father. Can you tell us what it’s been like since he was arrested and detained, the fight to get him free, and where things stand now?

Alejandro Barranco:

Yeah, no, yeah, for sure. It was really, really hard to get in contact with him to try to find where he was at. We did have a lot of help from the community, so that definitely made it easier, but I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone who doesn’t have that support. It’s almost impossible. They have no clear system at the LA Detention Center. After that, he was transferred to Adelanto.

He was woken up at 2:30 in the morning, but didn’t receive notification that he got there until 7 PM. Makes no sense. Once he went to his bond hearing, they told us that he was approved for bond. It was set at $3,000. We paid it, and then earlier today, we received notification, they accepted the payment, and now we’re just waiting. We’re on standby.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Again, we’re here in Orange County, California, where you and I grew up, and this is one of the most diverse places in the world. Like in Santa Ana where we’re standing, immigrants make up like 46% of the population, and like 69% of the workforce. What do you want people out there to know who are believing this crazy racist fantasy, that we’re somehow going to just get rid of all those people?

Alejandro Barranco:

You can’t. Like you said, there’s a lot of us, and we’re just here to work. Our people are just here to work. They’re raising kids like myself, like my brothers who serve, who might want to join law enforcement, who might want to be a firefighter, who might want to, I don’t know, run for mayor.

We’re good people. Not all of us are bad, and I think that’s just the majority. The majority of the people here are just here to work and look for a better life, that American dream.

Maximillian Alvarez:

For folks out there who think or are being told that these are the worst of the worst criminals, that everyone who’s being detained has committed some sort of a crime, what is the story of what happened to your dad and your family? Sort of tell us about the reality of what’s going on here.

Alejandro Barranco:

Yeah, they’re not going after criminals. They’re just going out for people looking for work or doing work. I think it’s lazy, because they should have records of all these criminals, should do proper investigations, go after them directly instead of just terrorizing the streets. They’re empty. These people have families. They just do work to provide for their families. They’re not doing anything bad.

Day Laborer 2:

No somos criminales, nosotros ya tenemos tiempo aquí. Quince, veinte años, trabajando, siempre nosotros pagamos nuestros impuestos y para que nos hagan este tipo de agravios, yo pienso que el señor este ya era mayor y porque se le fueron a él si él no estaba haciendo nada, él no estaba robando, no estaba haciendo nada malo, solamente andaba trabajando, y porque otros, los que comenten más grandes errores, principalmente los corruptos, del gobierno mismo, entre ellos no se miran, miran a  la gente pobre, los  apenas andamos luchando para ganar algo para la familia, para la pan de cada día de la casa, aquí no somos criminales, aquí la policía a veces pasa aquí cuando estamos aquí esperando trabajo, si fuéramos criminales ya nos hubieran llevado a la cárcel, 

We’re not criminals, and we’ve been here for years now, some fifteen or twenty years, trying to make a living. We always pay our taxes, just to have them do these terrible things to us. I think that he [Narciso Barranco] was older, which is why they took him down. He wasn’t doing anything, he wasn’t stealing anything, he wasn’t doing anything wrong at all, he was just doing his job. So why do other people, those who commit greater offenses—the corrupt ones, some working for this very government—why aren’t they paying attention to what’s happening among themselves? They only focus on the poor, the people who are fighting to make a living, trying to earn enough to feed our families. Those of us living here aren’t criminals. Sometimes the police drive by when we’re waiting for work, and if we were criminals, they would’ve taken us away by now. 

Maximillian Alvarez:

Narciso Barranco was finally released on bond and reunited with his family on July 15th. Alejandro has said his father is applying for parole in place, which is granted to undocumented family members of active duty military members, giving them permission to stay in the US for at least a year. Lisa Ramirez, Narciso’s immigration attorney, said the federal government is still seeking to remove him from the country. Narciso has an upcoming immigration status hearing in August.