At least six public servants report being assaulted in the past two weeks while trying to apprehend undocumented immigrants with known criminal records.
By Julian Resendiz for Border Report
The injured include Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations agents in Arizona.
The first assaults were reported last July 21 in Phoenix, after HSI agents learned that an undocumented immigrant had tried to buy a gun from a licensed firearms dealer. The agents further learned that Santos Mendivil Contreras had come into the U.S. in November 2022 on a visitor’s visa that expired a month later and never left.
The agents showed up twice to Mendivil’s house, knocked but nobody came out. They set up surveillance on Mendivil’s house and tried to take him into custody when they saw him driving up to his residence in a Chevrolet S-10 pickup.
Court records allege Mendivil stepped out of his vehicle and tried to enter the home. When he could not, he began “kicking, spitting, biting” and trying to take a handgun from an agent.
A second HSI agent assisted his peer, brought down Mendivil and handcuffed him.
Upon seeing the agents trying to subdue Mendivil, his son Emanuel Mendivil Cervantes allegedly exited the S-10 and began kicking the agents while yelling, “Get off my dad!”
A woman came out from the house and began recording the incident with her cellphone. Court records show an HSI agent took the phone away from the woman. That’s when a prone Santos Mendivil allegedly bit the back of the agent’s leg so hard that he ripped his pants.
After the two men were taken into custody, Emanuel Mendivil allegedly told investigators he was aware some of the men on the scene were law enforcement officers but was just trying to protect himself and his father from “getting jumped.”
Santos Mendivil said he didn’t know the men were law enforcement officers and did not understand the markings on their clothes. Some of the agents were wearing vests marked “Police”; but according to Santos Mendivil, the one that pointed a gun at him was wearing all-black clothing.
He told investigators he had been in a bar fight a few days earlier and thought the agents were the people from the bar, records show.
The HSI agents involved in the fight sustained scrapes and bruises; one experienced neck pain and one was treated at a hospital for bites.
A federal grand jury in Phoenix on Friday indicted Santos and Emanuel Mendivil on multiple charges of assault on a federal officer. Santos Mendivil was further charged with making a false statement during the purchase of a firearm.
An assault on two DEA agents was reported on July 24, also in Phoenix.
Records show two DEA agents specifically conducting an immigration enforcement operation stopped a vehicle driving by an undocumented immigrant known to have committed a carjacking in Mexico.
The agents wore vests with law enforcement placards on the front and back when they tried to take Beningno Armando Rios Pacheco into custody, court records show.
Rios complied with the agents and allowed himself to be handcuffed. However, a black Chevrolet sedan stopped at the scene and a woman later identified as Janeth Karina Montoya Estrada and a juvenile stepped out, called out the agents and started recording with their cellphones.
According to a federal complaint affidavit, Montoya got close to one of the agents and pushed him with the hand with which she was holding the cellphone.
The agent told Montoya she was under arrest for assaulting a public servant, but the woman allegedly resisted, leading to both sustaining injuries.
Rios allegedly became unruly upon seeing the agent struggle with the woman and began throwing his elbows and using his weight against the agent guarding him. Both went to the ground and the agent reported injuring his shoulder.
As a DEA agent was taking her to the back of a government car, Montoya allegedly began to plead with him to let her go and allegedly began stroking the agent’s leg in a suggestive manner. The agent told her to stop touching him and “felt extremely uncomfortable and disgusted,” according to court records.
Phoenix Police Department officers arrived on the scene and the arrests proceeded without further incident.
FBI agents interviewed Rios and Montoya after the fact. Rios said he doesn’t speak English and did not understand the agents’ commands or what their ID’s said. Montoya refused to answer questions and immediately requested a lawyer.
A Phoenix federal grand jury indicted the two on Wednesday on charges of assaulting a federal officer and resisting arrest.
Read the original article in its entirety on Border Report.
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These people that assault these officers need to be put down. The blunt end of the billy club in the gut or mouth followed up a few swings like a baseball bat. You have to hurt them, then they won’t resist as much.