It is still not a good look.
It wasn’t a couple of weeks ago when video of a National City woman being dragged from the sidewalk and into a Border Patrol vehicle first was transmitted via the Internet and social media, and it is not at this moment, a few short days after a judge ruled that same woman could be released from government custody and reunited with her three daughters.
According to her attorney and defenders, at the beginning of the month Perla Morales Luna and her children were walking together on their way to pay their rent. Suddenly the family was descended upon by plain-clothes and uniformed Immigration Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border agents.
Someone had the presence of mind to capture on video the moments that armed, imposing men dragged the single mother away from her children in broad daylight.
The disturbing nature of the video is made more acute by the sounds of frightened, confused and desperate women screaming and crying as one of them is stuffed into a waiting vehicle and whisked away.
The scene resembles a brazen public kidnapping. Or a moment in the history of a Latin American country in which government agencies routinely snatched people from their homes and streets and “disappeared” them.
The reality, according to the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, is that Morales Luna was part of a human smuggling ring and had eluded arrest in the past and that she ignored their invitation to turn herself in for being in the country illegally.
If the Morales Luna incident sounds vaguely familiar perhaps it is because last June a different National City family found themselves torn apart after federal agents raided their home and departed with Rosendo Perez-Pelcastre and Francisco Duarte-Tineo.
After leaving the couple’s two young daughters in the care of their college-aged brother, federal gents contended Rosendo and Francisco, undocumented residents, were also part of a human smuggling operation. The husband and wife, neither of whom had a criminal record before they were detained, were ultimately released on bond.
A year later no criminal charges, including those surrounding human smuggling, have been filed against the working class mother and father. But they are still subject to deportation because of their immigration status.
As for Perla Morales Luna, a judge this week determined she was not a flight risk and allowed her to be released on bond and reunited with her daughters. For now.
As was the case with the Duarte family, no criminal charges have yet been filed against Morales Luna. For now it looks like the feds didn’t bust a criminal. They busted a single mom on her way to pay the rent.
Not a good look for the government.
