The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Missouri has launched a lawsuit against two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents over the alleged assault of an immigration attorney featured in Netflix's new series Living Undocumented.
In the Netflix series, which was produced by Selena Gomez and looks at the real-life impacts of the Trump administration's hardline immigration policies, immigration lawyer Andrea Martinez can be seen trying to accompany her client, a 3-year-old child from Honduras, to be reunited with his mother at an ICE office in Kansas City before the pair's scheduled deportation.
An ICE agent appears to allow Martinez to follow her client until the moment they reach the front door of the building.
That's when the agent and a second worker appear to block the lawyer from entering the doorway, before pushing her and causing her to fall on the ground.
A visibly shocked Martinez struggles to get up from the ground, before telling a colleague, who helps her up: "They tricked us," as the agent disappears inside with the child.
Later on, the agent returns to allow Martinez inside. With Netflix's cameras barred from entering the ICE facility, it is unclear exactly what takes place within the office.
However, when she exits, it is on a stretcher, with the lawyer claiming to have been left with a fractured foot and lacerations on her knee and leg as a result of her altercation with the two ICE workers.
On Thursday, ACLU Missouri announced that it had filed a lawsuit against ICE over the incident, suing the two workers involved in the altercation on behalf of Martinez, who the organization said had been "cruelly mistreated by ICE agents."
"Martinez was attempting to accompany her three-year-old client into an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Facility so that he could be reunited with his pregnant mother—who is also Martinez's client—before both would be deported to Honduras," ACLU Missouri said.
Instead, the organization said: "ICE agents forcibly separated Martinez from her client, ultimately fracturing her foot."
ACLU Missouri also said that "the pregnant mother and toddler were deported without any of their belongings" following the incident.
In an interview with Vulture, Martinez said the lawsuit was about "standing up to ICE, not only for myself being personally bullied, but because if I didn't sue, ICE would just get away with it."
"They get away with too much as it is. They hurt people. They abuse immigrants. They mistreat immigrants, and they just expect they're not going to be sued because immigrants are vulnerable and they're probably going to get deported before there's ever a lawsuit able to be filed," she said. "We tell our children to stand up to bullies, and that's what I'm doing through this lawsuit. My bully just happens to be the United States of America."
Newsweek has contacted ICE for comment for this article.
