Purported Agents Raid Home and Take Belongings of Citizen Mother and Daughters

A woman called  “Marisa” in news reports and her three daughters were raided by about 20 armed men who bashed in the door in the middle of the night, claiming to be federal agents with warrants and taking nearly everything they had of value.

Marisa and her daughters relocated to northwest Oklahoma City a couple of weeks earlier. Her husband was still in Maryland wrapping up the last of their move and planned to join them soon.

Marisa said the men wore insignia of ICE, FBI and U.S. Marshal service. Their warrant was for people whose mail still arrived at the house, but Marisa does not know who they are. Marisa repeatedly protested that she and her daughters are all USA citizens, but the men did not care.

“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless. I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”

The men refused to show identification or even provide a business card. They made Marisa and her daughters wait outside in the rain in their underwear, not even allowing them to get dressed. She said, “They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them. My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”

The men ransacked the entire house. They took nearly everything portable and valuable: phones, computers and the family’s life savings in cash.

Exerpts from what she told a television reporter for KFOR News 4 include:

I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here. I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.

One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning.’ It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.

I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months.

What if I would have been armed? You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women? A little bit of mercy. Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen, fellow resident. We bleed too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We’re scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified. What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety? Of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?

The U.S. Marshal service claims none of their officers were involved in the raid. The FBI initially said it provided assistance for the operation but none of its agents participated in the raid itself. Later, the FBI walked that back and said it was not involved. Immigration and Customs Enforcement refused to respond to enquiries.

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