OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A family in Oklahoma was wrongly targeted when federal immigration agents raided their home while serving a search warrant as they looked for members of a human smuggling operation, a federal official said Thursday.
The family — a mother and her three daughters — told KFOR-TV they had just moved into the home in Oklahoma City about two weeks earlier and had tried to tell the agents that the suspects listed in the search warrant did not live at the house.
The television station did not name the mother, who said she and her daughters were traumatized by the experience, as a group of 20 armed men busted through their door early in the morning on April 24.
The mother said the agents forced them out of the home, outside in the rain, wearing only their undergarments.
The mother said the agents were very dismissive as she tried to tell them they had recently moved into the home from Maryland and that the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
The agents took their phones, computers, and life savings in cash, the mother said.
In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been carrying out a court-authorized search warrant as part of a “large-scale human smuggling investigation” involving Guatemalan citizens.
“The search warrants included the location of an address where U.S. citizens recently moved. The previous residents were the intended targets,” the senior Homeland Security official said in the statement.
In the statement, the official did not address the mother’s claims that her family’s money and phone were seized and have not been returned.
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