DHS official Tricia McLaughlin firmly denied a report by NBC News that claimed a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent used a 5-year-old autistic girl as “bait” to capture her father, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala living in Massachusetts.
A video aired by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra depicts the young girl by a law enforcement SUV, holding a bottle and surrounded by several male officers outside her home in Leominster last Tuesday. According to NBC, the girl’s father, Edwards Hip Mezia, reportedly expressed to his wife that he felt he was being chased. Upon arriving home, he allegedly ran toward the parking lot, prompting the agent to “grab” his daughter, as described by his wife in the Telemundo report.
While the girl’s mother can be heard telling officers about her daughter’s condition, asking for her return, McLaughlin denounced these accusations as “a disgusting smear.”
“It’s simply not true,” McLaughlin asserted, clarifying that an ICE agent never utilized a child as bait. She mentioned that Mezia disregarded the emergency lights and fled to his house, leaving his daughter behind. “He bolted out of the car, gave the officer a double middle finger, and dashed inside,” she recounted. “He abandoned his daughter in the car. Officers were the ones who rescued the child and called local authorities to report the abandonment.”
McLaughlin noted that such media claims have surged, escalating attacks on law enforcement. According to NBC Boston, local police managed to recover the girl and return her to her family.
Mezia was taken into custody two days later, as reported by his wife to Telemundo, and is currently held in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
