A naturalized U.S. citizen said Friday that he's questioning his vote for President Donald Trump after he was wrongfully swept up in the Republican president's immigration crackdown.
Jensy Machado
told Telemundo 44's Rosbelis Quinoñez that he was driving to work Wednesday with two other men in Manassas, Virginia when they were stopped not far from his home by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, who surrounded his vehicle.
"And they just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say, turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window, you know," Machado said. "Everything was really fast."
Machado said the officers told him the name of a man for whom they said they had a deportation order, and who had purportedly given Machado's home address. He said he offered to show his Virginia driver's license—a Real ID requiring proof of lawful status to acquire—but "they didn't ask for any ID."
"I was telling the officer, if I can give him ID, but he said just keep my hands up, not moving," Machado told Quiñonez. "After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me. And then he went to me and said how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date or if I have any case. And I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, 'Do you believe him?'"
Machado said he was uncuffed and immediately released after the officers saw his identification. The two men with him were taken into custody. Machado said he does not know why.
He also said the incident made him second-guess his vote for Trump—who promised to start "mass deportations" on "day one" of his presidency.
"I voted for Trump last election, but, because I thought it was going to be the things, you know, like, just go against criminals, not every Hispanic looking, like, that they will assume that we are all illegals," Machado explained.
It could have been worse. During Trump's first term, Francisco Erwin Galicia, a high school senior and U.S. citizen from Edinburgh, Texas was held by ICE for more than three weeks before he was finally released.
