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DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin on Tuesday strongly rejected a report from NBC News alleging that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents used a 5-year-old autistic girl as “bait” to arrest her father, an illegal alien from Guatemala, in Massachusetts.
A video obtained by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra shows the girl sitting beside a law enforcement SUV, holding a bottle, while surrounded by several male officers outside her home in Leominster last Tuesday.
NBC reported that the father, Edwards Hip Mejia, told his wife he believed he was being followed and drove home. Once there, he allegedly ran toward the parking lot, but agents “grabbed” their daughter, the wife told Telemundo.
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DHS officials rejected a report that ICE agents used a 5-year-old girl with autism as bait to get her father, an illegal immigrant, to turn himself in. (Matt Stone via Getty Images)
The girl’s mother can be heard telling officers her daughter is on the spectrum before demanding they return her child.
McLaughlin, though, called the allegation a “disgusting smear.”
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DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin (dhs.gov)
“Absolutely not. ICE agents NEVER used a 5-year-old girl as ‘bait’—what a disgusting smear,” she said in a post on X. “The criminal illegal alien target — with previous arrests for domestic abuse and strangulation, among other charges — ABANDONED his own child in a car.”
She added that Mejia ignored emergency lights, fled to his home, and left his daughter behind.
“He fled from the car, gave officers the double middle finger, and darted inside his house,” McLaughlin said. “He abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car. Officers helped rescue the child and called local police to report the abandonment.
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“Disgusting smears like these peddled by the media are leading to a 1000% increase in assaults against our brave law enforcement,” she added.
According to NBC Boston, local police recovered the girl when they arrived and returned her to her family.
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Mejia was ultimately detained two days later, his wife told Telemundo, and is being held in Plymouth, Massachusetts.