OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has admitted that a family who says they were “traumatized” when ICE agents raided their Oklahoma City home were not the suspects ICE was looking for.
“ICE was carrying out a court-authorized search warrant for a large-scale human smuggling investigation. The search warrants included the location of an address where U.S. citizens recently moved. The previous residents were the intended targets,” a representative for Homeland Security told Nexstar’s KFOR.
The admission comes after agents raided the family’s home last Thursday. The mother, whom KFOR identified only as “Marisa,” revealed that she and her daughters were startled awake early that morning when around 20 agents with guns raided the house and seized their phones, laptops, and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”
The agents had also ordered Marisa and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes, Marisa said.
“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” said Marisa, who moved with her family and daughters to OKC from Maryland only a few weeks before. “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.”
During the ordeal, Marisa said she learned the names on Homeland Security’s search warrant did not belong to her or anyone in her family. Instead, she recognized them as names listed on mail still arriving at the house likely former residents.
Marisa said she and her daughters were traumatized, and they are struggling to deal with the aftermath.
The intended subjects of the raid, KFOR has learned, were suspected human smugglers from Guatemala.
The Northern District of Oklahoma U.S. Attorney’s office told KFOR that U.S. federal agents arrested eight Guatemalan Nationals during a set of raids across the country last Thursday as part of an operation cracking down on illegal immigration ordered by President Trump.
The names of the eight suspects they arrested are the same suspect names listed on the warrant served on Marisa’s house, where none of them were located.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, also responded to KFOR’s requests for additional information this week, confirming the raid on Marisa’s house was part of that nationwide operation. They also admitted for the first time that Marisa and her family were not supposed to be targeted.
Marisa’s story began making national headlines after KFOR published its initial report on her family’s ordeal. It also caught the attention of attorney Patrick Jaicomo.
“I opened my phone and saw this and just thought, ‘Here we go again,'” said Jaicomo.
He has a good reason to say that, he told KFOR.
“Yesterday morning, I argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a family from Atlanta who were the victims of a wrong house raid committed by the FBI, who simply failed to check the address on the house before they sent in a SWAT team,” said Jaicomo.
Jaicomo is with the Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit legal advocacy group. They are representing the Atlanta family in their court case free of charge. Jaicomo says his group will represent Marisa for free too, telling us her case fits a years-long pattern of questionable raids.
“Based on the facts as I understand them right now, there’s no question that there was a lack of due diligence,” said Jaicomo.
Marisa, speaking with KFOR, said her family is questioning everything right now, but doesn’t put much trust in the agencies responsible for raiding her home.
“Why us? Why?” she asked. “You see and hear this on the news, and now I’m part of the news.”
KFOR has sent emails to the offices of Oklahoma Rep. Stephanie Bice and Senators James Lankford and Markwayne Mullin about this botched raid.
Lankford’s office is the only one of Oklahoma’s federal delegation to respond so far.
“The Senator is following the situation, and we are working to get an accounting of what happened,” a representative from his office said.
