A civil engineer whose violent street arrest became a flashpoint during a massive immigration raid in Maine this winter has sued the federal agents who detained him.
Juan Sebastian Carvajal-Munoz, who moved to Maine from Colombia to pursue a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Maine and later accepted a job working on bridge construction projects under the H-1B visa program, filed the complaint Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Portland.
On Jan. 22, the third day of the federal immigration crackdown here, dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day, Carvajal-Munoz was driving to work when federal agents smashed his car window, dragged him from the driver’s seat and left his vehicle running in the middle of downtown Portland, according to the complaint. When he offered the agents proof of his permission to live in the country, they told him his visa would be revoked and placed him in “full-body shackles,” the filing stated.
The scene unfolded near a pair of reporters and quickly became one of the more dramatic headlines during a five-day sweep that resulted in around 200 arrests, nearly all involving immigrants without criminal histories. He is the first to sue the government over his warrantless arrest during the operation.
His lawsuit is yet another instance of an immigrant using a legal filing to push back against the federal government’s description that it came to Maine to arrest the “worst of the worst” criminals. His lawyers argued that agents racially profiled him and violated multiple of his constitutional rights by forcefully arresting him without any legal basis.
The complaint reveals that agents abruptly released Carvajal-Muñoz from custody the same day as his arrest, leaving him to make his way home from an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement field office in Massachusetts that night. It describes him as a hard-working student with no criminal record who worked a job conducting soil and foundation analyses for bridge projects.
Dozens of other immigrants arrested during Operation Catch of the Day also used legal petitions to counter the narrative that they were dangers to society when they challenged their detentions in federal court. Many have since been released.
“Federal agents came to Maine and terrorized entire communities, just as they have done throughout the country,” Carvajal-Muñoz said in a statement released Tuesday by the ACLU of Maine, which brought the lawsuit alongside local and national partners. “All people should be free to move about their communities safely, knowing they will not be violently arrested by masked agents simply for driving while Latino.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified punitive damages and provides a detailed account of the 15-hours that elapsed between his arrest and when he returned him, including a moment where he felt mocked by agents who pretended to release him back in Portland but instead kept driving him around in their custody. In another humiliating moment, he was forced to urinate with other detainees in a public parking lot, according to the complaint. He learned he was being released when an officer came to his locked cell in the field office and told him he was not supposed to be there, the filing states.
It names as defendants the five agents who participated in Carvajal-Muñoz’s arrest or held him in custody. Four are referred to as John and Jane Doe because their identities are unknown. The fourth is Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent Jack Cory Ravenamp. The agents who arrested Carvajal-Muñoz were wearing masks.
Spokespeople for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other Mainers have sued the federal government over its actions during Operation Catch of the Day. Two Maine women have sued Homeland Security, which oversees federal immigration enforcement, earlier this winter after agents made threatening statements toward them while they observed and filmed their actions during the raid.
A third man put the agency on notice in late January that he plans to sue for up to $7.5 million in damages over similar alleged violations of his First Amendment rights.
