A federal immigration officer drew his gun on a Virginia woman during a tense confrontation in a Falls Church parking lot Monday after officers accused her of trying to hit them with her car.
Videos of the encounter shared on social media show several masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers surrounding the vehicle of Carolina Molina, 36, as she sits behind the wheel. One officer can be seen pulling out his hand gun and pointing it toward Molina’s window as the two argue.
“You almost ran us over,” the officer says in the video recorded by Molina before warning her, “I will arrest you. Keep it up.”
Molina denied trying to strike the officers with her car and told them she was recording the confrontation.
“I was looking down a barrel, and he could have shot me, and he could have gotten away with it,” Molina told CNN affiliate WUSA9.
The officers eventually walked away without taking her into custody, and she has not been charged, according to Molina.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offered a different account Tuesday, accusing an unnamed woman of interfering with an immigration enforcement operation and attempting to endanger the officers with her vehicle.
A DHS spokesperson referred to the woman as “an anti-ICE agitator” in a statement, saying she drove her vehicle “in circles around our ICE officers and then attempted to harm officers by weaponizing her vehicle against them—all in an attempt to help illegal aliens get away.”
The videos captured by Molina show the confrontation after officers surrounded her vehicle but do not show what occurred beforehand. During the portion captured on video, her car appears stationary as officers approach it.
Molina, a licensed mental health counselor who works with people navigating the immigration system, said in an interview that she wanted the agency to be held accountable.
“I know my laws. I’m an American citizen. I have the right. I have my First Amendment rights. I can say what I want, and I don’t feel like I should have a gun pointed to my head because you didn’t like being called a h–,” she said.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents Falls Church, slammed the officers’ conduct and said his office had been in touch with Molina.
He said he “will be demanding answers and consequences,” arguing the episode reflected what he described as a pattern of unnecessary escalation by immigration officers.
“This kind of misconduct and threat of force against members of our communities cannot be tolerated,” he said in a statement on social media.
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