A van transporting eight undocumented mothers forcibly separated from their children under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy crashed en route to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility. ICE then repeatedly denied the crash ever occurred.
The Texas Observer reports that the accident left the women with minor injuries; an ambulance arrived at the scene, but none of the women went to the hospital out of what they said was fear of prolonging their separation from their children. Additionally, a police report noted that the van was too damaged to continue driving, and was towed away from the scene.
There were clearly multiple receipts documenting this incident, but ICE spent three weeks denying it ever happened. From the Observer:
The Observer was first alerted to the crash the day after it occurred by immigrant rights activists in Austin. The next day, Leticia Zamarripa, an ICE spokesperson, denied the incident twice. “Your sources misinformed you,” Zamarripa wrote on July 20. “There was no crash.”
However, once ICE was informed that the Observer obtained the accident report, they released a statement.
The statement, predictably, was trash:
…ICE spokesperson Adelina Pruneda, says the incident was a “fender bender not vehicle crash” that “resulted in minor damage to both vehicles.” Pruneda added that both vehicles “remained operable.” However, the responding police officer wrote that the van carrying the immigrants was towed after suffering “disabling damage.” Pruneda did not respond to questions about why the agency initially denied the incident and refused to provide information.
ICE is an agency with a history of telling lies to support its racist agenda. Add this one to the book.