Argentina’s government posts ICE-style video of immigration operation

Original article by Tiago Rogero South America correspondent

The Argentinian government posted a video on social media showing a 60-year-old woman being led away in handcuffs by two federal police officers during an immigration operation in Buenos Aires.

The woman’s face is shown unblurred in the video, which has nearly 1m views and depicts one of hundreds of such operations carried out by the administration of the far-right president, Javier Milei, directly inspired by Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the US.

Visibly distressed, appearing to be in pain and with one hand bandaged, the woman is shown against a heavy metal soundtrack as the words “Illegal foreigner or criminal record? Out!” flash across the screen.

In another video, she is described as “a Peruvian national subject to an arrest warrant for fraud and robbery”.

But there was no arrest warrant for her.

The woman, who asked to be identified only by her initials, PLS, said she was released just minutes after being paraded in handcuffs before photographers and television crews covering the operation, which took place last February.

“They just drove me around the block and said: ‘Get out. You’re free.’ I asked: ‘Why did you put me through all this?’” she said.

“My face was everywhere on social media. I started getting calls from relatives living abroad – back in Peru, in Spain, the US and Germany – asking me: ‘What happened? What did you do?’” she added.

According to her lawyer, PLS is a legal permanent resident and was subject only to a “whereabouts inquiry” – requiring her to be notified about a separate case – which, under Argentinian law, does not entail arrest or any other form of coercion.

“Her detention was unlawful, and the authorities used it as propaganda for their operations against immigrants,” said Lucía Galoppo, a lawyer at the NGO Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), which is representing PLS.

CELS sees her case as a striking example of how Milei is reshaping the country’s immigration laws to bring them closer to those of Trump – whom the Argentinian president openly admires – including by creating an Argentinian version of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Checks on people’s immigration status existed before, but they have become far more frequent, large-scale operations involving not only immigration agents but federal police.

Much like Trump, Milei has turned raids in poorer, traditionally immigrant neighbourhoods into a “public spectacle”, said Galoppo.

Since taking office in December 2023, the self-styled libertarian has introduced a series of changes to immigration law by decree, bypassing congress.

The latest came in late July, when Milei invoked his claim that there had been an “anti-Argentina” wave since the World Cup to justify a decree allowing the deportation of foreigners who promote “messages of hate” against the country or any Argentinian citizen.

Critics pointed to the irony that, had countries Milei recently visited adopted the same rule, the president himself could have been expelled after insulting Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez.

Other decrees include ending the automatic right to permanent residency for foreigners who have a child born in the country or marry an Argentinian citizen, and requiring immigrants to prove they have sufficient financial means to support themselves – in a country where more than 40% of workers are informally employed.

While making it harder to obtain documentation, Milei has also restricted free access to public hospitals, previously available to everyone but now limited to permanent residents, except in emergencies.

“The state is manufacturing a problem to manufacture a security-based response,” said Galoppo. “Argentina doesn’t have an immigration problem,” she added. In the 2022 census, immigrants made up 4.2%, the lowest proportion since records began in 1869.

Galoppo believes Milei is targeting immigrants as part of a strategy to create an “internal enemy” that distracts from domestic problems – alongside corruption scandals, his “chainsaw” austerity policies have brought inflation under control, but unemployment and poverty have risen.

Milei did not respond to requests for comment.

CELS filed freedom of information requests with the government about its immigration operations. There were 851 between 1 January and 26 June. The government provided further details on only 590 of them, in which just 2.2% of the foreigners stopped were found to have irregular immigration status.

“These operations are highly theatrical, deploying hundreds of police officers in an attempt to imitate raids in the US, but the tiny number of people found to have irregular status shows they are not justified,” said Galoppo.

In the lawsuit filed against the state on behalf of PLS, CELS alleges that she was subjected to unlawful deprivation of liberty, degrading treatment, public humiliation and abuse of authority. PLS has lived in Argentina since 2006.

The “whereabouts inquiry” involving her relates to a 2021 case. In it, a person whose phone was stolen alleged that money had been transferred from their account to one in PLS’s name and then to a third account. PLS denies any involvement, saying her own phone had been stolen months earlier and may have been used to create an account in her name.

Her lawyer said being sought for notification did not justify her detention.

The security ministry also did not respond to requests for comment.

PLS said she felt ashamed and afraid to leave home after the operation, costing her her livelihood as a street food vendor. “If I saw a police officer, I was frightened thinking they might arrest me,” she said.

But she added that she had no intention of leaving: “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not a criminal. I’m someone who works. I liked Argentina, and I want to stay here.”