Federal law enforcement officers pepper sprayed Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva, her staff and other community members protesting an immigration raid at a taco restaurant on Tucson’s west side in a historic Latino neighborhood.
Arizona Luminaria photographed the officers at Taco Giro dispersing a cloud-like substance at the crowd and captured video of Grijalva identifying herself and pushing back against agents dressed in combat gear and black masks partially covering their faces.
“I’m a sitting member of congress and I want to know where you’re taking him,” Grijalva asks as she wades through a crowd of protesters and masked officials. People cough around her.
“Don’t push me, don’t push me, don’t push me,” she says.
“I want to know where you’re taking him,” she says as she reaches a masked agent wearing a helmet and a uniform with “POLICE” on the front.
An agent is heard saying “assault on a federal officer” but the rest of the audio is unclear.
“What’s your fucking name, where’s your fucking badge?” a member of the public shouts.
Grijalva continues questioning where agents were taking people they’d arrested during the raid.
“Downtown to the federal jail is where you’re taking him?” Grijalva asks.
“Yes ma’am.”
“That’s all I needed to know.”
“She needs to stop being so aggressive,” Grijalva says about one of the masked agents. “Stop being so aggressive. Don’t push on me,” she says to the agent.
Grijalva is the first Latina to represent Arizona in the U.S. House and has already been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump. On her first day in Congress, after a Republican-led delay to swearing her into office, she was the deciding vote to release the Epstein files.
Grijalva describes Taco Giro as a “small mom-and-pop restaurant that has served our community for years.” The shop sits on Grande Avenue between St. Mary’s Road and Speedway Boulevard in the Barrio Hollywood neighborhood — lined with locally-owned restaurants, churches and a preschool and daycare.
Grijalva posted videos of the altercation at Taco Giro on her social media.
“You guys need to calm down and get out,” she tells federal officers using pepper spray as people scream, cough and car horns honk around her. A projectile nearly hits her in the leg as she moves through the crowd.
She then posted a statement condemning federal immigration agents’ actions.
“We just came up on a community that was protecting their people. We had, I would say, maybe 40 ICE agents, most of them masked, in several vehicles,” she says directly to the camera. “The community had stopped right here right in the middle of the street because they were afraid that they were taking people without due process. Without any notice.”
“I was here, this is the restaurant I come to literally once a week. And was sprayed in the face. By a very aggressive agent. Pushed around by others when I was literally not being aggressive — I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of congress,” she adds.
All but one agent, she says, was “rude and disrespectful” to her as she asked about the whereabouts of people arrested.
“I can only imagine, if they’re gonna treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else,” she says.
“We saw people directly sprayed. Members of our press. Everybody that was with me, my staff member, myself. Two staff members. We have remnants of whatever they sprayed on us,” she says coughing.
Grijalva called Trump out directly in her message.
“One of the biggest problems we have in this community is that we have Trump, that has no regard for any kind of due process, the rule of law, the constitution,” she says. “They’re literally disappearing people from the streets. They arrested two people. We have no idea where they’re going.”
She thanked Tucson Police Department officers “for coming and taking care of the space. Making sure that everyone was safe once ICE left. ot the aggressors here, they arrived on the scene after ICE was already here and after there was a block in the street. I just want to make sure that that’s really clear.”
Grijalva says she went to the raid to protect the community she represents and ensure the public’s safety.
“I think it’s important for me to have eyes on what’s happening here and not just have it be stories through other people,” she says.
Photos and videos taken by Arizona Luminaria show some officers in combat gear with the words “ICE” or “Police HSI,” which stands for Homeland Security Investigations. The organization is a federal law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security, as is ICE.
Shortly after the operation, Mayor Regina Romero and Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz released a statement condemning federal law enforcement actions and clarifying that Tucson Police Department officers were not involved.
“Today, federal officers conducted a raid in Tucson that rapidly escalated into violence against the public. We share the fears in our community created by President Trump’s immoral and inhumane immigration policies,” they wrote.
They added that it is common under the “Trump Administration, unidentified federal agents often intentionally wear clothing with vague words like “police” to purposefully confuse the public.”
“Their disproportionate use of force, smoke grenades and pepper balls against the public, including our own Representative Adelita Grijalva, is not justified and cannot be tolerated,” Romero and Santa Cruz wrote.
Tucson Police Department officers were dispatched to the scene to close the street and “to keep our residents safe. They were not involved in the use of force against community members,” they wrote.
Romero and Santa Cruz encouraged people with photos or videos of federal officers’ actions to keep the documentation should there be an “investigation and follow-up” into the incident.
“We are committed to having a safe city where everyone’s rights are respected and legally enforced at all times,” they wrote.
Some community members gathered at the federal ICE field office on the south side of Tucson to continue protesting.
Tucson Police Captain Dominic Flores said about a dozen officers responded to the ICE office on Friday afternoon in response to the protest. By the time the officers arrived they encountered about 25 protesters, he added. But the group quickly dispersed after their arrival.
Moments before Tucson police arrived, protesters had been banging on the fence to the field office, located inside a strip mall complex.
Federal agents sprayed some of the protesters from inside the field office parking lot. But there were no major injuries.
In recent months, community members and journalists have documented officers from federal law enforcement agencies commonly using aggressive policing tactics during immigration sweeps and raids in cities across the nation.
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended its immigration operations and officers’ tactics. Following a DHS operation in New Orleans this week, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement that cities with sanctuary policies were being targeted.
“Sanctuary policies endanger American communities by releasing illegal criminal aliens and forcing DHS law enforcement to risk their lives to remove criminal illegal aliens that should have never been put back on the streets,” McLaughlin said.
Local voters in 2019 rejected an effort to make Tucson a sanctuary city. However, amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, the advocacy organization Stand Up, Fight Back Tucson launched a petition earlier this year calling on Romero and city council members “to pass a resolution for Tucson to become a sanctuary city, acting to protect the rights of our citizens even in the face of federal retaliation.”
Reporters Rafael Carranza and John Washington contributed to this story
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