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“What hospital were you born at?” the Border Patrol agent asked.
Mr. Gavidia, 29, was born only a short drive from where they were standing, in East Los Angeles. He did not know the hospital’s name. “I was born here,” he shouted at the agent, adding, “I’m an American, bro!”
Mr. Gavidia was eventually released as he stood on the sidewalk. But another U.S. citizen, Javier Ramirez, 32 — Mr. Gavidia’s friend and co-worker — had been forced facedown to the ground by two agents in the car lot. Mr. Ramirez was put inside a van and driven to a federal detention center, where he remains in custody. Mr. Ramirez’s lawyer said that officials at the detention center had denied his request to speak to his client.
“I know enough to know this is not right at all,” Mr. Gavidia said in an interview. “Latinos in general are getting attacked. We’re all getting attacked.”
The episode on Thursday was captured on video by Mr. Gavidia’s friend and the car lot’s security cameras, and described in interviews with Mr. Gavidia, Mr. Ramirez’s lawyer and another man who was at the shop during the raid.
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Viral videos on social media of the Montebello incident and other instances of agents questioning Latino residents in Los Angeles have heightened anxiety that the federal immigration crackdown has entered a new phase. The fear is that agents, including those who are themselves Hispanic, are now racially profiling Hispanic residents and questioning citizenship on the street. Mr. Ramirez recently started carrying his passport with him because he feared being stopped, Mr. Gavidia said.
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Salvador Melendez, the mayor of Montebello, said he was outraged after a resident had sent him a video posted on social media of Mr. Gavidia being briefly detained.
“They came in over here looking for a specific look, which is the look of our Latino community,” Mr. Melendez said of federal agents. “They’re just going to apprehend anybody that looks Latino. We just feel extremely frustrated and angry as a community.”
A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, said that the agents were conducting a lawful immigration enforcement operation.
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