MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance.
But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain.
He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend’s car on January 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again.
He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.
“They started beating me right away when they arrested me,” said the Mexican immigrant. His case has highlighted growing tensions between federal immigration agents and local healthcare facilities.
Castañeda Mondragón, 31, is among a disturbing number of immigration detainees who, despite avoiding deportation during the Trump administration’s enforcement crackdown, have sustained lasting injuries from encounters with ICE officers. His case is one of the excessive-force claims that the federal government has yet to investigate.
After his hospitalization, which was overshadowed by ICE monitoring, Castañeda Mondragón struggled with memory loss and physical coordination due to his significant injuries. He pleads for justice as members of the community rally to support him financially and emotionally, recognizing the long road to recovery he faces.
“It’s immense luck to have survived and to be able to heal,” he stated in reflection on his traumatic experience. However, the psychological scars from the encounter continue to haunt him, instilling a persistent fear of future encounters with law enforcement.
