Asked what her message is for the ICE agent who drew a gun on her, Molina said she’d tell him he needs therapy.
Carolina Molina spoke out Wednesday about her experience having a gun drawn on her by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Northern Virginia.
“I feel like, in that moment, I had to de-escalate,” Molina told reporters of the moment an ICE agent pointed a gun at her. “I had to explain what I was doing.”
The video of ICE agents surrounding Molina’s car on Monday at a shopping center in Falls Church has gone viral on social media and attracted widespread media attention.
The ICE agents surrounded Molina’s car after she had yelled insults at them. They accused her of trying to run them over, but footage from Molina’s dashcam doesn’t show that she tried to harm them. Molina said she was at the shopping center trying to drop business cards off and denied that she had been following the ICE agents.
“ I have seen these videos of American citizens being killed, and, like, why would I put myself in a situation like that?” Molina said.
Asked what her message was for the ICE agent who drew a gun on her, Molina said she’d tell him he needs therapy. She said it was important to her to raise her voice as the daughter of immigrants.
“ If my parents were here undocumented, I would want them to be able to stay,” Molina said.
Molina was joined at Wednesday’s press conference by immigrant rights organizers who called on local and state leaders to do more to protect communities from Trump’s immigration crackdown. Demonstrators held signs that read, “ICE Out of Virginia” and “Abolish ICE.”
Oliver Merino, an organizer with the National Immigration Project, said people have gotten more vocal about their opposition to ICE in the past year, but more work remains to protect local communities.
“We’ve seen a change from people coming out, standing up in solidarity with their immigrant neighbors,” Merino said. “We haven’t seen as much from elected officials here in Virginia. I think that’s something that we still have to work on.”
