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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Rep. Don Beyer and five other House Democrats opened an investigation Wednesday into an Aug. 10 encounter in which they say a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent pointed a gun at a U.S. citizen in Northern Virginia without justification, and asked the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to examine the agents' conduct.
The lawmakers also asked that the agents be placed on administrative leave while the matter is reviewed, and that the Department of Homeland Security preserve all records of the encounter, including body-worn camera footage.
Beyer, whose district includes Alexandria, was joined by Reps. Suhas Subramanyam and James Walkinshaw of Northern Virginia and by the ranking Democrats on three House committees: Robert Garcia of California on Oversight, Jamie Raskin of Maryland on Judiciary, and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi on Homeland Security. Their letter went to Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting ICE Director David Venturella, with a copy to the DHS inspector general. It sets a response deadline of Aug. 31.
What the lawmakers say happened
According to the letter, Carolina Molina, a licensed professional counselor, was at immigration law offices in the Bailey's Crossroads neighborhood of Falls Church on Aug. 10, volunteering mental health assessments for immigration clients. She saw ICE agents operating nearby and tried to leave.
Unmarked vehicles then boxed her car in front and back, the lawmakers wrote, and masked agents approached. One had drawn his firearm and pointed it at her.
In video Molina recorded, the letter says, the agent with the drawn gun shouted at her for following and recording the agents, then accused her of trying to run them over and threatened her with arrest. Another agent is quoted saying he would testify and lock her up. The agents left without detaining or charging her after she told them she had dashcam footage.
Molina recorded the encounter on both a dashcam and a cellphone.
The dispute over DHS's account
The day after the encounter, DHS issued an unattributed statement describing Molina as an "anti-ICE agitator" and saying she had attempted to harm officers by weaponizing her vehicle against them. The department said she could face criminal prosecution.
The lawmakers say the footage does not support that. Neither video shows any attempt to run over or endanger the agents, they wrote, and they argued the agents' decision to leave without charging her undercuts the claim she posed a deadly threat.
They went further, writing that the "weaponizing her vehicle" phrasing matches justifications offered elsewhere that later collapsed once video emerged — a pattern they said suggests DHS personnel are systematically engaging in intimidation of American citizens under false claims of danger. That characterization is the lawmakers' allegation, not an established finding.
The Alexandria Brief has requested comment from ICE.
The policies at issue
The letter measures the agents' conduct against two ICE directives.
Directive 19009.3 governs use of force, requiring officers to use force only when no reasonably effective, safe and feasible alternative exists, and only at a level objectively reasonable under the circumstances. Violations may be grounds for discipline.
Directive 19010.3 requires agents to activate body-worn cameras at the start of enforcement activity or as soon as safely possible. The lawmakers say Molina's video shows at least three agents wearing cameras, that Molina recalls seeing the agent who drew his gun press a button on his, and that another agent photographed her license plate. They asked ICE to produce the complete, unedited footage, and to explain if none exists.
Their ten questions also ask who the agents were, whether they were trained on stopping and approaching vehicles, whether any use-of-force report was filed, whether any have faced discipline, whether they remain deployed in public spaces, and whether menacing someone for recording is consistent with their training.
Context
The lawmakers placed the encounter within what they called a broader pattern of dishonesty and unjustified escalation by DHS agents nationally, one they wrote had resulted in the deaths of Ruben Ray Martinez, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
Good and Pretti were killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in January. Beyer called those deaths murder at the time and demanded the impeachment of the homeland security secretary then in office.
Beyer said Tuesday that his office has received reports of several other ICE encounters in Northern Virginia over the past 10 days involving unjustified violence or apparently warrantless detention, describing a pattern of agents stopping people on the street, asking for identification and responding with force when questioned. He urged residents to exercise extreme caution.
His office has not said whether any of those reports came from Alexandria.
On Aug. 6, Beyer joined Subramanyam and Walkinshaw in an unannounced oversight visit to ICE's temporary holding facility in Chantilly. The lawmakers said they did not observe overcrowding and that ICE staff told them the agency was complying with a court order limiting stays there to 12 hours.
ICE Out of Alexandria, a local coalition, said in an Aug. 10 release that six people were detained in the city's Chirilagua neighborhood over three days that week. The Alexandria Brief has not been able to independently confirm those accounts.
