A U.S. Marine Corps veteran said he was shocked to see a video on social media of his father, a landscaper in Southern California, being beaten by masked U.S. Border Patrol officers as he was pinned to the ground during an immigration arrest.
The Saturday arrest of Narciso Barranco, who came to the U.S. from Mexico in the 1990s but does not have legal status, is the latest to capture widespread attention as the crackdown on immigration by President Donald Trump’s administration draws scrutiny and protests.
Witnesses uploaded videos of the arrest in Santa Ana, a city in Orange County between San Diego and Los Angeles. No footage showed the entire incident from start to finish as agents struggled with Barranco outside an IHOP restaurant.
Narciso Barranco was taken to a federal immigration detention center in downtown Los Angeles where he is in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Marine veteran Alejandro Barranco, said his father called him Sunday and told him that he was in a lot of pain.
“He just started crying,” Barranco said of his 48-year-old father.
The Department of Homeland Security said Barranco refused to comply with commands and swung his weed trimmer at an agent. The agents “took appropriate action and followed their training to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation in a manner that prioritizes the safety of the public and our officers,” the email statement added.
Alejandro Barranco said his father had no criminal record and is kind and hardworking. He said the agents’ use of force was unnecessary and differed greatly from his military training for crowds and riot control. He aided the U.S. military’s evacuation of personnel and Afghan allies from Afghanistan in 2021.
“It’s uncalled for, not appropriate or professional in the way they handled that situation,” Barranco said. “It looks like he’s putting up resistance on the ground but that’s a natural human reaction and I think anybody would do that to defend themselves when they are being beaten on the ground by four men.”
The federal government said they’ve seen an uptick in people interfering with arrests that has put its agents at risk. Trump has deployed the California National Guard and Marines to guard federal buildings in Southern California and protect federal law enforcement officers.
DHS shared a video in which Barranco is seen running with the trimmer in the air as agents try to corral him. At one point, an agent sprays him with pepper spray, and Barranco moves the trimmer between him and the agent but it does not touch him. Behind him, another officer has his gun drawn as he crosses a busy intersection.
In other video footage, Barranco is seen running through the intersection still holding his long trimmer upright as a truck moves to block his path. He’s then seen darting to another lane and tries to open a car door before agents tackle him. As he screams and yells, cars honk and one motorist shouts: “Leave him alone, bro.”
An agent tells Barranco to give him his hand as he lies prone. Video footage from another angle shows an officer hitting Barranco repeatedly on the head and neck as he screams and moans and moves around. Another motorist is heard yelling in Spanish “why are you hitting him?”
The department said in an email to The Associated Press that Barranco “swung a weed whacker directly at an agent’s face. He then fled through a busy intersection and raised the weed whacker again at the agent.”
It added that Barranco was offered medical care but declined.
All three of Barranco’s sons were born in the United States and eventually joined the U.S. military. Alejandro left the Marine Corps in 2023. His two brothers are currently active-duty Marines.
“We joined the Marine Corps because we love our country and want to give back,” he said. “Our parents taught us to be appreciative, be thankful of our country, about being patriots.”
His father was worried about immigration officials arresting him and the family had looked into his options but Alejandro said his dad never found the time to tend to the matter as he focused on his landscaping business.
In fact, the first thing he said to his son when they spoke after the arrest was to check on his landscaping client to make sure no mess had been left when he dropped everything and fled from agents, Alejandro said.
