Robertsdale, Alabama

Leonardo Garcia Venegas is a U.S. citizen, born in Florida, who has been arrested twice by immigration agents for the crime of – as he sees it – “being a Latino working in construction.”

In May, the 25-year-old was working at a construction site in Foley, Alabama, when, by his account, “five armed men in camouflage” jumped a fence at the property line and ran past a No Trespassing sign toward his co-workers. According to a lawsuit filed on Venegas’s behalf by the Institute for Justice, the five agents “ran right past the white and black workers… and went straight for the Latino workers.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asserts that Venegas “physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands.” Venegas tells a different story. He says he was in the act of filming the arrest of his brother, a co-worker on the project, when an agent forced his arm behind his back and pushed him to the ground. Then a second agent tackled him (a video shows an agent yelling, “Get on the fucking ground!”), and a third agent held him down as he repeatedly shouted “I’m a citizen!” and produced a REAL ID card to prove it.

The agents told Venegas that his ID was “fake” and detained him in handcuffs for more than an hour before confirming his Social Security number and letting him go. Venegas says he had to take nearly two weeks off work to emotionally recover from that experience.

The second raid occurred in June. Venegas was working alone inside a partially constructed house in Fairhope, Alabama, when he was cornered by an armed, masked agent who approached from behind, he says. After being ordered outside, he again produced his REAL ID, again to no avail. This time he was held for another half hour before his citizenship was confirmed.

Twice was enough, he decided. In September, Venegas filed a class-action federal lawsuit against the Trump administration for violating his constitutional rights. He is seeking an end to what the Institute for Justice calls “unconstitutional and illegal immigration enforcement tactics.”

“I’m suing because it’s not right what they did to me. I don’t want it to happen to anyone else,” Venegas told USA TODAY.

In both cases, his lawsuit asserts, immigration agents raided private property without a warrant or consent, violating the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” In answer to the suit, DHS emailed a statement telling USA TODAY that “DHS law enforcement uses ‘reasonable suspicion’ to make arrests. There are no ‘indiscriminate stops’ being made.”

“The Constitution is the highest law in the land and officers cannot violate the Fourth Amendment just because they are enforcing immigration laws,” one of Venegas’s attorneys replied.

The raids have continued, and in a video shot by his law firm Venegas says he “lives in fear every day that when I get to work it will happen again.” He just wants to work in peace, he says.