Andreina Mejia Speaks at Hearing: How Trump’s Immigration Agenda Endangers Children

Hi, my name is Andrina Mejia. I'm a 36-year-old mother of two. When the incident happened with me and my son, it was on August 11 before they went back to school. I was enrolling my daughter in her upcoming high school where me and my son were waiting in the car and I just remember I seen these two cars approaching my car. I literally thought they were going to crash into us. Two individuals with masks covering their face, they got off pointing their guns at me and my son. One came on my side, the other one went on my son's side. They handcuffed him and I was confused. I just told my son, listen to, follow directions, listen to what they're telling you. Just because in my mind, I'm like, I don't want them to shoot my son. So I got off and the person who was next to me was telling me that they were looking for an individual. They thought that was my son. So they showed me a picture on their phone and they told me, this is your son. I'm like, no, that's not my son. So I told them, can I go to my son? Because I saw my son was nervous. At the time I was speaking to a friend on the phone and she told me that all she could hear my son responding to the other individual who had him handcuffed was, hi, my name is Baltimore. I'm 15 years old. I'm a US citizen and I'm in special classes. So after that, they took the handcuffs off. They allowed him to come to my side. And the person who was with me just told my son, oh, we just confused you with somebody else, but look at the bright side. You're going to have an exciting story to tell your friends when you go back to school. So I looked at the guy just questioning. There's nothing exciting about having guns pointed at you like if you're a criminal. After that, I had to wait for the police to file a report. And I was really upset just by the fact that they left bullets in front of my car on the floor. So I took pictures of that. And after that, I saw the news and I seen that the LAUSD had done like a conference meeting where they said that the LAPD had reached out to Homeland Security, told them that, oh, can you send your people back because they left ammunition on the floor? And they said that their response was they were laughing and they're like, oh, no, we don't need them. You could just keep them so you could practice your targeting. At that moment, I'm like, when you have a son that's in special classes, he has trouble hearing, he wears hearing aids, he has a speech delay. My mind was I had to protect my son at all costs. If I don't protect them, nobody will. So I'm just thankful that I was there to protect them because I just think about that day. And I just think if I wasn't there to protect them and my son would have gotten scared, what about they would have just, you know, they would have shot him or something. So I mean, it's been kind of difficult for him to go to school. He will wake up crying. He sees cars with tinted windows and he's scared. He told me, mom, is it them? I'm like, no, it's just a regular car. So right now he's doing a bit better, but he says that sometimes he can't sleep.