This story originally appeared on Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra. You can see it in Spanish here.
A family in Lynn, Massachusetts, says federal agents detained their father Monday morning during a so-called family welfare visit.
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WATCH HEREVideo shows the moment U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took Luis Barreras, a father of three, into custody.
Barreras' family said it all began with a phone call federal agents made to him, assuring him they wanted to check on his children's well-being. It was around 7 a.m. when the agents showed up at his home on Chestnut Street.
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SIGN UP In the video, Barreras' son, Justin Martínez, is seen trying to intervene. His wife, Irayda Martínez, is heard asking why he's being taken away and demanding that the agents show an arrest warrant.
"When I realized they were holding him like that, I came down here. They even had some documents to go looking for people, I guess," Irayda Martínez, who was holding her 8-month-old son at the time of the incident, told Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra in Spanish.
"After that, they started grabbing him, they threw him there and grabbed him, I tried, but they took him," Justin Martínez said.
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The agents took Barreras away without further explanation. Some documents were left on a chair, but his name did not appear in them.
"They're looking for all kinds of tactics to break the trust of the working class who either naively open the door or are influenced by trust, and then they stop them, as happened today," a Lynn pastor told Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra.
The incident comes after another in Lynn last week in which a man who was detained by ICE, and released a day later, claimed agents brought him to a cemetery and beat him, even after he told them he is a legal resident.
The family is devastated and looking for an immigration attorney to help.
Protesters spoke out against recent ICE raids at a rally in Lynn Tuesday.
