ICE arrested a TikTok influencer who livestreamed immigration raids

An influencer who documents Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ activities on TikTok was arrested by ICE while livestreaming from her car.

Tatiana Martinez was detained last month in Los Angeles while sitting in her Tesla outside her home. The 24-year-old was streaming on TikTok when federal agents approached her vehicle.

Videos of the arrest show Martinez being dragged from the car and restrained face down. Bystanders can be heard calling for medical assistance as she lies motionless on the ground.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek that Martinez was arrested because of a prior DUI conviction. “This influencer drove under the influence—and got convicted for it in Los Angeles,” the official ICE account posted on X.

Her attorney, Carlos Jurado, has suggested Martinez was targeted for her platform, where more than 40,000 followers on TikTok watch her document ICE raids and share advice on what to do if stopped during enforcement actions. Martinez has also posted under President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations.

Social media has increasingly been used to alert communities about ICE activity and document arrests across the U.S. Videos capture workers and family members being taken in daylight, but those behind the cameras risk drawing attention from ICE themselves.

“One of the biggest points that was being made to her aggressively by officers was, ‘Did you think that you were going to get away with recording our activities and there wouldn’t be a consequence?’ That was said to her many times by many different people while she was being held in Los Angeles,” Jurado said, according to The Independent. (Fast Company has reached out to Jurado and DHS for comment.)

Jurado confirmed Martinez, originally from Colombia and in the U.S. for about four years, was convicted in 2023. He told ABC 7, however, that the DUI was never mentioned during the arrest.

Jurado also said Martinez passed out from trauma during the incident and was hospitalized. She is now being detained in Calexico, California, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for later today.

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