Newly published video provides insights into the immigration arrest of a chiropractor outside of his child’s Beaverton school.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stopped Mahdi Khanbabazadeh, 38, while he was driving his child to Guidepost Montessori school on July 15.
The arrest marked the first confirmed immigration enforcement action outside of an Oregon school. Until earlier this year, federal policy prohibited immigration officials from making arrests near certain locations such as schools, houses of worship and hospitals.
OPB obtained edited video clips showing the arrest from Khanbabazadeh’s family. OPB authenticated the footage before publishing it and is using Khanbabazadeh’s name with his family’s permission.
One video from inside the vehicle blurred the faces of Khanbabazadeh and his child, who was in the backseat. It was recorded at 8:17 a.m., according to a timestamp on the video.
“Daddy, police!” the child said from a carseat as officers told the man to roll his window down further.
“Yeah, that’s police,” Khanbabazadeh replied as he retrieved his identification for the officers.
“Where are you headed?” one of the ICE officers asked.
“Day care,” Khanbabazadeh replied.
In another clip from the same video, recorded around 8:32 a.m., the father implores the officers to delay their arrest.
“There is a baby in the car,” Khanbabazadeh said. “Is it hard to wait for three minutes?”
A clip taken from the same dashboard camera shows ICE officers smashing the driver’s side window of the car after the child has left the vehicle. Khanbabazadeh tells the officers he is getting out.
“We told you three times. Unbuckle your seatbelt and step out of the car,” one officer said.
Another video taken from outside the vehicle shows Khanbabazadeh standing next to a black SUV being handcuffed and led away by several ICE officers, some of whom are wearing masks.
A spokesperson for ICE declined late Monday to comment on the videos.
Khanbabazadeh is currently being held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, a detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. He was born in Iran and is married to a U.S. citizen. The couple had recently completed an interview with immigration authorities and were awaiting final approval on a green card.
The family is pressing for Khanbabazadeh’s release from the facility. His immigration attorneys have declined to comment on the case.
According to ICE, Khanbabazadeh entered the United States on a student visa, which a spokesperson for the agency said he overstayed, in violation of the law. His family has disputed that characterization, saying that he had completed his green card application, including an interview with federal immigration officials earlier this year.
The incident left the Guidepost Montessori School community shaken, with the school itself going into a “soft lockdown” that day and holding a meeting with families the following evening.
Randy Kornfield, who had been dropping off his grandchild at the time and witnessed the arrest, told OPB one of the ICE agents got into a heated exchange with a teacher from the school after that person asked that the officers identify themselves. Kornfield described the arrest as “heartless.”
In a press release the day after the arrest, ICE stated it initially attempted to arrest Khanbabazadeh during a traffic stop, but decided to allow him to drop his son off at preschool first.
“Officers allowed him to proceed to the daycare parking lot where he stopped cooperating, resisted arrest and refused to exit his vehicle, resulting in ICE officers making entry by breaking one of the windows to complete the arrest,” a spokesperson for ICE said in a statement last week.
The ICE action was condemned by local and state leaders, including Beaverton Mayor Lacey Beaty and Gov. Tina Kotek.
OPB’s Ryan Haas and Michelle Wiley contributed to this report.
