Video Captures Teen Sobbing As Her Dad Is Arrested By ICE

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While being dropped off at school with her sisters, 13-year-old Fatima Avelica from Los Angeles, recorded her undocumented father being picked up by agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Her father, Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez had been in the country for 20 years with four children.

The ICE officials, dressed in police jackets, took the 48-year-old Dad into custody, as he dropped his girls off at school in Highland Park.

“It’s really hard what we’re going through,” Avelica-Gonzalez’s daughter Brenda Avelica said. “I never thought we’d actually go through something like this. It’s terrible to feel and see your family being broken apart.”

The executive director of the Highland Park charter school Academia Avance, Ricardo Mireles, called upon two dozen people to support the family.

“I think the impacts are going to come in terms of, ‘Hey, how do we pay the rent? And how do we move forward?'” Mireles said. “We want to be able to find resources to help this family go through this process.”

Mireles explained that the girls’ father had a nearly decade-old DUI conviction as well as an incident 20 years ago where the father said he bought a car with an incorrect registration sticker – unbeknown to him.

Both of these reasons were given for the deportation.

An attorney for the family was in the process of filing paperwork for a U-visa, which would allow Avelica-Gonzalez to stay in the country.

Watch the video here: