OCEANSIDE, Calif. (FOX 5/KUSI) — Homeland Security Investigators executed a search warrant at a small apartment complex in Oceanside early Wednesday morning, detaining two people during that operation.
Normally, on the eastside of Oceanside, you find a quiet neighborhood with kids playing in the park and neighbors walking their dogs.
“If my husband’s walking by the window and is like ‘Ooh that smells good,’ she’ll hand him a taco out the window. We’re just like family,” said Marlo Cleveland, one of the residents as she described the relationships in her neighborhood.
But, on Wednesday, community members were met with a chaotic scene.
“It was like they were taking out a drug cartel compound and it’s just a two-bedroom apartment,” Cleveland said.
Around 6 a.m., Homeland Security Investigators smashed the windows of this small apartment complex near the intersection of Buena Street and Santa Barbara Street, claiming to execute a warrant at one of the units.
“They kept saying, ‘We have a warrant. We have a warrant,’ and then they were asking me if I knew the names of people in there,” Cleveland said. “Well, if you have a warrant, you should know who you’re here for, right.”
Marlo Cleveland, one of the neighbors, didn’t want to speak on camera but recorded the entire operation and says the federal agents used flash bangs when they arrived.
“We just want to let you know that we may be using gas to attempt to evacuate the residence,” one of the agents can be heard saying in the video.
Before agents could use tear gas, video shows officers detaining four people in the home, including two teenagers.
“There’s a lot of fear and confusion around the fact that unmarked cars are going into the neighborhoods and are taking people out of our neighborhood that have lived there for a decade or more and we still have no answers as to why,” Deputy Mayor Eric Joyce said.
FOX 5/KUSI reached out to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement several times for more details on this operation, but we did not hear back.
“You see people start to come out on the street during these actions, and I’m very concerned something could go wrong,” Joyce said.
Federal agents released the two teenagers, and in the video they can later be heard saying the two adults would be transported downtown to verify their status.
“You don’t need thirty or forty loaded up military gear people to handle two parents and two kids,” Cleveland said.
The community started a GoFundMe page to help the two adults obtain legal representation and support the children left behind after the incident.
