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In the video, the man’s children hang onto him and cry, and an ICE agent later threatens to pepper spray a bystander.
Several U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents attempted to arrest a man with two young children clinging onto him in Providence, as seen in a video taken by a bystander.
In the video, obtained by The Boston Globe, the agents surround the man, who is holding a child in each arm. Throughout the video, the children are heard crying.
The ICE agents repeatedly bark at the bystander recording the interaction, eventually threatening to pepper spray the bystander, the video shows.
The man, who was interviewed by the Globe, said he was driving to drop off his children at a babysitter before going to work in construction. The man, who went by his middle name “Sebastian” in the Globe interview, said he noticed vehicles following him.
Sebastian told the Globe he struck a curb while trying to get away from the vehicles, and he got out of his car to walk his children back home. Sebastian’s car can be seen in the video with damage to the front on the driver’s side and a tire turned sideways on the curb.
Two ICE agents then approached and stopped Sebastian, according to the Globe’s interview.
“I didn’t want to let them go,” Sebastian told the Globe in Spanish.
Sebastian, who is from Guatemala and crossed the border around three years ago, told the Globe he is undocumented but is actively working to change his status.
ICE agents later walked him closer to his home and told him to report to ICE on Wednesday. If he didn’t, they threatened to arrest his whole family, he told the Globe.
In the video, the ICE agents pat down Sebastian as the bystander yells at the agents for “violating his rights.” The agents later take a photo of Sebastian on their phones. At one point, the bystander asks if the agents have a warrant, and they respond that they do, according to the video.
Towards the end of the video, an ICE agent growls at the bystander to back up, while grabbing and holding his pepper spray.
While ICE did not immediately respond to Boston.com’s request for comment on this specific situation, a spokesperson previously wrote the agency “prioritizes the removal of individuals who pose a threat to public safety.”
“ICE is charged with enforcing the U.S. immigration laws as passed by Congress and is committed to upholding the law and protecting public safety,” the spokesperson wrote to Boston.com.
According to the Globe, Sebastian does not have a criminal record in Rhode Island.
Providence’s guardrails against ICE
The interaction with ICE took place in Providence, a city which has gone to great lengths to place guardrails against the immigration enforcement agency over the past couple of years.
Mayor Brett Smiley signed an executive order in September 2025 affirming that Providence police officers are not to act as immigration officers, ask about a person’s immigration status, or proactively work with ICE agents.
The Providence City Council then passed a series of amendments to its Community-Police Relations Act in November 2025. These amendments banned Providence police from volunteering to help immigration enforcement, collaborating with immigration enforcement without a warrant, and more.
The actions followed an incident in July 2025 in which Providence police responded to a vehicle collision involving an ICE agent. Body-worn camera footage showed the police helping ICE in its immigration enforcement search, including a police officer explicitly stating, “We’ll help you” to ICE agents. The ACLU wrote a letter demanding all body-worn camera footage from the incident.
The Providence External Review Board found the officers violated a city ordinance, according to a September memo.
Mayor Brett Smiley signed two executive orders over the year to further distance the city from ICE.
A January executive order prohibited ICE from using any city property as a staging area, operating base, or processing location. A more recent July executive order established procedures for how city officials should respond to federal officials’ election-related questions and reaffirmed protections against ICE voter intimidation.
The city’s protections against ICE extend beyond the realm of politicians, with dozens of businesses in the city joining together in August 2025 to create a network of “immigration defense zones,” where federal agents are prohibited from entering without a judicial warrant.
ICE activity in the area
The incident in Providence follows a three-day stretch in late September when ICE detained more than 80 people just across the border in Southeastern Massachusetts.
Advocates, attorneys, and officials shared stories of ICE agents detaining a father whose 8-year-old son waited at school to be picked up; a parent with a one-month-old child at home; workers heading to the fish processing plants on the New Bedford Harbor; and others doing nothing more than driving or going to the grocery store.
Providence has seen a number of high-profile ICE arrests during the second Trump administration, including the wrongful arrest of a high school intern at the Rhode Island Superior Court in November 2025. Earlier in 2025, protestors gathered around a Providence hospital after reports of agents inside.
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