A photo of Narciso Barranco’s sons, who are United States citizens and who served in the Marines, at their home in Tustin, California. After three decades in California, Barranco was arrested by agents while weeding outside an IHOP, stirring outrage and a fight to stop his deportation. Photo / Peyton Fulford, The New York Times
Before dawn on June 21, Narciso Barranco loaded his weed trimmer, lawn mower and leaf blower into his pick-up.
He had three IHOP restaurants to landscape and then seven homes. His goal was to finish in time to cook dinner with his wife, Martha Hernandez.
It was a cool Saturday morning in Tustin, California, about 55km southeast of Los Angeles.
After wrapping up work at the first IHOP, Barranco stopped to buy a wheel of fresh white cheese. He returned home and left it on the kitchen counter for Hernandez before driving to an IHOP in Santa Ana.
He paid no attention to the Home Depot across the parking lot. Later, he would wish he had been more aware.
Migrants for decades have gathered outside the store, hoping a contractor or homeowner might offer a day’s work.
Under the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown, Home Depot has become a prime target for United States federal agents under pressure to round up people like Barranco, who slipped across the border from Mexico more than 30 years ago.
Barranco, 48, was weeding between bushes when men in masks descended on him. He raised the head of his weed trimmer as he retreated.
Authorities would say they believed he was attacking them; Barranco’s family said he was scared and just trying to move away.
In a post on social media, the Department of Homeland Security would cite that moment to justify what happened next.
Barranco’s memory of his arrest is fragmented: the sting of pepper spray; federal agents pinning him to the pavement; their relentless blows; the pain radiating from his left shoulder.
He didn’t dispute that he was in the country unlawfully. Still, he pleaded his case to the agents as they wrenched his arms behind his back.
“I have three boys in the Marines,” he recalled blurting out in English.
Surely that would count for something?
The arrest of Barranco quickly became a rallying point for those who believe immigration enforcement actions have gone too far.
A slight man with a reserved demeanour, Barranco had no criminal record.
All three of his sons are US citizens, having been born in California.
Alejandro, 25, was a combat engineer who deployed to Afghanistan to assist with the US withdrawal. Jose Luis, 23, was released from military duty last month and plans to study nursing. Emanuel, 21, is still in the Marines, based in San Diego.
The sons could have sponsored him for a green card but were discouraged by the time it would take and the thousands of dollars it would cost.
Hernandez, Barranco’s wife and the stepmother of the three young men, is also a US citizen.
After the agents subdued Barranco, they shoved him, hands shackled behind his back, into an unmarked vehicle. He was soon transferred to a van with another immigrant who said he had been snatched as he left the Home Depot.
By nightfall, Barranco was crammed into a constantly lit basement in Los Angeles with 70 other men.
Barranco left a tearful voicemail message for Alejandro, informing him that he had been arrested and didn’t know where he was being held.
Two days later, after locating his father, Alejandro drove to LA and waited for nearly four hours to see him, only to be turned away when visitation hours ended.
When Alejandro finally laid eyes on his father the next day, Barranco was dishevelled and dirty. Father and son met across a glass partition.
“My father looked defeated,” recalled Alejandro, who tried to assure his father that the family was “taking care of everything”.
The next day, Barranco was transferred to a privately run detention centre in the high desert, about two hours away.
Barranco was born in a village in Mexico, one of five children who subsisted on the maize, beans, squash, and tomatoes that they grew.
In 1994, he trekked to the border and sneaked undetected into Arizona. He made his way to California and began taking whatever work there was, in construction, restaurants, landscaping.
He married, and three boys came along, the first in 1999.
“I decided that if I took my kids to Mexico, they’d end up like me,” he said.
“I thought, ‘Here, I can work and ensure they have a better life.’”
As his boys moved through school, Barranco, who only has a few years of formal education, took parenting workshops to support their success.
In 2012, he received a Certificate of Congressional Recognition for his “faithful commitment and hard work” on behalf of his children’s education. That same year, after completing a nine-week “parental involvement programme”, he earned a certificate guaranteeing that his sons would be admitted to any California state university after high school.
“Any opportunity to do something good to help them, I tried to take advantage,” he said.
Barranco and his first wife divorced in 2015. A few years later, he met Hernandez, then 58. A friendship flourished.
“I was lonely; he was lonely,” said Hernandez, a widow whose children were grown up. “We enjoyed each other’s company.”
On February 18, 2023, they were married in a small ceremony officiated by Hernandez’s son Rigo.
Footage taken by bystanders of Barranco’s arrest went viral.
The videos show several agents standing above him while others hold him down. One agent, kneeling at his side, strikes Barranco repeatedly in the head, neck and left shoulder as he groans. The agents force him into an SUV with the aid of a metal rod.
DHS posted a video of Barranco wielding the weed trimmer as agents pepper sprayed him.
“Perhaps the mainstream media would like our officers to stand there and be mowed down instead of defending themselves?” Tricia McLaughlin, a department spokesperson, wrote on the social platform X.
The agency did not respond to a request for additional comment.
Barranco’s family started a GoFundMe to raise money for a lawyer.
Barranco recalls being transported to the immigration detention centre in Adelanto, California, with an Asian man, an African man and a fellow Latino. They arrived at the lock-up, which can hold nearly 2000 immigrants, before sunrise and waited all day to be processed.
Barranco’s family deposited money into his account so he could make phone calls and buy items like chips, coffee, and instant noodles to supplement the unappetising institutional food, he said.
He shared his phone and his commissary credit with detainees whose families did not know their whereabouts or who could not afford the expensive calls and items.
Barranco had no idea that his arrest had prompted protests and galvanised volunteers across Orange County.
Six days after his arrest, the Orange County Rapid Response Network, in co-ordination with his family, held a peaceful march to honour Barranco and denounce indiscriminate immigration sweeps.
Thousands of dollars flowed into the GoFundMe, enough to hire Lisa Ramirez, an immigration lawyer, to seek Barranco’s release, fight his deportation case and help him gain legal status in the US.
Ramirez submitted a request to the Government for “parole in place”, a programme that allows parents of US military members to remain lawfully in the country and work while they await approval for permanent residency.
Ramirez filed a motion for a bond hearing in immigration court.
It included the birth certificates of his sons and proof of their military service, as well as the accolades from the school district and Congress for his parental involvement and other evidence of his good moral character.
Barranco had his hearing after 19 days in lock-up. The Government asked the judge to hold him without bond, as is common.
Ramirez asked the judge to release him on the minimum bond of US$1500, arguing that he had three US-born military sons and was not a flight risk.
The prosecutor requested a US$13,000 bond. The judge set it at US$3000.
Since his release, Barranco has mostly stayed home, venturing out on Sundays for church.
At 8am each day, he logs into a two-hour online English class.
The ankle monitor he was fitted with before leaving Adelanto has since been removed. Three times a week, he must check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
At 11.10am on a recent Thursday, during an interview for this article, his phone buzzed.
His expression tensed as he entered a code and took a selfie, part of the monitoring protocol. Agents have also shown up at his door without notice.
As of yesterday, his lawyer had yet to receive acknowledgment from the Government that his application for parole in place was under review.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Miriam Jordan
Photographs by: Peyton Fulford
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