A little girl is back with her mother tonight because ICE officers in Los Angeles did their job. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Wednesday that its Enforcement and Removal Operations team in Los Angeles arrested Daniel Cervantes Moctezuma, a Mexican illegal alien and fugitive wanted in Mexico for kidnapping his daughter and fleeing to the United States.
ICE released footage of the operation. “We’re going to be targeting a criminal illegal alien who was actually wanted in Mexico,” an ICE Los Angeles supervisory detention and deportation officer explains from the driver’s seat. “Back in 2018, he kidnapped his daughter from the mother of the child who has full custody. With the help of the FBI’s human trafficking unit, we’re going to go ahead and reunite the mother back with the child.”
The arrest went by the book. “We were able to take him into custody without incident,” the officer says in the video, adding that the girl was taken into safe custody “and she is going to be on her way back to be reunited with her mother.” ICE confirmed the outcome: “His daughter was safely reunited with her mother.”
Cervantes Moctezuma is now in removal proceedings. ICE said he was arrested last week.
This is what immigration enforcement looks like under President Trump: officers going after fugitives who fled justice in their home countries and hid in American communities, and making a family whole again in the process. No sanctuary politics, no looking the other way, just a child back in her mother’s arms.
