Climbing into the car felt too personal. Like walking into a person’s bedroom, Shoreline resident Chris Megargee said.
The detritus of fatherhood was everywhere: scattered toys and a neatly packed bag of apple slices, crackers and a juice box on the passenger seat. On the floor was a bag of tamales Ivan Guzman, a local cook, had just bought for that day's lunch, still warm.
I'm a dad. It was the stuff of family life. Of a dad," Megargee, a local activist, said. "He should still be in the car."
Megargee was tasked with driving Guzman's car to his workplace after federal agents detained him about 8:30 a.m. Sunday. Guzman was driving his son to day care before work when four unmarked vehicles surrounded his car, blocking two lanes of Aurora Avenue near North 163rd Street. Masked and armed federal agents emerged and arrested Guzman.
They left his 2-year-old son sitting alone in the back seat for about 40 minutes, eyewitnesses said.
The arrest quickly drew concern from community members and passersby. Five days before, ICE agents detained a 5-year-old boy in Minnesota. A photo of him went viral, showing his scared eyes staring out under the brim of a blue, bunny-ear hat while an agent held onto the back of his Spiderman backpack.
In Shoreline, tensions climbed as the agents waited for someone to pick up the child. About a dozen people gathered, some filming the agents, shouting or blowing whistles. Three more unmarked vehicles and agents arrived.
From the sidewalk, Megargee monitored the growing standoff, alarmed.
Megargee started receiving "rapid responder" training a year ago to help people immediately after an ICE arrest. Before this month, he said he had not responded to a single arrest by ICE agents in Shoreline. He received his first call Jan. 15, after federal agents detained two day laborers waiting for work outside the city's Home Depot. Until Sunday, he had never seen as many residents face off against federal agents.
These arrests and the size of the community’s response felt like warning signs that a “dramatic increase” in ICE activity could be headed for Shoreline, a city of about 60,000 just north of Seattle, he said. Immigration agents have been seen along Aurora Avenue North in North Seattle as well, including when three people were arrested on Jan. 7 near at Evergreen Washelli Cemetery near a Home Depot there.
“We’re not Minneapolis, thanks be to God,” Megargee said Tuesday. “But a lot of us in this movement are afraid that it’ll become that.”
Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to inquiries about arrests this month in Shoreline.
On Thursday, Jan. 22, Guzman, the lead cook at Shoreline’s El Cubano To Go, showed up to work afraid.
After hearing about recent arrests nearby, Guzman, who is an immigrant from Mexico, worried federal agents would pull him over while he drove home with his son in the back seat.
“I told him don’t be worried. It’s not going to happen. All you do is work,” Veronica Castaneda, the sandwich shop owner and Guzman’s boss, said. “Then Sunday morning he calls me.”
Castaneda said in an interview Wednesday she does not believe Guzman has a criminal record. Guzman’s girlfriend, the child’s mother, planned to meet him Thursday with an attorney at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, the Tacoma facility where he’s now detained, she said.
It was unclear how long Guzman has been in the United States or how he came to the country.
Guzman’s arrest shook Castaneda, who temporarily closed El Cubano for several days. The cook is reliable and hardworking to a fault, working all six days the shop is open, then looking for other work on his one day off, she said.
After Guzman called her Sunday morning, Castaneda said she rushed to his car on Aurora and 163rd. She couldn’t stop herself from crying as she pulled his son from his car seat, the boy’s face streaked with tears.
“He knew it was the police who took his dad,” she said. “I never thought we would go through something like this.”
The image of Guzman’s son has also stuck with Megargee, who has two children of his own.
Megargee, who lives in Shoreline and works as a nonprofit fundraiser supporting migrant and immigrant groups, arrived at Aurora and 163rd shortly after someone shared photos of the federal agents on an encrypted messaging app.
There, he saw a car surrounded by unmarked vehicles, their flashing lights illuminating the face of a toddler, he said.
The boy seemed scared and confused, his eyes darting around at the people outside. He clutched a fuzzy white blanket in his hands, sometimes dragging it over his face and head, as if to hide, Megargee said.
Megargee asked some bystanders to stop blowing whistles — an anti-ICE protest tactic that emerged last year — because it could scare Guzman's son and antagonize "these men with guns at their side," he said. A nearby business owner walked up carrying a bobblehead toy and asked the agents to give it to Guzman's son. After consulting with each other, one of the agents opened Guzman's car door and handed the boy the toy, Megargee said.
It was a relief when the agents drove off shortly after Castaneda arrived to pick up Guzman’s son, Megargee said.
It felt like "a brutality" to get inside Guzman's empty car, the scene of a fellow father's typical morning frozen the exact moment he was "snatched out of (his family's) life," Megargee said.
“The ripple effect of all these disappearances and abductions from the fabric of our communities and our lives," he said. It’s horrible and it does nothing to benefit our country.”
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