Prosecutors in Palm Beach County told WLRN on Thursday they won’t pursue criminal charges against a teenage U.S. citizen from West Palm Beach who last May video-recorded his arrest by law enforcement authorities following a traffic stop in Riviera Beach that involved federal immigration agents.
“After a thorough review of the report and contact with the arresting officer, we have determined there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal charge," the Palm Beach State Attorney's Office said in a statement to WLRN.
The nine-minute video showed a group of law enforcement officers in tactical gear aggressively taking down Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio — an 18-year-old U.S. citizen — and two other young men suspected of being in the country illegally. Laynez-Ambrosio was born and raised in West Palm Beach.
The video was shared with several media outlets by the Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth. It went viral online in the past week and has drawn widespread media attention.
The arrest of the three men happened May 2 when Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach with his mother and two co-workers. His mother is a legal U.S. resident.
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It’s unclear why the van they were driving was pulled over by Florida Highway Patrol troopers or why Border Patrol agents were contacted. FHP troopers have partnered this year with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement to help the Trump administration's deportation efforts in apprehending suspected undocumented immigrants.
In the video, a female officer can be heard asking, in Spanish, if anyone is in the country illegally. One of the passengers tells the officer he is undocumented.
That’s when the scene grows more tense, with the young men being handcuffed, tasered and forced to the sidewalk.
“You got no rights here. You’re an illegal, brother,” one of the law enforcement officers is heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio.
The officers can then be heard boasting about the arrest and saying “you can smell that … $30,000 bonus.”
At the time of the arrest, Laynez-Ambrosio and the two others were charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice.
Laynez-Ambrosio said he and his co-workers were taken to an immigrant detention center in Riviera Beach and that he was detained for several hours before being released.
He said the other two were transferred to the Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County, and have since been released pending an immigration hearing.
Federal immigration officials, in a statement to WLRN, said U.S. Border Patrol agents responded May 2 to a request for assistance from FHP troopers.
In its statement, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, said the agency arrested “several adult male illegal aliens” after FHP stopped a vehicle near John D. MacArthur Beach State Park.
The CBP said the arrest is being internally reviewed.
“During the encounter, several of the illegal aliens resisted arrest, resulting in a USBP agent deploying a taser,” the CBP stated. “In accordance with CBP policy, all use of force incidents are reviewed by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility.”
Father Frank O’Loughlin, who founded Guatemalan-Maya Center and is its executive director, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that “racial profiling is the heart of this” incident and that the young men confronted by federal immigration agents and FHP troopers were “treated like trash.”
Laynez-Ambrosio told WLRN that the incident with the Border Patrol and FHP troopers has traumatized him and his mother.
" I never expected that they were gonna racially profile me and my workers and my mom," he said. "I've been stressed out 'cause there's no work, no money coming in financially."
The violent and aggressive tactics by Border Patrol agents was unnecessary, Laynez-Ambrosio told The Guardian US, an independent non-profit news organization.
"It didn’t need to go down like that,” he said. “If they knew that my people were undocumented, they could’ve just kindly taken them out of the car and arrested them.”
“It hurt me bad to see my friends like that,” he added. “Because they’re just good people, trying to earn an honest living.”
