When federal immigration agents in riot gear broke down the door, José Estrada Jerez was sitting on the floor next to his uncle, their hands raised in surrender.  Estrada Jerez, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen born in Honduras, said he had lived in the home on Dorset Street for only about two week s when he was caught in the middle of a large and violent confrontation over immigration enforcement. Federal agents surrounded the home, looking for a Mexican man named Deyvi Daniel Corona Sanchez who they believed had run inside after a car chase. But when they eventually forced their way in after obtaining a search warrant, they found four people, none of whom was Corona Sanchez. In a firsthand account of the raid, Estrada Jerez told Seven Days that an agent picked him up by his arms, threw him on his stomach and handcuffed him. An agent then lifted him back up and searched his pockets, pulling out his U.S. passport card and his cellphone, he said. “I told him, ‘I’m a U.S. citizen!’” Estrada Jerez recounted in an interview on Monday night. “He told me, ‘I don’t care.’” Estrada Jerez and his uncle had moved to Vermont from New Orleans months earlier in search of better jobs in construction, he said. They shared the home with a couple from Ecuador who have two daughters, ages 4 and 8.  The raid followed an attempted ICE arrest earlier in the day. Last Wednesday morning, an ICE agent surveilling the home saw two men get into a Toyota Camry that was registered to Corona Sanchez, who faces charges of drunken driving and illegally reentering the U.S. after being deported. According to an affidavit, the driver sped off as the agent tried to pull the car over. Other ICE vehicles attempted to block the Camry’s path, and the driver crashed into them before turning back onto Dorset Street, hitting another oncoming car. The affidavit says an agent then saw two men flee the car into the home on Dorset Street. Estrada Jerez declined to speak about the car chase. But he insisted he has never met Corona Sanchez, and said the man was not in the car that agents were chasing and was never in the house. In a statement on Monday, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson James Covington claimed Corona Sanchez had been the car’s driver but “was no longer inside” the home when agents searched it after obtaining a warrant. As he and his uncle waited inside the home, Estrada Jerez said, ICE agents surrounded the building and yelled for them to come out. His uncle, Christian Humberto Jerez Andrade, 31, called advocacy group Migrant Justice for help. He entered the U.S. after fleeing Honduras in 2015, according to court records. Soon, dozens of people had gathered outside the home to show support, called to the scene by a text message alert from the advocacy group. Daysi Camila Patin Patin, 20, and her sister Jisella Joana Patin Patin, 31, were also inside, along with the older sister’s 4-year-old daughter.  Estrada Jerez said they spent the next nine hours trying to prepare for an incursion into the home. He spoke on the phone repeatedly with his mother, who lives in New Orleans. His uncle called his 6-year-old son. They pushed the living room couch up against the door.  “I was grateful for all the people that was outside, everybody that came out, supporting me and my uncle,” he said. “That really helped me to get through things.” After agonizing over the decision, Jisella Joana Patin Patin decided to hand her daughter through the door to a teacher from the South Burlington School District, who carried her to a waiting car that drove her to safety. “It was really hard for her, letting her daughter go,” Estrada Jerez said. The occupants of the home never knew who ICE was looking for, nor that they had obtained a warrant, Estrada Jerez said.  “Nobody in the house saw the warrant,” he said. “They just busted in the door, guns pointing everywhere.” The agents pulled the two sisters from a bedroom out to the living room, Estrada Jerez said. All four were held there while agents searched the house. They demanded to know where Corona Sanchez was hiding, Estrada Jerez said.  One agent climbed into the attic. His foot broke through the ceiling, setting off what Estrada Jerez thought was the agent’s gun. The women started to cry, he said.  At a city council meeting on Monday night, South Burlington Police Chief Bill Breault said the agent had set off a flash-bang grenade, not a firearm. When they determined the man they sought wasn’t there, the agents arrested the two Ecuadorian sisters and Estrada Jerez’s uncle. They uncuffed Estrada Jerez and left him behind. He watched through the window as the others were taken through a screaming crowd to a waiting SUV.  Estrada Jerez has not gotten his phone or ID back from the ICE agents. He said he has bruises on his arms from agents grabbing him. Since the raid, he has been staying at the homes of supporters he met on Wednesday. He has no other family nearby. He hasn’t been able to speak with his uncle, who is due in court Tuesday morning for a hearing before a federal judge over the legality of his detention. “I never had a father, so he was my father figure,” Estrada Jerez said. “Every night I think about him. I think it’s crazy how they took him away from me. I feel sad. I feel broken.” The post Teen Shares Account of Being Inside Home Besieged by ICE appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less