Democratic congresswoman says she was pepper-sprayed during ICE raid in Arizona

Rep. Adelita Grijalva, at a press conference at the US Capitol on November 12. (Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource)

Rep. Adelita Grijalva said Friday she was pepper-sprayed and pushed around during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Tucson, Arizona, a claim that the Department of Homeland Security swiftly disputed.

The Arizona Democrat said in a video on X the incident occurred near a restaurant she frequents and that she came upon a scene of “maybe 40 ICE agents, most of them masked, in several vehicles” who had been “stopped” in the street by people who she said “were afraid they were taking people without due process.”

Grijalva said she “was sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent” and “pushed around by others,” even though she said she had not been aggressive. “I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she said.

Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, said on X in a response to the congresswoman’s video that the claims are “not true.”

“If her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel. But they’re not true. She wasn’t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who *was* pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin said.

“In fact, 2 law enforcement officers were seriously injured by this mob that @Rep_Grijalva joined. Presenting one’s self as a ‘Member of Congress’ doesn’t give you the right to obstruct law enforcement.”

Speaking to CNN’s Laura Coates later Friday evening, Grijalva dismissed McLaughlin’s account, saying, “It’s convenient to them to make it seem as if I was doing anything other than inquiring about what was happening.”

Earlier Friday, Grijalva posted a second video to X that shows uniformed officials spraying into a crowd of people, including what appear to be protesters, Grijalva and her staff. Grijalva can be seen saying, “You guys need to calm down and get out.”

The congresswoman said in the first video she posted that once she introduced herself as a member of Congress, she assumed it would have been calmer, “but there was literally only one person that was trying to speak to me in any kind of civil tone, and everyone else was being rude and disrespectful.”

“I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else,” she said.

Grijalva denounced the Trump administration’s handling of immigration enforcement.

“I think that this is one of the problems – the biggest problem that we have in this community is that we have Trump that has no regard for any due process, the rule of law, the Constitution,” Grijalva said in the video. “They’re literally disappearing people from the streets. They arrested two people. We have no idea where they’re going.”

Ellis Kim, CNN