HAYS COUNTY — In late March, a group of Venezuelan relatives and friends, celebrating a pair of birthdays, rented a six-bedroom house in the southern tip of Austin with a pool and stunning views from every window of Texas’ Hill Country.
They decorated a table for a cake and blew up balloons. As the night faded, the kids went to bed and the adults kept hanging out.
Suddenly, at about 5 a.m. the next morning, the group heard explosions from flashbangs, followed by shouts from law enforcement yelling commands to get out of the house, according to interviews with two attendees.
“We all started shouting that there were babies — ‘Babies, there’s babies,’” recounted a 30-year-old Venezuelan man, who said he was at the house to celebrate the birthdays of his son, who turned 5, and his best friend, who turned 28.
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Released, evicted and expelled from school
The Venezuelan man and his family were released from detention in Frio County after 23 days following the Hays County raid. They came home, wearing ankle monitors, to find an eviction notice on their Pflugerville home and a stack of past due bills. Their eldest son, whose birthday was going to be celebrated by splashing in the pool, was kicked out of school because of too many unexcused absences while they were detained, his dad said.
So, go ahead, call me a whiner for posting this absurd operation.
Oh, I forgot this gem:
Gang tattoos
After being handcuffed as the sun rose in Hays County, agents separated the Venezuelan man from his wife and kids, took him to a processing center and scanned his fingerprints, he said.
“I asked why we were there if we had been at a family birthday party,” he said. “They basically treated me like a criminal because I have tattoos.”
He said two of his tattoos honor his kids. His forearm is inked with April 3, his eldest son’s birthday, and his back with an homage to his youngest. He also has stars tattooed on his shoulders.
“They told me to my face: ‘You know what those stars mean? Those stars are styled by gangsters in your country,’” he recounted. “I said, no. I got these stars when — no kidding — I was starting to leave adolescence, started working. I got them because I liked them and I wanted to get them.”
So, yeah, this is swell.
Are we great yet?