A South Carolina man who police say was seen in a “disturbing” video confronting a Latino man in a pickup truck and telling him he was going to be sent back to Mexico has been arrested on charges that include impersonating an ICE officer.
The arrest was followed by a similar case the next day at Temple University, where a 22-year-old man and two other people were accused of falsely identifying themselves as officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Philadelphia police said.
The cases come amid aggressive immigration enforcement by the Trump administration at the U.S.-Mexico border and major U.S. cities, creating an environment that a Latino civil rights group called dangerous.
“I think this is just the beginning, unless we object to it, unless we bring this out and have other folks see how this gentleman here will be prosecuted,” said Roman Palomares, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, referring to the man who was arrested in South Carolina.
Sean Michael-Emmrich Johnson, 34, was arrested Friday after he turned himself in at the Sullivan’s Island Police Department. He was booked for investigation of one count of felony kidnapping, impersonating a law enforcement officer and two other misdemeanors. On Monday, the police department said it had obtained warrants charging Johnson with two more counts of kidnapping.
Deputy Police Chief Monty L. Anders said three Latino men were in the pickup truck. None of them were charged, and their names were not being released, he said.
Johnson was released Saturday after he posted bond, according to jail records, and he is due in court next month. He could not be reached for comment Monday at a phone number listed for him.
Sullivan’s Island police responded to a call about a person operating a vehicle without a license Wednesday. Later, they said in a news release, they were made aware of the “disturbing” viral video, which prompted a criminal investigation into the 911 caller, whom they identified as Johnson.
“This video displayed possible criminal actions by the caller that were not initially reported to police while on-scene,” they said.
Anders said the video lasted a few minutes and “is not the entire incident,” but he said he could not comment further.
In the video widely shared on social media, a white man, whom police identified as Johnson, stands at the driver’s-side window of a vehicle with a Latino in the driver’s seat. The video was recorded by a man in the passenger seat.
The window is down, and the white man asks the person in the driver’s seat whether he is from Mexico and tells him: “You’re going back to Mexico.”
The video also shows the white man taking the keys out of the truck’s ignition, dangling them in front of the driver and telling him in a mock accent: “You cannot drive. You have no driver’s license.”
“You are going back,” he says, and he tells the man that police are on their way and that he cannot drive a vehicle without a license.
At one point, the man in the driver’s seat holds a cellphone up to the man at the window, and the man responds: “No, no, no, it’s over. It’s over.”
The man in the driver’s seat, who is holding a cellphone in front of himself, can be heard speaking Spanish. The man at his window then says, “Hey, El Chapo.” The driver continues speaking Spanish, and the man at his window tells him, “Don’t be speaking that pig Latin in my f—— country, bro.”
“Don’t be speaking that pig Latin here,” he adds. “This is America. We speak English in America.”
He then smacks the cellphone out of the man’s hand and again says: “We speak English, English.”
“Habla Ingles? No,” he then says to the man in the driver’s seat, later adding: “This is my job. This is my truck. I own this country.”
He also tells another man standing near the car window that the man in the driver’s seat “doesn’t even have a license” and twice says, “I got his key.”
The police department said that after “extensive video review” and interviews of witnesses, warrants were obtained for Johnson, who lives in Huger, about 30 miles from Charleston.
Andes, the deputy police chief, said Johnson does not face hate crime charges because South Carolina is one of the few states without hate crime laws.
“The charges that we filed against him were the fullest to the extent that we could by law,” Andes said Monday.
Palomares, of LULAC, commended the police department for filing the maximum charges.
“This is an example of the dangerous climate that our community is facing out there,” Palomares said.
In the Pennsylvania case, Aidan Steigelmann was charged with conspiracy of impersonating a public servant, court records indicated. A Philadelphia police spokesperson said two men identified themselves as ICE officers Saturday night to enter a Temple University residence hall.
A third man arrived, and all three left together, police said.
Minutes later police received a report that three men were identifying themselves as ICE agents at an Insomnia Cookies store nearby. Two of the men left in an SUV, but Steigelmann was arrested.
Police did not identify the two other men. They said the three wore “black shirts with ‘Police’ on the front and ‘ICE’ on the back.”
Temple University said in a statement that the three men at the cookie store were the same men who were denied access to Johnson & Hardwick Residence Hall earlier that night.
The school said two of the men impersonated law enforcement officers and a third recorded the interaction. A student was taken into custody and placed on interim suspension pending an investigation, the school said; it did not identify the student.
“Neither Temple’s Department of Public Safety nor the Philadelphia Police Department have any reports of federal ICE agents being on campus,” the school said. “It is deeply troubling and disappointing to know behavior like this reportedly occurred on our campus.”
Steigelmann is represented by the Defender Association of Philadelphia, which declined to comment Monday.
