Footage appears to show federal immigration agents deploying breaching charges to enter a home in California where children were reportedly inside.
Video shows an explosion before what appear to be Border Patrol agents enter to carry out an arrest at a family's property in Huntington Park. The people who live there are United States citizens, one of the residents told ABC 7.
Newsweek has contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for comment via email.
President Donald Trump has vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants as part of a hard line mass deportation policy. Federal immigration authorities have been facing increased scrutiny over its conduct, becoming a focal point in the national immigration debate. The White House has maintained that anyone residing in the United States illegally is a criminal.
The operation took place early Friday in the 3500 block of Flower Street, NBC 4 Los Angeles reported.
CBP said agents were seeking Jorge Sierra-Hernandez, who had "rammed his car into a CBP vehicle" during enforcement operations, per the outlet.
Security camera footage showed about a dozen armed federal agents in tactical gear positioning themselves in the front yard. Two agents were seen attaching items to the property's door and front window shortly before the explosion occurred.
Agents could be seen crouching behind a vehicle in the driveway before entering the home shortly after the blast, which reportedly blew the door off and shattered a window.
Jenny Ramirez, who lives at the home with Sierra-Hernandez, her boyfriend -- told ABC 7 that he was not at the property when Border Patrol agents arrived. She said that everyone who resides in the home is a United States citizen, according to the outlet.
Ramirez said she learned about the operation when a neighbor called to inform her that Border Patrol vehicles were in the neighborhood. "If they would've knocked on my door I would have opened the door, but they blew up the window and door first," Ramirez told ABC 7. "There didn't have to be that violence to enter my house."
Ramirez told the outlet that she had been sleeping with her baby when her neighbor called to alert her about the dozens of agents outside her home.
'Where they broke the window, my baby was there and before I got him out of there was when it exploded," Ramirez told the outlet. "My ears went blank."
When she heard the explosion, she dropped to the floor with her children as a drone entered the house and searched each room for her boyfriend, according to the report.
Ramirez told the outlet that the agents told her they were looking for her boyfriend but did not explain why. She said her boyfriend later called her on Friday morning and told her that Border Patrol had contacted him and instructed him to turn himself in.
Ramirez believed the operation might be related to a collision that happened about a week earlier in the city of Industry, per ABC 7. According to Ramirez, her boyfriend had been driving a Jeep when he collided with a truck carrying federal agents.
Once the drone left the house, at least nine agents entered with guns drawn and eventually escorted Ramirez and her children outside, she said.
"They didn't identify themselves until I came out; they told me they were from Homeland Security, from ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]," Ramirez told ABC 7.
CBP said in a statement: "Jorge Sierra-Hernandez was arrested because he rammed his car into a CBP vehicle, causing significant damage and obstructed the work of our agents and officers during course of a law enforcement operation. During this incident, agents were assaulted, and additional rioters threw rocks and other objects at our personnel. Anyone who actively obstructs or assaults law enforcement, including U.S. citizens, will face consequences which include arrest."
Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores said in a statement: "This family did nothing wrong. They were involved in a minor traffic accident and this is the level of violence and the response that we get."