A 38-year-old father was arrested by immigration officials outside his child’s preschool in Oregon on Tuesday, officials said.
Mahdi Khanbabazadeh, a citizen of Iran, was arrested for overstaying his visa, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told CBS News on Friday.
The spokesperson said ICE officials attempted to arrest Khanbabazadeh during a traffic stop when he requested permission to drop his child off at daycare. The agency allowed him to the school’s parking lot, where he “resisted arrest and refused to exit his vehicle.”
ICE officials broke one of the windows of the vehicle to “complete the arrest,” the spokesperson said, adding that Khanbabazadeh’s child was unharmed.
“It was just chaos,” Randy Kornfield, who was dropping off his grandson at Guidepost Montessori School in South Beaverton, Oregon, at the time of the arrest, told CBS affiliate KOIN. “There were a lot of parents who were upset. And rightly so. It’s just not something that needs to happen at a preschool, or at any school, for that matter.”
Caroline Medeiros, an immigration lawyer who is consulting on the case, told local media that seven unmarked cars pulled into the school’s parking lot to make the arrest. Medeiros has a daughter who attends the school, KOIN reported. She said that Khanbabazadeh was dragged out of the car while his wife was asking where they were taking him.
Medeiros told reporters that Khanbabazadeh first came to the U.S. on a student visa and eventually married a U.S. citizen. He was in the process of getting his green card and had already gone through an interview for it.
Medeiros told local media that Khanbabazadeh was being held at an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington.
CBS News reached out to Medeiros for additional comment.
Maris Mendes, CEO of Guidepost Global Education, told CBS News in a statement that the events at the South Beaverton school were “deeply upsetting to our entire community.”
“As educators and caregivers, we are grounded in the belief that children deserve to feel safe, supported and protected – especially in the places they come to learn and grow,” the statement said in part. “While we are still working to understand the full scope of what happened, we are approaching this moment with care and urgency. We’re supporting the family directly affected, standing behind our staff, and looking closely at how we can safeguard the emotional and physical security of every child in our schools.”
The arrest is among thousands of detentions by immigration officials since President Trump came into office. He promised to launch the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. His administration quickly reversed limits on ICE operations put in place by previous administrations and moved to revoke the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants.
