Except for a handful of co-workers who had not shown up for work, Tuesday started as a regular day for Fernando Vazquez, who works as landscaper at commercial jobsite in Cary.
News that federal immigration agents were moving from Charlotte to the Raleigh area had quickly spread among the Latino immigrant workforce in the Triangle.
But Vazquez, a Raleigh-born citizen who graduated from Mount Vernon College and Career Academy this year, went to work without hesitation along with his father, whom he said is a Mexican immigrant with a legal work permit.
Around 9 a.m., Vazquez walked to a Food Lion near the intersection of Chapel Hill and Maynard roads. As he made his way back to the jobsite, he said federal immigration officers wearing green Border Patrol uniforms stepped out of a grey Chevrolet Tahoe parked on a nearby curb and approached him.
"They saw the color of my skin, I'm guessing," Vazquez told WUNC. "They asked me where I was from. I didn't answer any of their questions because I know my rights and stuff like that."
Nervous for his father, he said, he tried to stall while the officers questioned him. Vazquez said one of the agents — who was also Hispanic — spoke to him in Spanish. He called his father and told him to leave because Border Patrol was in the area.
Vazquez said the situation escalated when he tried to leave. He says officers pushed him up against a wall, handcuffed, and searched him. He had his wallet on him, with his North Carolina ID and his driver's license, he said.
Agents placed him in the vehicle, where another Hispanic man about his age was already handcuffed, detained, and crying. Vazquez said he recognized him as a landscaper on his same jobsite.
The man asked him, in fluent English, to attempt to contact his family for him.
What was captured on video
While they drove, Vazquez said the officers repeatedly cursed at him. He answered an officer and told him he was born in Raleigh.
"I feel like I was getting kidnapped," Vazquez recalls. "They already have my ID. They already have my driver's license. They had all that. I was in shock, nervous, scared, because ... where are they going to take me? There's also a lot of stories about how dudes, they dress up as Border Patrol, but they're not really Border Patrol. I was wondering, is this really Border Patrol or no?"
A few minutes later, about two miles away, Vazquez said agents drove onto an unspecified property, and took him out of the car.
As officers removed his cuffs, Vazquez pulled out his phone and took a video that he uploaded on TikTok and has since gone viral.
An officer glances into the camera, seemingly caught off guard.
"Look at how they've got me," Vazquez says in the video, in Spanish. As they leave, he frustratingly asks where his wallet is.
One officer is seen emptying his wallet and tossing it on the ground before shutting the passenger door and leaving. Another SUV is also seen leaving the site. Vazquez curses at them in Spanish as they leave.
He says he then ran as fast as he could to return to the jobsite to find his father, who had already gone home.
"I'm still in that shock"
Since then, the original TikTok he uploaded has been seen almost 4.9 million times as of Friday afternoon.
"I just, I don't believe it ... just based off the color of my skin, how I got put in that situation," Vazquez said. "Looking back at that video, it's unreal. It's like me watching somebody else's video, because I still feel it wouldn't happen to me. I'm still in that shock. Out of everybody, it happened to me."
The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection did not respond to questions from WUNC for this story by Friday afternoon.
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina told WFAE in Charlotte that federal immigration agents are violating the state's law banning masks and accused them of operating through racially profiling Latino people in public.
In a statement to WFAE, DHS denied the charge and said "what makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.—NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity."
A DHS official said that as of Thursday more than 370 people were arrested in North Carolina five days, WFAE reported.
Last week, a Latino U.S. citizen was also detained and had his vehicle window smashed by federal agents at a Latino shopping center on South Boulevard, a area of primarily Latin American businesses, The Charlotte Observer reported.
"Everybody has to stay safe, take precautions," said Vazquez. "If you don't [have to] leave your house, don't leave your house. And if you do leave your house, make sure you carry, carry some sort of ID, documents proving your (status)."
