MIAMI — Parishioners from Gesu Catholic Church joined college students and members of a local activist group in downtown Miami to document encounters between ICE agents and migrants.

The group has been hitting the streets in recent months recording what they describe as rough treatment of immigrants.

Immigrant justice organizer Lindsay McElroy, with the Guatemalan Maya Center in Lake Worth, showed Local 10 videos her organization has recorded and verified.

“It’s brutal and it’s racist, they’re entirely racially profiling our community,” McElroy said.

In one video, an officer is heard asking people in Spanish inside a landscaping truck, “Who is here illegally?”

Moments later, one person is grabbed by the neck as another is forced out. A man is tasered and pinned to the ground while trying to tell officers, “I got rights to talk, bro. You have no rights here. I do.”

McElroy said the group is bearing witness and creating a record of encounters between ICE agents, deputized state officers, and immigrants or U.S. citizens.

“We’re out there every single day. We’re recording video, making sure due process is followed as much as we can,” she said.

She added that the recent deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE agents in Minneapolis have made her and others fearful but determined. “My blood ran cold when I saw the Alex Pretti video,” McElroy said.

Faith motivates the work, said 84-year-old Father Frank O’Loughlin, co-founder of the Guatemalan Maya Center.

“There’s only one commandment from Jesus that is repeated over and over and over again, and it’s to receive each other, to embrace each other, to love each other,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security maintains that it targets only the “worst of the worst.” Activists, however, say most immigrants they know who have been detained or deported have no violent offenses on their record.

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