Overview

• Footage provided to Telemundo shows a 5-year-old sitting beside an SUV with federal agents outside the family’s Leominster home as officers spoke with her parents inside.
• Department of Homeland Security publicly rejected allegations that agents used the child to lure her father out, and NBC updated its story with a correction after initial language suggested otherwise.
• Leominster police say they recovered the child and returned her to relatives, and the city’s police chief stated the department was told the girl had been left locked in a car during the encounter.
• Two days after the videoed incident, Edwards Hip Mejia was arrested and is being held at the Plymouth County ICE facility, with a federal judge ordering he not be transferred out of state as his attorney seeks release.
• The family and their lawyer dispute DHS’s account, say the child—described as autistic—was traumatized, and are calling for an investigation into the agents’ actions, while DHS cites the father’s prior arrests; court records show those 2024 charges were dismissed.