Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio had his cellphone close at hand when Florida Highway Patrol troopers pulled over the work truck he, his mother and two of his friends were riding in on their way to a landscaping job in Palm Beach County.
Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, was initially planning to show his friends a TikTok video “to lighten the mood” after the stop, said Lindsay McElroy, lead immigrant justice organizer for the Guatemalan-Maya Center. He ended up recording the rough takedown of his two friends, one who was shocked with a Taser, by law enforcement and candid conversations among the officers that followed, video provided to the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Friday by the advocacy nonprofit Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth Beach shows.
Laynez-Ambrosio is a U.S. citizen of indigenous Guatemalan descent who was born in West Palm Beach, said McElroy. His mother, who is a legal resident, was driving the landscaping truck with a suspended license on May 2 when they were pulled over in Riviera Beach. The two other men in the truck with Laynez-Ambrosio and his mother are “undocumented,” McElroy said.
Father Frank O’Loughlin, long-time activist and executive director of the Guatemalan-Maya Center, said “racial profiling is the heart of this” and that the men in the video were “treated like trash.”
“The big story is Kenny’s bravery and the insight that he has been able to give,” O’Loughlin said. “… Where is Florida law enforcement going under the malevolent influence of MAGA? That’s the big question.”
The encounter on May 2 escalated quickly, the nearly 9-minute-long video showed. At least two Florida Highway Patrol troopers can be seen in the video, and McElroy said U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were also at the scene. It is unclear at multiple points throughout the video which agency’s officers are participating in the takedown and which agency’s officers are speaking.
Seconds into the video, an officer in a tan uniform forcefully removed one of Laynez-Ambrosio’s friends from the truck by using his forearm to hold the man around his neck.
The same officer then reached into the truck as Laynez-Ambrosio said, “You can’t grab me like that! You can’t grab me like that!” A trooper in a dark-colored uniform grabbed Laynez-Ambrosio’s other friend, identified only as Kevin in the video, on the back of his neck to remove him from the truck.
“Get your f—— head down. Get on the ground,” one of the officers ordered.
Once Laynez-Ambrosio and the others were out of the truck, multiple officers shouted for them to get on the ground. The trooper who grabbed Kevin out of the truck continued to hold him in a headlock, the video showed, as two other officers also struggled to get him down to the ground.
Still recording, Laynez-Ambrosio told his friend in Spanish to not resist. Kevin was then shocked with a Taser and groaned as he tensed and fell down.
Most of the rest of the encounter is not clearly shown in the cellphone video because of the camera’s positioning, though audio can still be heard.
Laynez-Ambrosio told law enforcement he wouldn’t follow their orders to get up because “they gon’ do whatever they were doing to him,” according to the video.
“That’s not how you arrest people,” Laynez-Ambrosio said. “That’s not. You could kindly take him out. That’s it, that’s how simple, bruh. But y’all making it so difficult. Why y’all make it so difficult?”
An officer told him to be quiet.
“I got rights to talk, bruh,” he said.
“You got no rights here,” an officer responded.
Just after that, McElroy said it sounded as if that officer followed that with, “You’re illegal, brother.” Some media reports say the officer said, “You’re a migo, brother,” rather than “illegal.”
“It sounds more like them saying ‘You’re illegal,’” McElroy told the Sun Sentinel. “He didn’t have his ID. He kept telling them he’s a citizen. But they just ignored him. They were racially profiling him, that’s basically it.”
As a handcuffed Laynez-Ambrosio is pulled up from the ground, he said, “I was born and raised here!”
In addition to the two other men, Laynez-Ambrosio was taken to the Border Protection facility in Riviera Beach, where he was detained for several hours, McElroy said. His mother was not detained, and the other two men have since been released and are awaiting court hearings.
Ultimately, Laynez-Ambrosio was charged with misdemeanor obstructing without violence and entered a pre-trial intervention agreement in June, Palm Beach County court records show. As part of the agreement, he was ordered to do 10 hours of community service and four hours of an anger management course, court records show.
A trooper wrote in a notice to appear form that the truck was pulled over to conduct “a Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) inspection.” None of the three men in the truck had identification on them, the document said, and Border Protection officers were requested to identify them.
“They held him because they assumed he was undocumented,” McElroy said of Laynez-Ambrosio being detained in federal custody. While detained at the Border Protection facility, McElroy said: “They were trying to get him to delete the video but he was refusing.”
At the traffic stop scene after the men were detained, the video continued recording officers’ conversations about the takedown and the men though some parts are indecipherable or their exact words are unclear. One officer asked another if he had been hit by the Taser. He replied that he was only “banged up” but hadn’t been shocked.
“Once she got that proper spread on him, he was done,” one officer said.
Some of officers laughed together after it sounded as if one remarked about how one of the men smelled.
Later on, one officer said, “Startin’ to resist more now,” the video showed.
“We gonna end up shooting … Because they’re gonna start fighting,” one officer said. “Like this kid goes, like … ‘No you can’t do that.’ I’m not doing s—. Like, we told you already to get out. You either get out, or I’m gonna pull you out.”
The other officer he was talking to agreed with him, the video showed.
One officer could be heard moments later saying, “Just remember, you could smell that too with a $30,000 bonus.” Some other officers replied, “Yeah!” and laughed. It’s unclear what they were referencing.
Spokespersons for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and FHP Troop L, which includes Palm Beach County, did not respond to emails seeking comment Friday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, FLHSMV’s Executive Director Dave Kerner and State Board of Immigration Enforcement Executive Director Larry Keefe in recent months have lauded Florida Highway Patrol troopers as the first in the country to be deputized for federal immigration enforcement and as an exemplary agency for how other states could enforce President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans.
In February, DeSantis announced that all 67 county sheriffs in Florida had entered into 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which allow local officers to act with some immigration authority. He said the agreements would lead to “street-level” enforcement. FHP entered into their own agreement earlier that month.
Kerner said at a May news conference in Tampa with Keefe and DeSantis that nearly 2,000 state troopers across all 67 counties were at that time credentialed to act with immigration authority under the 287(g) agreement. DeSantis announced that more than 100 troopers had been recently sworn in as Special Deputy U.S. Marshals, which he said “is even over and above” the 287(g) agreement and allows them to execute federal warrants and and conduct “stand-alone operations” without federal partners.
Kerner’s agency has recently highlighted on social media numerous arrests of immigrants after traffic stops. Hundreds of immigrants have been taken into custody in Central Florida alone this year after being stopped for minor traffic violations, a recent Orlando Sentinel investigation found.