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Arnoldo Bazan: Texas teen says ICE agent choked him, sold his phone for filming unlawful arrest, ‘Couldn’t even breathe’
Arnoldo Bazan alleged that he and his dad were assaulted by ICE agents, who confiscated his phone and sold it after he recorded a video of an unlawful arrest.
A tenth grader has alleged that he was choked by an ICE agent in Texas before his cellphone was taken away and sold in an October 2025 incident. Arnoldo Bazan, 16, said that his cellphone contained footage of the unlawful arrest, according to The Mirror US.
Arnoldo and his father were getting McDonald's before school when unmarked vehicles allegedly pulled them over. Masked agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency started to bang on their doors. This prompted Arnoldo's undocumented father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, to speed away in the car.
Arnoldo started recording the encounter on his phone. ICE agents were allegedly seen ramming the car during a slow chase through Houston, Texas.
‘I felt like I was going to pass out and die’
Arnulfo went on to park and ran into a restaurant supply store. Arnoldo then allegedly saw agents throwing his father to the ground. He ran inside, yelling at them to stop.
One agent allegedly put the teen in a chokehold, and another pressed a knee into Arnulfo’s neck.
“I was going to school!" Arnoldo allegedly told the agents.
Arnoldo told ProPublica that he told the agent he was a citizen and a minor. However, the agent refused to stop.
"I started screaming with everything I had, because I couldn’t even breathe," Arnoldo said while recounting how the agent allegedly choked him.
Read More | Trump calls Renee Nicole Good a ‘solid, wonderful person,’ sends message to her father
"I felt like I was going to pass out and die," added the teen.
Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, reportedly accused Arnulfo of ramming his car "into a federal law enforcement vehicle.” However, he was not charged for the same.
McLaughlin also accused Arnoldo of elbowing an officer in the face as he was detained. The teen, however, denied the allegation. McLaughlin said Arnoldo was taken into custody to confirm his identity.
It was also revealed that Arnulfo had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor driving while intoxicated over a decade ago.
Arnoldo’s phone was confiscated by ICE agents, and he later used the Find My feature to track down his device. It led him to a vending machine for used electronics miles away, near an ICE detention center. ProPublica claimed that the agents sold his phone.
What happened to Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo?
Arnulfo’s daughter, who launched a GoFundMe in October after her father and brother’s ordeal, later revealed in an update that her father has been deported. Narrating what the father-son duo went through on the day of the incident, Selena Bazan wrote the ICE agents “never once asked about their legal status NOT ONCE.”
Selena said that ICE agents let Arnoldo go but detained their father. “He was bruised, with scratches on his neck, his shirt ripped apart, and he was devastated because they had taken our dad away,” she wrote of Arnoldo.
In an update shared on October 30, 2025, Selena wrote, “My dad was classified as low-level at the Montgomery Detention Center, and they told us low-level detainees could be visited on Mondays. We first went for an interview, and just to be sure we would actually be able to see him that day, my sister (Maria Bazan) asked me to call the detention center to confirm, since we have to make the trip all the way to Conroe (we live in Houston).”
She added, “When I called, they asked me for his A-number, and then the girl on the phone told me my father had been deported that same morning. We were all in utter shock because we felt defeated what do you mean our father was no longer even in the U.S. anymore?! Fortunately, my dad contacted us later that day and told us that he was doing well, though he said his soul felt broken because of how they treated them and how he saw them mistreat my brother.”
Selena added at the time that her brother’s case was “still open,” adding that “there was no need for such an aggressive attack toward a 16 year old child.”
Arnoldo’s ordeal has surfaced in the aftermath of the death of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was gunned down by federal agent Jonathan Ross after she allegedly struck him with her vehicle. The Trump administration has maintained that Ross shot Good in self-defense.
