MINNEAPOLIS
Alberto Castañeda Mondragón’s memory is fractured. The beating he says he received from immigration officers last month was so severe that afterward, he could not remember he had a daughter. He still struggles to recall treasured moments, like the night he taught her to dance.
But the violence of his arrest is seared into his consciousness.
He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend’s car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center, throwing him to the ground, and handcuffing him.
He remembers being punched and struck in the head with a steel baton, then dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he says the beating continued.
He remembers, too, the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.
“They started beating me right away when they arrested me,” the Mexican immigrant told The Associated Press this week. His case, recently detailed by the AP, has fueled mounting friction between federal immigration agents and a Minneapolis hospital.
By James Kisoo
