On the morning of Wednesday 21 January, a US Border Patrol agent opened fire on an individual during an immigration operation in Willowbrook, California. Reports indicate that nobody was hit by the shots.
After the incident, crowds of locals and protesters gathered to demonstrate their anger toward the border agents. Both local and federal authorities responded to the gathering protests, exacerbating the crowd’s outrage.
Border Patrol ‘came in here harassing him’
Around 7am, the LA County Sherrif’s Department received word from the US Border Patrol that the federal agency was conducting an immigration operation in their jurisdiction.
The Homeland Security officers were targeting a man named William Eduardo Moran Carballo, reportedly a citizen of El Salvador. However, in an apartment parking lot in South LA, the agents botched their operation.
The exact nature of the events is currently unclear. However, Eyewitness News reported on seeing video filmed by a neighbour, showing Carballo:
leaving the apartment building, getting into his car and driving away. Seconds later, neighbors say Border Patrol tried to take him into custody, and that’s when the shooting occurred.
The incident ended with a crash. Video from the scene shows the front end of the man’s white sedan smashed in with the windshield shattered and airbags deployed.
Another witness stated that:
He jumped in his car and tried to run off, like speed off, and so he must have hit the car a little bit, one of the ICE agents or a Border Patrol car a little bit while he was getting out, but they came in here harassing him.
Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a statement claiming that an immigration judge issued a final removal order for Carballo in 2019. The statement went on to say that the operation began in nearby Compton:
to arrest a violent criminal illegal alien from El Salvador, William Eduardo Moran Carballo, who is involved in a human smuggling operation and has two prior arrests for inflicting corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant.
In the DHS version of events, Carballo drove his vehicle into the enforcement officers, at which point an agent opened fire:
In a dangerous attempt to evade arrest, this criminal illegal alien weaponized his vehicle and rammed law enforcement. Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired defensive shots. The criminal illegal alien was not hit and attempted to flee on foot. He was successfully apprehended by law enforcement. The illegal alien was not injured, but a CBP officer was injured.
To the Canary’s best knowledge, no video evidence has been reported to support the DHS’s version of events. Likewise, Homeland Security provided no further details about the officer’s injury.
We should also note that US immigration officers have previously made claims of being rammed by a civilian vehicle to defend their dangerous use of firearms.
Notably, this was the case in the murder of Renee Good earlier in January. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other US officials tried to maintain this narrative in spite of direct video evidence to the contrary.
‘No ambulance, no paramedics’
Video from another eyewitness appears to show federal agents holding an individual by the hair and bundling them into an unmarked SUV. It’s currently unclear if this was Carballo, or else how they are connected to the incident.
In spite of DHS claims that Carballo wasn’t hit by the shots, neighbours expressed concern for his wellbeing after seeing the damage to his car. One bystander remarked on the lack of emergency services on the scene:
No ambulance. No paramedics. No fire department were called or arrived on the scene. The agents then asked hours after the gunshots where the closest hospital was at, asked the community, and we pointed them to the nearest hospital.
However, the response did include a grab-bag of law enforcement agencies: sheriff’s deputies, California Highway Patrol officers and federal agents in tactical gear gathered at the scene after the gunshots.
As Wednesday morning drew to a close, a large crowd of locals had drawn around to voice their opposition to the officers’ presence.
Border Patrol ‘chose the wrong city’
One local, Eric, highlighted the obvious racism of the immigration agents:
It brings a lot of chaos to the kids, to people that have no citizenship. They’re just here to work. That’s why we’re here to support our people. They’ve been taking people with citizenships just because of the color of our skin. We’re tired of it already. We need them out of here.
Another neighbour, Andre Smith, echoed the call for the ‘border’ patrol to leave the area, which lies over 200km from Mexico:
People are not going to work. They’re causing disruptions. It’s heartbreaking. It hurts. Why are you all here? I heard this is border patrol. If this is border patrol, y’all need to go and patrol the border.
One member of the crowd shouted “Let’s see your ugly face” at an officer. Others filmed video of the scene and the assembled law enforcement agents. Angie Vargas, a local live streamer, said:
The federal ones… they like to come and go. They like to move quick, so the fact that they’re here and this incident happened, I think honestly, they came to the wrong city.
A lot of us are out against what’s going on, but yes, they are around our city, and I think there’s a lot of us out here… supporting the community, being an extra set of eyes for them. That’s why we’re here. We’re filming. We’re bringing everything… the truth of what’s going on, because there’s a lot of people that are scared to come out and see what’s going on.
‘Inflection point’
Public opposition to Trump’s regime of brutal ‘immigration enforcement’ has been on the rise for months. Even outside of its wanton use of firearms, 2025 was ICE’s most deadly year on record. 32 people died in ICE custody in just one year.
However, the murder of Renee Good by an ICE agent in broad daylight has pushed many people over the edge. It marked what Kate Voigt, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), called an “inflection point”:
We’ve seen a swell of grassroots actions over the past few weeks. More and more people are seeing that ICE is dangerous, violent, operating with impunity. More and more people are angry, scared, motivated, and more and more people are looking to their members of Congress for action.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.