The Trump Department of Homeland Security flipped the script on a liberal California media outlet that reported immigration agents “drove off” with a U.S. citizen detainee’s toddler in the backseat of a vehicle.

The Los Angeles Times reported that while carrying out an immigration enforcement operation at a Home Depot in the Cypress Park neighborhood, Border Patrol officials detained a 32-year-old U.S. citizen named Dennis Quinonez, who had a 1-year-old child in the backseat of his car.

The outlet reported that “after two agents climbed into his car — along with their weapons — they drove off with the child as onlookers protested.”

The article noted that a DHS spokesperson said Quinonez “allegedly ‘exited his vehicle wielding a hammer and threw rocks at law enforcement while he had a child in his car.’”

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The outlet also noted that the spokesperson said Quinonez “was arrested for assault, and, during his arrest, a pistol was found in his car that is reported stolen out of the state of New York,” adding he “has an active warrant for property damage.”

Quinonez was charged with unlawful possession of a gun and ammunition by a person previously convicted of domestic violence, the outlet reported. 

Despite this, the outlet quoted an immigration activist who said, “The fact that they were getting into that car, heavily armed, with masks on their face, they put that toddler in extreme danger.”

The activist said, “It should shock everyone’s conscience that we have masked armed men behaving like that with a U.S. citizen father and a toddler who were just going to run an errand at Home Depot on a random Tuesday.”

Deeper in the outlet’s coverage of the incident, it reported that the “agents decided to drive Quinonez and his daughter separately to another location, where agents determined that the handgun was loaded with five rounds of ammunition.”

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A person holds a sign in front of federal agents at MacArthur Park July 7, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

An LA Times reporter took to X to post about the incident, writing, “During a Border Patrol operation outside a Cypress Park Home Depot yesterday, agents detained a U.S. citizen they accused of assault. The agents drove off with his one-year-old daughter in the backseat. She’s since been reunited with her family.”

The reporter added that “Maria Avalos, the child’s grandmother, said the agents ‘shouldn’t have driven off’ with her granddaughter.”

“When they got into the car, taking my granddaughter, I said, ‘Why are they taking her, are they really ICE, are they kidnapping her or what?’” the woman reportedly said. 

This post prompted a sharp reply from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

“Oh ffs sake, Brittny. This U.S. citizen left his own child unattended in a car and proceeded to attack law enforcement as the[y] were conducting an operation—he exited his car wielding a hammer and threw rocks at law enforcement as he abandoned his child,” she wrote.

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ICE and Border Patrol agents march through Los Angeles. (Carlin Stiehl/Getty Images)

McLaughlin added that, given the facts that Quinonez was arrested for assault, a pistol was found in his car during the arrest, the car was reported stolen out of New York and he had an active warrant for property damage, “law enforcement rightly looked over the child until they were in the safe custody of a guardian.”

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In response, a spokesperson for the LA Times told Fox News Digital, “We stand by this story. All the information that DHS cited is prominently reported in the story.”