Homeland Security pushes back against criticism of immigration raid at Oklahoma home

OKLAHOMA CITY — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday fought back against criticism over its handling of a raid of an Oklahoma City home as part of a migrant smuggling investigation, saying the people living there haven't been ruled out as suspects.

The updated statement by Homeland Security came after the agency initially said the home's previous residents were the intended targets. The initial statement was followed by backlash from congressional Democrats and by the family that lives in the targeted home.

The family — a mother and her three daughters — told KFOR-TV they had just moved into the home about two weeks earlier and had tried to tell the agents that the suspects listed in the search warrant did not live at the house.

The television station did not name the mother, who said she and her daughters were traumatized by the experience, as a group of 20 armed men busted through their door early in the morning on April 24.

The mother said the agents forced them out of the home, outside in the rain, wearing only their undergarments.

She said the agents were dismissive as she tried to tell them they had recently moved into the home from Maryland and that the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.

The agents took their phones, computers, and life savings in cash, the mother said.

In a previous statement, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said the search warrants had ''included the location of an address where U.S. citizens recently moved. The previous residents were the intended targets.''

But in the updated statement issued Thursday afternoon, a Homeland Security official said the raid was ''targeting a property, that was a hub for human smuggling, not specific individuals.''

The Homeland Security official said agents had conducted surveillance on the home and confirmed through utility records that a member of the Lima Lopez Transnational Criminal Organization was still paying utilities at the house.

The official said the search warrant was issued by a judge and based on an 84-page affidavit that detailed how the address served as a ''stash house'' for human smuggling.

The search warrant authorized ''the seizure of evidence such as electronic devices and documents, regardless of who was present,'' the official said.

''This court-authorized search was a critical strike against a dangerous human smuggling network in furtherance of our mission to protect American communities from the chaos unleashed by the Biden administration's open-border policies,'' the official said in a statement.

Homeland Security said officials ''have not ruled out the home's current occupants involvement in the smuggling ring.'' The home's occupants were not arrested during the raid.

The Homeland Security official said the investigation has resulted in the indictment of eight Guatemalan citizens for their alleged roles in the smuggling operation. The indictment, filed in the Northern District of Oklahoma, which does not include Oklahoma City, alleges that people without legal status were smuggled to Tulsa. The indictment, issued April 21, made no mention of the home in Oklahoma City. Court records showed that some of the suspects had been arrested in Oklahoma City.

Homeland Security's updated statement on the raid came after Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee posted on the social platform X a video of one of its members, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, from Vermont, criticizing the raid during a recent committee meeting.

''Armed federal agents breaking into homes, even of U.S. citizens, traumatizing them, taking their possessions. This is Trump's America,'' Balint said.

President Donald Trump's administration has been criticized by Democrats, civil rights groups and others for the warrantless arrests of people at courthouses, people suspected to be in the U.S. illegally and international students.