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Guadalupe Lopez was at home when ICE and Border Patrol agents broke down the door of the house and entered looking to arrest her cousin. She said agents pointed guns at her two younger brothers, ages 8 and 13. (Emily Neil/WHYY)
Guadalupe Lopez was sleeping when her younger brother woke her Monday morning.
Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol were banging on the door and surrounding the home where Lopez lives with her mother, her cousin, Jose Manuel Cordova Lopez, and her two younger brothers, who are 8 and 13 years old.
The officers had followed Cordova Lopez’s car back to the house after he had left for work, Lopez said. Cordova Lopez was then blocked in by agents and their cars. She said her cousin drove home and fled inside the house.
The agents asked her to open the door and Lopez, 26, said she refused.
“I was just like, ‘No, like, I know my rights,’” she told WHYY News on Wednesday. “I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m not gonna open the door without a warrant.”
She said there were at least two agents at every window of the house. One of them taunted her, Lopez said, moving his jacket to show a “big gun.”
“He was like, ‘This is what I’m gonna take you down with.’ He was like, ‘I’m gonna gas your whole house.’ And then I was just like, ‘There’s kids, there’s kids. Like, why would you do that?’ And then he was just like, ‘Well, you guys looked for it like, you guys should have just told him to come out.’”
In a video Lopez provided to WHYY News, she is heard screaming as she records agents busting open the door to a room where she is with her younger brothers, one of whom is heard crying. Agents shine flashlights and appear to flip a mattress over as they inspect the room.
“When they came in, they started pointing their guns at [her brothers],” Lopez said. “What 8-year-old is gonna have another gun to protect himself, you know what I mean? Like, why are you aiming guns at little kids?”
Lopez continues to record as it appears agents arrest her cousin. The video ends when an agent knocks her phone out of her hand. Lopez said at that moment, he also hit her in the side of the face.
According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, the operation was a “targeted” attempt to detain Cordova Lopez because the Mexican national’s visa expired in December 2021 and he was charged last year with a DUI. DHS alleged Cordova-Lopez “weaponized his vehicle and rammed an ICE vehicle” before going back to his home. After that, ICE obtained a criminal warrant and entered the home.
DHS said its agents have experienced a “1,300% increase in assaults against them, a 3,200% increase in vehicle attacks, and a … 8,000% uptick in death threats.”
Lopez told WHYY News she and her family remain “traumatized” by Monday’s events. She said even her normally quiet dog is barking at every sound now, and her cat is still hiding in a closet. One of her brothers had to come home from school early this week because he’s shaken by the incident.
“One little noise, somebody knock[s] at the door or something, we all jump,” she said.
The Lopez family and immigrant rights advocates gathered at Ridge Pike and North Barry Avenue on Wednesday, where federal agents closed off the road as they conducted their operation Monday.
The group called for Jose Cordova Lopez‘s release from detention, an independent investigation into Monday’s raid, accountability for the agents involved in the operation and compensation for home damages and medical expenses related to the incident.
Lopez and advocates said that Lower Providence Police Department officers collaborated with federal agents during the raid. They called for accountability for those officers as well.
“We stand with the demands of this family that the officers who assisted ICE be fired, that the agents who terrorized these children from both ICE and Border Patrol be fired,” Jasmine Rivera, executive director of Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, said. “We will support this family to seek damages and compensation for this abuse.”
The Lower Providence Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stephanie Vincent, of rapid response network MontCo Community Watch, whose members were present as legal observers of the raid on Monday, said the incident is not the only one of its kind in the region.
“What happened to this family is not an isolated tragedy,” she said. “It’s one of hundreds of stories unfolding in our towns and neighborhoods, families navigating trauma, children navigating fear, communities navigating injustice at the hands of a federal enforcement system that treats constitutional rights and human dignity as optional.”
Norristown and other nearby areas in Montgomery County have seen high levels of immigration enforcement activity since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025.
Advocates also called on the Lower Providence Township Board of Supervisors and the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners to pass welcoming laws to strengthen protections for immigrant communities and limit local law enforcement’s ability to collaborate with federal immigration enforcement agents.
On Tuesday, Lower Providence Township Supervisor Dr. Jeanine Darby, who was on site Monday, Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija and other elected officials condemned the ICE raid.
“What I saw was devastating,” Darby said. “Children crying, a family in shock and a home destroyed after agents broke down the door. No child should feel that kind of fear in their own home.”
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