OXNARD, Calif. (KABC) — A spontaneous protest against immigration agents broke out after an incident in Oxnard on Thursday morning. A U.S. citizen was taken into custody by federal officials but has since been released and is speaking to Eyewitness News.

Video shot by a member of the watchdog group VC Defensa shows an SUV believed to be driven by a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration agent ramming into the back of a pickup truck.

It happened in Oxnard around 8 a.m. VC Defensa heard that immigration agents were in the Oxnard area and went out to monitor their activity.

Oxnard police said they received a call that a pickup truck had collided with a vehicle with ICE agents inside.

Police stopped the pickup at the intersection of 8th Street and South A Street. They said DHS agents and members of the public then arrived, and the scene became “boisterous.”

A crowd of approximately 80 people quickly gathered to protest at the scene.

Oxnard police then sent in officers for crowd control at the protest and to “keep the peace.”

The department confirmed that DHS took someone into custody. The crowd eventually dispersed.

“The Oxnard Police Department had absolutely no involvement in what preceded our arrival on scene. The federal authorities asserted that the traffic collision was intentional, and because of that, it is under their jurisdiction. This means that this is a federal investigation, and not that of the Oxnard Police Department,” the department wrote in a post on Facebook.

The organization VC Defensa identified the man taken into custody as volunteer Leonardo Espartaco Martinez. They said he was taken to Los Robles Medical Center to be checked out before he was taken to the federal building downtown.

The organization claims ICE agents intentionally struck Martinez’s truck and blocked his exit as Martinez observed ICE activity.

“Leo, who is a U.S. citizen, is currently detained at the Metro Detention Center in Los Angeles. Leo was exercising his right to document the crimes ICE is inflicting on our communities, as he and many of our volunteers have done for years. This shameful escalation by ICE is nothing more than an attempt to intimidate those of conscience who are standing up against Trump’s assault on immigrants. We will not be deterred, and we will continue to keep all of our communities safe,” VC Defensa wrote in a statement.

“One of the members was observing ICE activity, which is what they do. They’re a completely non-violent group. He was rammed by ICE, hit the passenger side of the car, injured and taken to Los Robles hospital,” said nurse Christine Farrell, who works with VC Defensa.

Pictures provided to Eyewitness News from outside the hospital show Martinez being taken into custody by ICE between noon and 12:30 p.m. He was released from custody later in the afternoon, VC Defensa said.

Martinez spoke to ABC7 after his release from custody.

“At one point, the police department did say that they were gonna hand me over to the agents, and that’s where I kind of got a little nervous, because they were the same dudes that just rammed into the car and were really aggressive. So once they put me in cuffs and put me in the car, I requested to go to the hospital to get checked out because I already had a headache at that point. My neck was sore, and we were there for a while. And after that, they brought me here, they processed me, and they released me on pending charges,” Martinez said. “I was shocked to be released so fast, but also, at the same time, from the beginning, I knew that I did nothing wrong.”

Martinez says he was not told what those charges might be, if any are even filed.

He also says no one has talked to him about the damage caused to his truck. He says he’ll be back to monitoring ICE on Friday.

Eyewitness News has reached out to DHS for a statement about what happened, but has yet to hear back.

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