Salt Lake City’s mayor and council leaders are condemning the Wednesday arrest of a woman at Salt Lake City International Airport after video shared on social media showed her being detained and taken away by immigration authorities.

Mayor Erin Mendenhall specifically questioned the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ tactics in a statement Thursday.

“Why were the agents in plain clothes without visible identification?” she asked. “Why did they choose the lobby of the airport — the gateway to our state — where some 28,000 people enter every day? What I do know is that nothing about this incident, like so many ICE operations, makes me feel safer as an American.”

ICE initially denied involvement in the arrest, telling The Salt Lake Tribune in a 9:48 a.m. email Thursday that the agency was “not involved.”

But after Salt Lake City police and an airport spokesperson separately said the arresting authorities were ICE agents, a spokesperson for the federal immigration agency in a 3:16 p.m. email ultimately confirmed “this was ICE.”

Video of the arrest was filmed by Shannon Hale, a Utah author who was traveling through the airport Wednesday. The arrest, she said, occurred outside of the security screening checkpoint at about 4 p.m.

In an interview Thursday, Hale said she went to see what was happening when she heard yelling and cries for help. At first, she said, she thought it was a child, but when she got closer, she saw it was a woman being handled by four men in plain clothes while a Salt Lake City police officer looked on.

“There were two Salt Lake City airport employees, and they were wearing those fluorescent vests, and I said to them, ‘What is going on?’” Hale said. “That’s who told me it was ICE.”

In Hale’s video, the woman can be seen trying to jump and break away from the arresting agents. She can be heard asking for her daughter and saying, “I have my papers.”

Hale said she was shaken by the arrest. An airport employee came to check on Hale after the agents led the woman away, but Hale said no one shared any more details.

“I wish I’d started filming earlier, because the cries, the crying out — they went on for at least a couple minutes. Before I started filming, they had her just down, face down,” Hale said. “It was so horrible.”

The Salt Lake City police officer at the scene didn’t physically detain the woman, but the video captured one of the agents showing the officer his badge, and the two appeared to have a brief conversation.

Salt Lake City police have a dedicated airport bureau and oversee some aspects of airport security.

“Our officer noticed the commotion and went over, and the individuals identified themselves as federal law enforcement and showed their badge,” Salt Lake City Police Department spokesperson Glen Mills said. “We did not participate in any other way, other than going to check out to see what the commotion was.”

Mills confirmed that the Salt Lake City police officer’s body camera footage captured the federal agents identifying themselves as ICE employees.

Generally, federal law enforcement agencies like ICE don’t have to tell local authorities when they are planning an operation or arrest, Mills said.

City Hall officials said ICE enforcement actions like the woman’s arrest Wednesday don’t foster public safety.

“There is so much about ICE operations that create a sense of fear,” Mendenhall said in her statement, “and we know we’ll likely never receive answers to our many questions that surround them.”

ICE has not identified the woman arrested or explained why she was detained.

Her publicized arrest followed another Salt Lake City airport immigration arrest in September, when ICE said they took a known Venezuelan gang member into custody after receiving information that he planned to board a flight there. Video of that arrest on concourse B also circulated on social media.

ICE identified the person arrested in that case but did not specify why agents suspected he was a gang member.

Mendenhall on Thursday said city leaders requested more information from federal officials about the Wednesday arrest and noted that Salt Lake City police don’t screen for individuals’ immigration status during investigations.

The Salt Lake City Council in a separate statement Thursday said arrests like this “create fear and uncertainty in our community.”

Before ICE confirmed it was the arresting agency, spokespeople for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Department of Homeland Security all did not respond to requests for comment from The Salt Lake Tribune about whether their agencies were involved.

A spokesperson for Rep. Blake Moore, whose district includes the Salt Lake City airport, said Moore’s office had no information about the arrest.

A member of a grassroots west-side political organization that offers resources to local immigrants called the video troubling.

“It makes me really upset,” said the person with the Brown Berets de West Valley. The Tribune agreed not to publish the person’s name because they said they fear they could be targeted by federal authorities for speaking out.

“I don’t like to see anybody, let alone my people, be treated that way,” the person said, “because a lady such as that reminds me of even my mother.”

The person encouraged bystanders who witness such an arrest to record what they’re seeing and try to collect information about who is involved, like officers’ badge numbers. They cautioned against interfering physically, noting it could lead to arrest.