OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) The U.S. Department of Homeland Security admits they know the mom and three daughters who say ICE agents left them traumatized when they raided their Oklahoma City home were not the suspects they were after.

Since affiliate KFOR first told you about the family’s ordeal on Monday, hundreds of people from all corners of the country are asking, How could this have happened?

That is the same question KFOR has been asking, and so far, it still has not been answered.

“Why us? Why?” asks the mother of three, whom we are calling Marissa. “You see and hear this on the news, and now I’m part of the news.”

Marissa says she and her daughters were traumatized, and they are struggling to deal with the aftermath.

As KFOR first reported, ICE agents made a decision to serve a search warrant on a Northwest Oklahoma City home. The home Marissa had just moved into from out of state two weeks ago with her three daughters.

The family said they were fast asleep when agents busted in early on a Thursday morning.

“I just couldn’t understand how is this happening to us?” asks Marissa.

They say the agents took all of their phones, computers, and life savings in cash, even though their names were not the ones listed on the search warrant.

“I kept telling them we weren’t criminals.”

The actual subjects of the raid were suspected human smugglers from Guatemala.

The Northern District of Oklahoma U.S. Attorney’s office told KFOR that U.S. federal agents arrested eight Guatemalan Nationals during a set of raids across the country last Thursday as part of an operation cracking down on illegal immigration ordered by President Donald Trump.

The names of the eight suspects they arrested are the same suspect names listed on the warrant served on Marissa’s house, where none of them were located.

For days, KFOR has been asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, for answers.

The agency responded Wednesday, confirming the raid on Marissa’s house was part of that nationwide operation, and admitting for the first time that Marissa and her family were not supposed to be targeted.
Telling KFOR, “ICE was carrying out a court-authorized search warrant for a large-scale human smuggling investigation. The search warrants included the location of an address where U.S. citizens recently moved. The previous residents were the intended targets.”

Since our first report aired and was published, it gained international headlines, catching the attention of attorney Patrick Jaicomo.

“I opened my phone and saw this and just thought, here we go again,” said Jaicomo.

“Yesterday morning, I argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a family from Atlanta who were the victims of a wrong house raid committed by the FBI, who simply failed to check the address on the house before they sent in a SWAT team,” said Jaicomo.

Jaicomo is with the Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit legal advocacy group. They are representing the Atlanta family in the their case free of charge.

He says he was walking out of the U.S. Supreme Court after arguing their case when he saw Marissa’s story.

“I mean, what timing is that?”

He says his group will represent Marissa for free too, telling KFOR her case fits a years-long pattern of questionable raids.

“Based on the facts as I understand them right now, there’s no question that there was a lack of due diligence,” said Jaicomo.

“I kept praying, God, please let me live through,” says Marissa.

The decision and the consequences have left the family to question everything and trust nothing.

“What makes you so much more worth protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety, of being able, given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?”

KFOR has had an overwhelming amount of emails and calls about ways they could help Marissa and her daughters. As of right now, there is not a legitimate fundraising campaign or way to help.

KFOR sent emails to Cong. Stephanie Bice, U.S. Senator James Lankford, and U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin’s offices about this botched raid. Lankford’s office is the only one of Oklahoma’s federal delegation to respond so far.

 “The Senator is following the situation, and we are working to get an accounting of what happened.”

U.S. Senator James Lankford Spokesperson

KFOR will continue following this story.