The woman who was dragged out of her car by federal immigration agents in Key Largo while screaming she was a U.S. citizen said the feds had already stopped her twice within a few weeks, including when they had detained her undocumented husband in a traffic stop in the same location just last month.

The woman was commuting alone in her husband’s car to her job at a Plantation Key school, raising questions of why she was pulled over weeks after agents already detained the man they were seeking.

“They took the person they were looking for into custody. I was the only person in the car,” said Dayana, 33, who only wanted her first name used, in an exclusive interview with the Herald on Tuesday.

She said this was the third time she had been pulled over within a four-week period - the first time, her husband was detained; the second time she went on her way.

Newly released body cam footage from a Monroe County Sheriff’s deputy at the traffic stop shows masked federal immigration agents threatening to break her car windows if she didn’t get out of the car or provide her ID. She repeatedly told them she was a U.S. citizen and was driving to her job as behavioral therapist with children at a local school.

On Dec. 3, agents with U.S. Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection pulled her over around 9 a.m. in front of the Pink Plaza shopping center on U.S. 1. After a few minutes of agents trying to convince her to hand over her driver’s license, they pulled her from her Toyota sedan, forced her to the ground, cuffed her and placed her in the back of one of their SUVs.

A Miami Herald reporter acting on a tip that agents were conducting immigration traffic stops in the area filmed the tense encounter.

In all, Dayana was stopped in roughly the same area of Key Largo and around the same time of day on Nov. 7, Nov. 15 and Dec. 3, she said. The stops were part of federal immigration operations in the Upper Keys that appear to be targeting undocumented immigrants commuting to work in the island chain from the mainland.

‘I’m going to break your window’

The 14-minute body cam footage, released by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office to the Herald through a public records request, captures the moments when Dayana, dressed in green medical scrubs, was first stopped, warned by the Monroe deputy to cooperate and then threatened by a masked federal agent, who surrounded the driver’s side of the car with two other masked agents.

“If you don’t get out of the vehicle, I’m going to break your window,’’ the agent shouted at Dayana, who was crying, ‘Please help me.’’

“I’m going to give you one last chance. If you don’t give me your ID, I’m going to break your window,” the agent yelled.

A Miami Herald reporter witnessed the agents forcefully removing Dayana — who is 4-feet, 11-inches tall and weighs 85 pounds — from her white Toyota Corolla. The footage shows Dayana yelling at the reporter to help her and that she was a United States citizen.

Agents held her in the back of one of their SUVs for about 10 minutes before releasing her after confirming she is a citizen. The video gained international attention after the Herald posted it on miamiherald.com.

The body camera video also shows how the federal agents asked a Keys sheriff’s deputy to convince the woman to show them her driver’s license and to exit the car. The deputy tells the agents he’ll talk to her, but won’t go any further.

“I can try talking to her for you guys, but, as far as me breaking out windows, I can’t,” he told a Border Patrol agent, who responded, “No, no. We’ll pull her out.”

Dayana declined to discuss her husband’s case or country of origin, fearing for his safety in detention. But, she said he has no criminal record and has been in the United States since 2013, coming when he was 16 years old.

She added that one of the uniformed Border Patrol agents at the Dec. 3 stop was one of the officers who detained her husband on Nov. 7.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency fielding questions about Dayana’s stop, did not immediately respond to questions about what she told the Herald. The agency previously said agents pulled Dayana over because she “was driving her illegal alien boyfriend’s car” and that she “refused to comply with repeated lawfully given orders by law enforcement to identify herself.”

What the footage shows

The body camera footage shows a masked agent telling the Monroe deputy that “the registration on the car is illegal. I don’t know who she is. She’s claiming she’s a U.S. citizen, but she’s not going to identify herself. So we don’t know who she is.”

The agent asks the deputy to convince her to provide ID, and, “If not, we’re going to drag her out of the car.”

The deputy walked up to the car; Dayana’s window was rolled down about two inches.

“I’m here to talk to you. Reasonably. Civilly. OK? Just to get to logical point on this, OK?” he told her. “What they’re doing, that’s their business. I just want to talk to you to put some logic in your head.”

Dayana told the deputy that she hasn’t done anything wrong and was driving to work.

“I work at a school. I’m a behavioral therapist,” she said.

She also said this isn’t the first time immigration agents have pulled her over.

“I know that I haven’t done anything incorrect. I am just driving on my way into work. They don’t have a reason to stop me. They want to do an inspection. They have already stopped me before. This is not the first time. I am a U.S. citizen. I don’t want to go through this,” she said.

“I also know that I have the right to remain silent. I also know that I don’t have to show proof of my immigration status. Let me go,” she said.

The deputy reiterated that he is only there to convince her to cooperate.

“All I’m saying is if you don’t cooperate with these gentlemen, it’s going to get to something that you don’t want it to get there, OK,” he said.

Dayana repeated that she had already been stopped by federal agents on her way to work.

“I’m scared. I don’t want to go through this anymore. You guys stop me every time. It’s not the first time. This is unacceptable. Just let me go. I am a U.S. citizen like I said,” she told the deputy and agents.

Eventually, a masked agent comes to the car and says, “Ma’am, if you’re a United States citizen, all you have to do is provide us with identification.”

The deputy then steps away and speaks with one of the agents, saying, “If you guys got something on the federal side to charge her with, then, by all means, go ahead.”

The deputy then walks away from the car, but his body camera footage captures about five agents, some masked, yelling at Dayana before pulling her from the car.

“Ma’am, I’m not going to go round and round with you,” one of the agents says. “Unlock the door and step out of the vehicle. Listen, listen. I’m not going to listen to you anymore. I gave you the opportunity to show your ID.”

Dayana then pleads with the deputy to help her, but he said, “That has nothing to do with me. Just cooperate.”

The deputy then switched to traffic enforcement, moving drivers along who slowed down on U.S. 1 to watch the agents struggle with the woman.

Before the agents forced the door open, one of them demanded, “Unbuckle yourself or I’m going to drag you out of the car.”

The body cam footage alarmed one South Florida immigration attorney, who reviewed it at the Herald’s request.

“Frankly, it’s horrific,” said Magdalena Cuprys. “I don’t see how these people had any reason to go as far as they did.”

Cuprys said Dayana had a right to not identify herself under the Fifth Amendment. That’s actually what attorneys often advise their clients to do — not answer any questions, and simply ask if they are being arrested. “There was no reason to believe that she was committing any sort of a crime. That’s why the Monroe Sheriff wouldn’t get involved, right,” Cuprys said

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office is among many local and state police agencies in Florida that cooperate with the federal government’s immigration enforcement efforts, but do not play a direct role.

“We respond when called and seek to be peacekeepers by mitigating the situation for all involved. We attempt to seek compliance and deescalate,” sheriff’s office spokesman Adam Linhardt said in an email to the Herald. “Again, we respond when called by all of our law enforcement partners. We also will conduct traffic control if needed to ensure the safety of all involved, as was the case here.”

The agents, Cuprys said, would have to have some reason to believe she was an “alien,” which her statements contradicted. “But there was nothing in that arrest that to me seemed justified, right? It was just vindictive,” she said.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects all persons in the U.S. from “unreasonable” searches and seizures. There must be a search warrant issued, based on probable cause, in order to search the person, their home or their documents, the amendment says.

Since the Dec. 3 stop, Dayana said that she is experiencing panic attacks, cries at night and repeatedly looks out of her window to see if anyone is coming for her. She said she was so traumatized after being detained that day that she called out sick from work.

“I made a U-turn,” she said. ”I couldn’t do it.”

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