Leonel Morocho Arteaga stepped out of his home and saw three black vehicles with tinted windows, he stated in a sworn affidavit submitted to federal court this week.The date was Aug. 26, the third day of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Danbury, where Morocho Arteaga resides, that led to dozens of arrests. He did not give it much thought, he said in the affidavit, because his asylum appeal was still pending. The vehicles were likely there for someone else.Only after Morocho Arteaga placed his 6-year-old son on the school bus and walked back to his parked car did he understand the agents were waiting for him. The same three black vehicles surrounded his car, and officers asked him to verify his name."They never told me who they were, whether they were police or ICE, but I could see that they had the letters of ICE on their uniform," Morocho Arteaga said in the affidavit.After the agents confirmed his identity, one opened his door and seized him by his shirt, he said. "I told the officer who spoke Spanish to be calm (and) that I would go with them," Morocho Arteaga said in the court filing.Morocho Arteaga's arrest was among 118 carried out across Connecticut during the four-day operation, according to ICE. The operation has attracted national attention as Democratic state and federal officials have said it was an example of ICE targeting someone at a bus stop. ICE and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In a statement to CT Insider for an earlier story about this arrest, DHS denied the arrest occurred at a bus stop."Any claim that ICE targeted parents at a school bus stop is FALSE," the statement said. "The vehicle stop did not take place in the vicinity of a bus stop, and Morocho-Arteaga was alone."Video published by CT Insider on Monday appears to show ICE arresting an adult at an intersection moments after children boarded a school bus less than a block away. The video was recorded by cameras mounted on a Danbury school bus and was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.While ICE lacks automatic permission to enter a school under the state's Trust Act law, arrests at or near bus stops in public places are permitted. ICE has faced significant criticism for similar actions in the past.In the new court filing, Morocho Arteaga provides his own account of the arrest and his subsequent detention. It is attached to an amended petition filed in the federal district court for Connecticut late Monday night in which the 28-year-old Ecuadorian citizen and father of two, whom ICE released from custody the same day it arrested him, asks the court to bar the agency from detaining him again and to stop requiring him to wear the GPS ankle monitor it fitted him with upon his release, among other measures.Morocho Arteaga's attorney, Mary Foden, of the Hartford-based firm De Castro Foden LLC, did not return a request for comment Tuesday afternoon about the affidavit. In a statement to CT Insider late Monday for a separate story, she said, "The detention of Mr. Morocho, moments after he helped his child board the school bus, shocks the conscience, and we will continue to vigorously pursue and protect his rights in Connecticut."Morocho Arteaga entered the United States without inspection, a misdemeanor offense under federal law, and was released after encountering U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents during the administration of former President Joe Biden, according to DHS.According to the petition filed by Foden on Morocho Arteaga's behalf, an immigration judge in Hartford denied his asylum application and ordered his removal from the United States in November 2024. Morocho Arteaga appealed the judge's ruling later that same month, the petition says. CT Insider confirmed that appeal is still pending.The first of two videos taken from the school bus's cameras begins with a silver car pulling out of a nearby church's parking lot and up to the intersection of Second Avenue and Rowan Street in front of the stopped bus. As it does, a handful of dark vehicles with flashing red-and-blue lights, consistent with other videos of ICE vehicles filmed in Danbury that week, box another car in on the opposite side of the nearby intersection.The person in the silver car then gets out and holds up a phone, apparently filming.The second video taken from the bus cameras shows the bus stop as a group of children lined up in the church parking lot, many wearing backpacks, as a group of adults stand nearby. As the children get on the bus, a silver car drives in front of it.Moments later, after the last child is on the bus but before its doors are closed, the group of adults suddenly looks toward the intersection, then runs away. A person then runs over from the area where the silver car pulled out, speaks with the bus driver, then walks back toward the intersection. The bus pulls into the church parking lot in order to shield the children from viewing the incident, the city's superintendent of schools told CT Insider. Then the video ends.CT Insider also reviewed other videos and a photo that have circulated among advocates in recent weeks. One shows four black vehicles with flashing red-and-blue lights surrounding a white or silver car. Agents in khaki protective vests and patches consistent with those worn by ICE officers in other videos taken in Danbury that week, some of them masked, surround the vehicles. Two are putting a man who appears to be handcuffed in the back of one of the black cars. The woman filming can be heard indicating the man being detained had recently dropped his child off at the bus stop.Morocho Arteaga said in the new court filing that after the agents arrested him, one asked if he had a criminal record. When he said no, Morocho Arteaga said the agent told him that was good "because if I didn't have a criminal record, the office would release me in three hours."Morocho Arteaga said in the affidavit the agents then placed him in hand and leg shackles and placed him in a van with 10 others and transported him to Hartford. Once there, an ICE agent spoke to all the detainees in Spanish, urging them to take "voluntary departure," a process that allows an immigrant who is in the United States without permanent status to voluntarily leave the country rather than risk forcible deportation, the affidavit continues."The officer then asked each person if they wanted to sign," Morocho Arteaga said in the affidavit. "I said no. One couple said that they would accept, and they were taken to another side of the office."Once the detainees were in a holding cell, Morocho Arteaga said the agents called them one-by-one for processing. When it was his turn, Morocho Arteaga said the agents told him to call someone to arrange for them to pick up the son he had dropped off at the bus stop that morning up from school. They also asked him about his 1-year-old, who is a U.S. citizen he said."The officer asked about the mother of my children, how far was her work from Danbury, but they did not ask about her (immigration) status," he said in the filing. "The question was focused on who would pick up my son from school."Morocho Arteaga said an officer gave him a form that indicated he was being transferred to Colorado. Then, around 5 p.m., Morocho Arteaga said in the filing that agents handcuffed him again."The officers told us that we were going to Boston and then to Colorado," he said.ICE released a list of five men Friday it said it had arrested as part of the four-day operation in Connecticut late last month. CT Insider confirmed ICE was holding at least three of the five at the Denver Contract Detention Facility, also called the Aurora ICE Processing Center, in Aurora, Colorado. CT Insider has also spoken to the families of two other men who were arrested during the operation and who have been held at the Aurora facility.However, Morocho Arteaga said an officer then took off his handcuffs and sent him back to the holding cell. After a short wait, they told him to call his family to come pick him up. After that, Morocho Arteaga said agents took him to a different building where they fitted him with a GPS ankle monitor and told him he could not leave the state without asking permission.The new petition asks the court to remove both the GPS ankle monitor and those travel restrictions.