Jefferson Fernando Cando Llano left a laundromat in Browne’s Addition on March 8 and headed for his car.

Moments later, gray pickups pulled into the Super Wash Laundromat’s parking lot and blocked him from driving away. Masked men jumped out of the trucks, detained Cando Llano and drove him away.

The episode rattled friends who watched video of the encounter at 1632 W. Second Avenue and called Spokane police.

Cando Llano’s detainment is the first local arrest by federal immigration agents where someone called police because they were unable to identify the agents, according to Spokane police Chief Kevin Hall. And it underscores the concerns among some police agencies about the secretive nature of federal immigration enforcement with agents wearing masks and driving unmarked vehicles.

Cando Llano, 29, came to Spokane around three years ago and is seeking asylum from Ecuador. He is married and the father of a 6-year-old boy.

A March 8 police report states Cando Llano’s friends initially filed a missing persons report with the Spokane Police Department because he was “taken from the location by multiple men,” and the friends feared he could have been kidnapped. The friends went to the laundromat to view the security footage and thought it could have been immigration personnel, but they could not verify, according to police records.

Hall had warned his department about such actions last year amid widespread fear across the United States as agents began wearing masks and driving unmarked vehicles.

Cando Llano brought his family to the U.S. from Ecuador because his wife faced trauma and violence there, according to a family friend. Cando Llano declined to comment, and his attorney did not respond to requests for an interview.

He and his brother, who also fled to Spokane from Ecuador, both have open asylum cases, according to friends. The two traveled to Seattle a month ago for an immigration court hearing.
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Read more at www.spokesman.com

Reporting by me
Photos by me
(Photo of agent in mask was my photo from a prior incident in Spokane Valley last year)

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