SAN BERNARDINO, CA – Rep. Pete Aguilar (CA-33) recently sat down with Martin Daniel Rascon, a U.S. citizen from San Bernardino, CA, who was shot at, targeted and harassed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in San Bernardino in August 2025. Daniel, his father-in-law and brother-in-law feared for their lives as they dodged bullets while driving away.
Rep. Pete Aguilar: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the experience that you had with agents here in town. You were the subject of a shooting by what has been determined to be DHS agents in August here in San Bernardino. I want you to walk me through that day. What do you remember about that day? And what happened?
Daniel Rascon: I was running an errand with my father-in-law and his son, my brother-in-law, when some masked men with guns drawn started approaching the vehicle, two on each side of the vehicle. Right away, this didn’t seem like the police department or a federal agency. It just seemed like random men geared up with things that they bought online.
Fear started running through my mind. What’s going to happen? What do they want? What are they going to do? The only thing I could do myself was start recording. And so I did. As I started recording, they’re asking us to lower the windows. They’re pulling on the door handles. My brother-in-law starts to record as well. So now both of us are recording because that’s our only option.
The three of us were scared. You can feel it and you can see it, especially in the videos. That’s when one of them decides to break the driver’s window, and the other agent on the right side breaks the passenger window.
Rep. Pete Aguilar: Both at the same time?
Daniel Rascon: Yes. Boom, boom. Just like that. And the agent on the driver’s side, he decides to punch through the window and hit Francisco in the face. It left him a big bruise on his face. That’s when he bravely decided to drive off, thinking that we were escaping from being attacked, when they decided to attack more by shooting into the side of the vehicle, which put us even more in fear and traumatized us.
The only thing I could think of was, I’m going to duck my head to not get shot through the back of the window, and hopefully nobody else gets shot in the vehicle. As we’re driving away more down the street, I realize that we made it through alive. But what just happened was unbelievable and was traumatizing at the time.
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Rep. Pete Aguilar: As you reflect on this, how has it changed you? You talked about being out with your baby. How has this changed how you react, how you move around town and what you do? Do you feel safe? Do you feel like you are a target?
Daniel Rascon: I absolutely do not feel safe. That’s not just for me. I go out and I go to work. I pass the spot where it happened every day on my way home or to work…It’s just a lot to handle. Because not only am I driving, I’m looking everywhere else. Is there an agent behind me? Is there an agent next to me? Could it be this car? Could it be that vehicle? It affects your mental state.
Rep. Pete Aguilar: And as we’ve seen, your status as a U.S. citizen doesn’t preclude them from terrible behavior. So I think that many, many people in this region and many people across the country feel the same way.