Los Angeles, California - A violent immigration raid in Los Angeles on Tuesday featured heavily armed agents driving off with a toddler while her father – a US citizen – was being detained.

Videos taken on the scene at a Home Depot in Cypress Hill captured the arrest of a 32-year-old man, later identified as Dennis Quinonez, during a large-scale operation.

While he was being detained, two masked agents enter his car, with his daughter clearly visible on the back seat.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the agents then drove off with the child, despite outraged cries from onlookers.

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Immigrant Defenders Law Center Lindsay Toczylowski told the LA Times that her organization had frantically tried to obtain any information about where the father and toddler had been taken.

Only later did Border Patrol representatives contact the child's grandmother and inform her where she could pick up the one-year-old from a federal building.

"When they got into the car, taking my granddaughter, I said, 'Why are they taking her, are they really ICE, are they kidnapping her or what?'" Avalos said at a press conference.

Authorities claimed Quinonez was arrested for allegedly threatening immigration agents with a hammer and throwing rocks at them. He was also charged with illegal possessing of a firearm, due to a previous conviction.

During Tuesday's raid, agents also targeted a center for day laborers and reportedly assaulted its coordinator, also a US citizen.

They were only the latest instances of a nationwide crackdown on immigrant communities launched by President Donald Trump since he took office in January.

Masked, heavily armed ICE and Border Patrol agents wearing no have been filmed violently abducting people in broad daylight and bundling them in unmarked vehicles, causing widespread protests and resistance across the country.