Video of NYPD arresting Chilean woman is real, but there's more to the story

In early June 2025 a video purportedly showing the arrest of a Chilean woman in New York City gained popularity on social media, with one Instagram reel accumulating 3.8 million views in just two days. A caption in the video stated: "NYPD arrests Chilean tourist by mistake and leaves her 12-year-old daughter on the street."

(fight_for_a_future/Instagram)

The video authentically documented New York Police Department officers detaining a Chilean woman in a real arrest that occurred on May 28, 2025, while a girl identified as her 12-year-old daughter cried nearby. However, the circumstances surrounding the video were more complex than the video's captions suggest. 

Official police records and witness accounts present conflicting narratives about whether the arrest was truly a mistake and how the child was handled during the incident. As a result, we've rated the claim a mixture of true, false and undetermined information.

Also, although many comments on the Instagram reel speculated the incident was related to immigration enforcement or theft, there was no evidence the arrest was related to immigration enforcement or that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was involved in the arrest, or that the woman had stolen anything.

Snopes has not yet been able to confirm who filmed the footage, but there was no evidence the clip was the product of artificial intelligence (AI) software or other digital manipulation. 

In an email, an NYPD spokesperson said the incident in the video began with a larceny at Sunglass Hut on Avenue of the Americas, where four men allegedly stole 53 pairs of sunglasses valued at approximately $32,000. Officers later spotted a suspect matching the description at 34th Street and Seventh Avenue. When they attempted to arrest him, according to the NYPD spokesperson, "an unknown female approached the officers and made multiple attempts to prevent the officers from effecting the arrest."

NYPD identified the woman in the video as Javiera Andrea Montero de la Fuente, a 33-year-old Chilean national legally residing in the United States with her family. According to the NYPD spokesperson, police formally charged her with:

• Resisting Arrest
• Obstructing Governmental Administration
• Disorderly Conduct

Montero's account, as published in Chilean news outlets BioBioChile and CNN Chile, paints a very different picture. According to both reports, which cited her interview with BiobioChile, she was shopping for souvenirs with her daughter when "some criminals came running behind us" and knocked them to the ground. Her daughter was injured in the fall, causing Montero to panic. She told BioBioChile:

We fall to the ground, and I can't see my daughter anymore. I despair and start screaming. "They hit my daughter, they hit my daughter." The thing is, I got much closer to the police than I should have. Then, the police officer you see in the video grabs me by force, very hard. 

One clear inaccuracy in the claim that circulated on social media was Montero's status as a "tourist." She was not a tourist but a legal U.S. resident. According to her BioBioChile interview, her husband was transferred to New York for work almost a year prior, and she and her daughter moved there two months before the incident to live with him permanently.

Regarding the claim that her daughter was "left on the street," Montero stated that police held her for six hours and she was "reunited with her daughter some time later. Key to this was a witness to the incident, who, she stated, had taken care of the minor during that time," according to BioBioChile.

BioBioChile identified the bystander who helped the child as Ricardo "Luss" Migaglioni, an American musician from the Bronx who witnessed the incident and took the child to the police station where her mother was being held. Migaglioni told BioBioChile he has "remained in contact with Montero and expressed willingness to testify on her behalf at the hearing she will hold in New York in the coming weeks." 

The NYPD confirmed that the child was escorted to the precinct and reunited with her mother after the latter's release.

CNN Chile reported that Montero also expressed frustration with the language barrier, "noting that this time she didn't find any Spanish-speaking agents, as she had on previous occasions."