A 20-year-old in Slidell, Louisiana, called their bluff on a pretextual traffic stop. Then the agent turned his sights on a 13-year-old kid.
A recent encounter at a Louisiana gas station is a textbook case study in jurisdictional overreach. When a 20-year-old driver and his 13-year-old stepbrother were pulled over, what was packaged as a routine traffic violation instantly unraveled into a targeted immigration interrogation.
Fishing for Probable Cause
Alan Laureano, 20, was driving his stepbrother away from their stepfather’s work site in Slidell when Border Patrol agents began tailing them. The agents waited until Laureano pulled into a RaceTrac gas station to activate their emergency lights.
Reading the situation, Laureano pulled out his phone and started broadcasting on Facebook Live to lock down a real-time public record.
As the agent approached the window, he laid out the official justification for the stop:
“You got white lights on the back of your vehicle. Your reverse lights are on the whole time, so that’s illegal.”
Laureano gave a simple reply: “Okay.”
The agent paused. Then came the immediate, hard pivot: “What’s your citizenship?”
Weaponizing a 13-Year-Old
Laureano, born in Slidell, knew his rights. He questioned the legality of the detention and flatly refused to surrender his identification, accurately pointing out that enforcing local traffic codes does not fall under the purview of federal Border Patrol agents.
“I always said to people, if they do pull me over one day I’m not gonna make it easy on them, I’m gonna make it difficult on them,” Laureano later told WWL Louisiana.
Realizing the driver wasn’t going to fold, the agent shifted tactics and aimed at the softer target in the passenger seat.
“I’m gonna play this your way, sir. I’m gonna have your driver’s license checked, and then I will check him, and if he’s illegal, I will take him.”
The agent walked around the vehicle to the boy’s side and commanded him to open the door, physically attempting to yank the handle open himself. Laureano quickly locked the doors and rolled the window down instead to maintain a physical barrier.
The armed agent interrogated the minor directly, asking for his full name, spelling, date of birth, and country of citizenship. The child confirmed what the agent had no grounds to question in the first place: he was a United States citizen born in Pearl River.
Outside the Color of Law
Immigration attorney Michael Gahagan reviewed the raw footage and didn’t mince words, categorizing the encounter as an illegal detention.
The legal reality is straightforward. Border Patrol agents lack the statutory authority to execute traffic stops for vehicular violations. To lawfully detain someone on the road, agents must establish an independent, reasonable suspicion of a federal immigration violation before initiating the stop. They cannot pull you over for a mechanical issue and go on a fishing expedition to invent immigration suspicion after the fact.
“It would be like if I drove up, just me, a regular guy, pulled you over and demanded your ID,” Gahagan noted. “You got a gun and a 13-year-old kid. But because he’s a kid, he’s going to start answering questions.”
The DHS Black Box
Following the incident, local media pressed the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol to produce the legal justification for the stop.
Border Patrol issued a boilerplate statement claiming the agents acted on “reasonable suspicion or probable cause of federal law violations,” tacking on that both individuals were confirmed as U.S. citizens and released.
But when WWL Louisiana followed up twice to ask exactly what specific violation provided that initial probable cause, DHS and Border Patrol went completely silent. No answer.
For Laureano and his stepbrother, the ordeal ended without someone being hauled away, but it highlights exactly how these pretextual stops operate in the wild. As they drove off, Laureano can be heard trying to calm his shaken brother with a stark reminder of their reality: “It’s fine, nothing’s gonna happen, we’re both from here.”
Source Material & Archival Links:
WWL Louisiana Original Broadcast & Interview: Short video featuring the original livestream footage and direct quotes from Alan Laureano.
Fox43 Coverage: Expanded details on the encounter and legal analysis.
Newswest9 Coverage: Supplementary syndication of the primary reporting.
