US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is facing fierce questions after a video that appeared to show a man falling unconscious during an arrest while clutching a small child went viral, and officials accused the man of faking a medical emergency to stop the arrest of his wife.

The footage, obtained by the Boston Globe, shows a frantic commotion inside a vehicle in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, on Thursday. A desperate woman in the passenger seat tries to awaken the man in the driver’s seat, with a crying child in the middle. People can be heard shouting: “He’s having a seizure.” An officer can be seen trying to pull the passengers from the vehicle, while a Fitchburg police officer orders the crowd to “back up” repeatedly.

“They’re trying to rip the baby out of [his] hand,” another bystander says.

ICE said the video did not accurately represent the situation. Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, said on social media that emergency medical personnel at the scene “found no legitimate medical episode” and the family refused medical care. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in a statement on social media wrote: “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice.”

Carlos Sebastian Zapata, the man in the video, told the Boston Globe on Friday that he fell unconscious as he feared his wife would be taken into custody. “I wasn’t letting go of my wife because they wanted to take her away,” Zapata told the newspaper.

He said agents pushed him during the attempted arrest, hit him around his ribs and pressed on his neck. “And that’s when I let go of my wife,” Zapata said. “I had convulsions or something.”

ICE confirmed that the operation had been focused on the man’s wife, who was accompanying him at the time. She was identified as Juliana Milena Ojeda-Montoya from Ecuador, and was taken into custody on Thursday.

Officials said Ojeda-Montoya had a warrant out for her arrest after she was charged by local authorities with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after allegedly stabbing a co-worker and throwing a trash barrel at her.

ICE agents reportedly conducted a traffic stop of the family at 7.00am, and it evolved into an “attempted apprehension”. Agents contacted Fitchburg police around 8.03am, reporting that a growing crowd was posing a threat to the agents.

According to police statements to Boston.com, an officer, a supervisor and a captain were sent to the scene and “confirmed that a crowd was gathering and that the situation was hostile”.

The incident occurred amid Trump’s intensified deportation campaign, which included a large-scale enforcement effort in September known as Operation Patriot 2.0 in Massachusetts. That operation led to the detention of more than 1,400 people in the state for immigration-related reasons.

Earlier this week, another ICE-related incident involving a toddler occurred, as masked and heavily armed federal immigration agents arrested a US citizen in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot store, then entered his car and drove away with his one-year-old child, who is also a US citizen, in the backseat.