FBI agents reportedly raided the home of a pro-life activist in Pennsylvania on Friday and arrested him.
A group of between 25 and 30 FBI agents raided the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, home of pro-life activist Mark Houck early Friday morning, his family told LifeSite News.
Houck is the leader of a nonprofit group that provides sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics in Philadelphia. The arrest seemed to stem from a court case that was dismissed by a federal court in Philadelphia, but was somehow picked up by the Department of Justice, his family said.
“The kids were all just screaming,” Houck’s wife, Ryan-Marie, told LifeSite. “It was all just very scary and traumatic.”
Ryan-Marie Houck told the outlet that the group of agents in SWAT gear arrived in 15 vehicles outside the family home at around 7:05 a.m. Friday morning. The agents quickly surrounded the house and began pounding on the door, demanding they open up. Houck reportedly tried to get the agents to calm down, noting that his seven children were scared, but the agents kept shouting.
“[T]hey had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” his wife said.
Houck and his wife asked the agents why they were there, to which the agents allegedly replied that they were there to arrest him. His wife asked for a warrant, but “they said that they were going to take him whether they had a warrant or not,” Ryan-Marie Houck recalled.
She protested, saying that what the agents were doing was tantamount to kidnapping. Only then did they provide a copy of the warrant. Shortly afterward, Houck was apparently taken out and put into one of the vehicles.
But the FBI agents quickly softened once they realized the distress they had inflicted on the family, Houck’s wife recounted. “After they had taken Mark, and the kids were all screaming that he was their best friend, the [agents] kind of softened a bit,” she said. “I think they realized what was happening. Or maybe they actually looked at the warrant.”
“They looked pretty ashamed at what had just happened,” she added.
According to the warrant, shared by LifeSite reporter Patrick Delaney, Houck’s arrest stems from an indictment on charges of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, specifically for “attack[ing] a patient escort.”
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