For the past year, Trump has been a man of his word when he stated that there would be a renewed assault on immigrants’ rights. Since taking office, ICE has seen an increase in activity and violence against citizens and immigrants.
According to an ACLU report from July, “Agents of Chaos and Cruelty,” it details how violent ICE agents have been. According to Denise Bell and Naureen Shah, there was aggressive and often illegal use of force or threatened use of force in about one out of four instances.
- 241 incidents involved physical force
- 128 incidents involved threatened force, including the brandishing of weapons or verbal threats or force
- 105 incidents involved weapons such as batons, tasers, and flashbang grenades
- 86 incidents involved chemical irritants
- 82 incidents involved agents using their cars, such as boxing in or hitting other people’s cars
People caught up in enforcement actions included 155 U.S. citizens, 30 legal permanent residents, as well as 144 immigrants in liminal status. The latter includes DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and immigrants with a U visa (victims or witnesses of crime). The results come from 1,200 instances of immigration law enforcement across eight states.
“The abuses detailed in this report are about more than immigration,” write co-authors Denise Bell and Naureen Shah. “They reveal a blueprint for expanding authoritarian rule in the United States, with profound consequences for everyone in America.”
Bell and Shah expanded on the reports by stating, “ Encounter with ICE turns daily lives into danger zones,” as ICE has deliberately deployed white nationalist and vehement anti-immigrant messaging in its recruitment efforts. Even lawful and legal immigrants are in danger because of the rhetoric used in the agency.
“They’re going to kill someone,” Bell wrote in her notes — presciently, as it turns out — well before events in Minneapolis led to the deaths of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renée Nicole Good. Since January 2025, ICE agents have been involved in 41 shootings resulting in 11 deaths of citizens and migrants alike.
The ACLU report also undercuts rhetoric about targeting “the worst of the worst,” finding that 214 children were detained, targeted for enforcement, or experienced law enforcement misconduct, and that among these, 32 were U.S. citizen children. In 54 incidents, agents directly interrogated or detained minors.
“In countries experiencing authoritarianism, the loss of basic freedoms grows so widespread that it grows less poignant,” the authors warn, noting that even as the scale of immigration enforcement attacks escalates, tracking them becomes more difficult. “It is a fact of life, obscured or ignored, rather than protested.”
