Tag
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Incidents involving ICE operations including raids, detention, deportation, family separation, and alleged use of excessive force or violation of detainee rights.
22 incidents
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
ICE held children at its Dilley family detention center for months, far beyond the Flores settlement's 20-day standard, with an estimated 1,560 minors held past the limit in six months. A federal judge appointed an independent monitor and special master over ICE and CBP child custody. DHS responded that 'being in detention is a choice.'
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
A Trump-appointed federal judge twice held DHS in contempt in 2026 for deporting young asylum seekers protected by a court settlement: at least 107 removals found in July, then the second deportation to El Salvador of the same 19-year-old in September, after he had already been returned once. DHS blamed 'communication errors.'
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU documented beatings, medical neglect and coercive deportations at Camp East Montana, the ICE tent camp on Fort Bliss and the largest US immigration detention facility. Three men died there within weeks, one in a death ruled a homicide. ICE's own inspection found unreported uses of force. DHS denies all of it.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
An immigration agent shot dead a young Colombian father who was not the target of an ICE stop in Maine. It was the second fatal ICE traffic-stop shooting in a week. ICE paused most vehicle stops; Trump reversed the pause within a day, saying ICE could not give up 'THE TRAFFIC STOP!'
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
An ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction worker with no criminal record, during a Houston vehicle stop in which he was not the person ICE was looking for. DHS claims self-defense; no officer wore a body camera. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide and a county grand jury is investigating.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Days after a federal judge restored limits on ICE courthouse arrests, ICE agents arrested three men at Manhattan immigration courts. Advocates call it the first clear breach of two court orders; ICE denies wrongdoing but won't say how the arrests were lawful. The core harm is a federal agency appearing to shrug off a specific, recent judicial order.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Trump signed a $70 billion ICE/CBP funding bill on June 10, 2026. Within weeks, ICE arrests surged past 10,000 in five days -- nearly double the prior pace -- after leadership ordered nearly all officers onto arrest duty and reportedly imposed a 3,000-arrests-per-day quota, which government lawyers deny is official policy. Two senior officials were reassigned for insufficient arrest numbers.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The administration told ICE it may arrest and hold refugees, who were vetted for years before admission, simply because they have not yet obtained green cards a year after arrival, even though the government itself has frozen many green-card applications. Refugees and resettlement agencies sued; as of mid-September 2026 the case was at cross-motions for summary judgment, with no final ruling.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
A second American citizen killed by federal agents during Minneapolis immigration enforcement protests. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — both unarmed U.S. citizens — during a single enforcement operation constituted a pattern of excessive force that prompted bipartisan calls for accountability.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
An ICE officer shot a Venezuelan man through a closed door during the Minneapolis enforcement surge, then claimed he had been beaten with a shovel. The victims were charged, but those charges were dropped when video contradicted him. The officer now faces state assault charges and a six-count federal indictment for lying to the FBI. A federal prosecutor who reportedly said DOJ blocked a civil rights charge was fired.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
An ICE agent shot and killed an American woman during an immigration raid in Minneapolis. Video evidence contradicted the government's claim of self-defense. The administration used the killing to threaten the Insurrection Act and escalate immigration enforcement.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
An ICE agent shot a Mexican father of two in the back of the neck during a traffic encounter near Chicago. DHS said the agent was seriously injured and dragged; body-camera footage has the agent describing his injuries as 'nothing major.' Illinois police opened an investigation eight months later.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
During the Chicago-area immigration surge, ICE made warrantless arrests that federal courts found breached a binding consent decree DHS had said it would stop following. A federal judge also restricted agents' use of chemical weapons against protesters and journalists. Appeals courts affirmed the consent-decree findings in part but vacated the use-of-force injunction on procedural grounds after the case was dropped.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
DHS reopened a disused punitive unit inside the largest maximum-security prison in the US to hold civil immigration detainees, and said the prison's fearsome reputation was the point. One former detainee's account describes harsh conditions, which ICE denies; that detainee was deported in breach of a court order. ACLU Louisiana is challenging detentions there in court.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
A systematic pattern of press freedom violations including the arrest of journalists covering immigration enforcement, and the deportation of a journalist to the country he fled due to death threats. Abroad, journalists covering US deportation operations have been detained by foreign authorities.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
A federal immigration agent shot a 23-year-old American citizen through his car window at a South Padre Island traffic point. DHS said he deliberately ran over an agent; police body-camera video and the passenger's account describe a car barely moving. The federal role came out only through a records request 11 months later, and a grand jury declined to indict.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Multiple US citizens and legally protected individuals have been wrongfully deported, often in direct defiance of federal court orders. The pattern includes deportation of a man with explicit judicial protection, another removed the day after a court barred his removal, and a US citizenship claimant deported despite a restraining order.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
A coordinated erosion of tribal sovereignty through executive order revocation, termination of $1.5 billion in clean energy funding for 574 federally recognized tribes, and ICE encroachments on tribal lands that questioned Native Americans' citizenship status.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Immigration enforcement separated at least 11,000 US citizen children from their parents, with children held in government custody for an average of six months while officials used reunification processes as traps to arrest parents and caregivers.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The rescission of the sensitive locations policy removed decades-old protections for churches, schools, hospitals, and shelters (courthouse arrests were governed by a separate ICE directive, also loosened in January 2025) from immigration enforcement. The rescission coincided with a broader surge in arrests of non-criminal immigrants and chilled access to essential services including healthcare and education.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Latinos account for 90% of ICE arrests, 76% of raids target majority-Latino neighborhoods, the Supreme Court has stayed an order barring stops based on apparent race, language, location and occupation, and at least 170 US citizens have been wrongfully detained — constituting systematic racial profiling in violation of equal protection and non-discrimination principles.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The administration declared a national emergency at the border on January 20, 2025, and directed federal military and law enforcement resources toward immigration enforcement. ICE operations expanded significantly; worksite raids and community arrests became routine. The administration deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with a U.S. court order protecting him from removal to El Salvador, to CECOT on March 15, 2025; a federal judge ordered the government to facilitate his return, and the Supreme Court upheld that requirement; the administration resisted for weeks before returning him on June 6, 2025 to face criminal charges in Tennessee. The ACLU and other organizations documented multiple U.S. citizens and green card holders wrongly detained. Trump characterized the deportation operations as removing 'the worst, most violent criminals' despite documented cases of individuals with no criminal history being targeted.