When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned.
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.”
But that is far from the reality many citizens have experienced. Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.
About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
Videos of U.S. citizens being mistreated by immigration agents have filled social media feeds, but there is little clarity on the overall picture. The government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans.
So ProPublica created its own count.
We compiled and reviewed every case we could find of agents holding citizens against their will, whether during immigration raids or protests. While the tally is almost certainly incomplete, we found more than 170 such incidents during the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer. That includes four who were held for weeks with their undocumented mother and without access to the family’s attorney until a congresswoman intervened.
Immigration agents do have authority to detain Americans in limited circumstances. Agents can hold people whom they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. We found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship. They were almost all Latino.
Immigration agents also can arrest citizens who allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. We compiled cases of about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, accused of assaulting or impeding officers.
These cases have often wilted under scrutiny. In nearly 50 instances that we have identified so far, charges have never been filed or the cases were dismissed. Our count found a handful of citizens have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.
Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agents pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed and punched a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative. In another, agents knocked over and then tackled a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. His lawyer said he was held for 12 hours and wasn’t given medical attention despite having broken ribs in the incident and having recently had heart surgery. In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described being held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time. (The Supreme Court has ruled that two days is generally the longest federal officials can hold Americans without charges.)
In response to questions from ProPublica, the Department of Homeland Security said agents do not racially profile or target Americans. “We don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,” wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
A top immigration official recently acknowledged agents do consider someone’s looks. “How do they look compared to, say, you?” Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino said to a white reporter in Chicago.
The White House told ProPublica that anyone who assaults federal immigration agents would be prosecuted. “Interfering with law enforcement and assaulting law enforcement is a crime and anyone, regardless of immigration status, will be held accountable,” said the Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson. “Officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens, and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism.”
A spokesperson for Kavanaugh did not return an emailed request for comment.
Tallying the number of Americans detained by immigration agents is inherently messy and incomplete. The government has long ignored recommendations for it to track such cases, even as the U.S. has a history of detaining and even deporting citizens, including during the Obama administration and Trump’s first term.
We compiled cases by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We did not include arrests of protesters by local police or the National Guard. Nor did we count cases in which arrests were made at a later date after a judicial process. That included cases of some people charged with serious crimes, like throwing rocks or tossing a flare to start a fire.
Experts say that Americans appear to be getting picked up more now as a result of the government doing something that it hasn’t for decades: large-scale immigration sweeps across the country, often in communities that do not want them.
In earlier administrations, deportation agents used intelligence to target specific individuals, said Scott Shuchart, a top immigration official in the Biden, Obama and first Trump administrations. “The new idea is to use those resources unintelligently” — with officers targeting communities or workplaces where undocumented immigrants may be.
When federal officers roll through communities in the way the Supreme Court permitted, the constitutional rights of both citizens and noncitizens are inevitably violated, argued David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He recently analyzed how sweeps in Los Angeles have led to racial profiling. “If the government can grab someone because he’s a certain demographic group that’s correlated with some offense category, then they can do that in any context.”
Cody Wofsy, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, put it even more starkly. “Any one of us could be next.”
When Kavanaugh issued his opinion that immigration agents can consider race and other factors, the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices strongly dissented. They warned that citizens risked being “grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.”
Leonardo Garcia Venegas appears to have been just such a case. He was working at a construction site in coastal Alabama when he saw masked immigration agents from Homeland Security Investigations hop a fence and run by a “No trespassing” sign. Garcia Venegas recalled that they moved toward the Latino workers, ignoring the white and Black workers.
Garcia Venegas began filming after his undocumented brother asked agents for a warrant. In response, the footage shows, agents yanked his brother to the ground, shoving his face into wet concrete. Garcia Venegas kept filming until officers grabbed him too and knocked his phone to the ground.
Other co-workers filmed what happened next, as immigration agents twisted the 25-year-old’s arms. They repeatedly tried to take him to the ground while he yelled, “I’m a citizen!”
Officers pulled out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to those legally in the U.S. But the agents dismissed it as fake. Officers held Garcia Venegas handcuffed for more than an hour. His brother was later deported.
Garcia Venegas was so shaken that he took two weeks off of work. Soon after he returned, he was working alone inside a nearly built house listening to music on his headphones when he sensed someone watching him. A masked immigration agent was standing in the bedroom doorway.
This time, agents didn’t tackle him. But they again dismissed his REAL ID. And then they held him to check his citizenship. Garcia Venegas says agents also held two other workers who had legal status.
DHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Garcia Venegas’ detentions, or to a federal lawsuit he filed last month. The agency has previously defended the agents’ conduct, saying he “physically got in between agents and the subject” during the first incident. The footage does not show that, and Garcia Venegas was never charged with obstruction or any other crime.
Garcia Venegas’ lawyers at the nonprofit Institute for Justice hope others may join his suit. After all, the reverberations of the immigration sweeps are being felt widely. Garcia Venegas said he knows of 15 more raids on nearby construction sites, and the industry along his portion of the Gulf Coast is struggling for lack of workers.
Kavanaugh’s assurances hold little weight for Garcia Venegas. He’s a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, who speaks little English and works in construction. Even with his REAL ID and Social Security card in his wallet, Garcia Venegas worries that immigration agents will keep harassing him.
“If they decide they want to detain you,” he said. “You’re not going to get out of it.”
George Retes was among the citizens arrested despite immigration agents appearing to know his legal status. He also disappeared into the system for days without being able to contact anyone on the outside.
The only clue Retes’ family had at first was a brief call he managed to make on his Apple Watch with his hands handcuffed behind his back. He quickly told his wife that “ICE” had arrested him during a massive raid and protest on the marijuana farm where he worked as a security guard.
Still, Retes’ family couldn’t find him. They called every law enforcement agency they could think of. No one gave them any answers.
Eventually, they spotted a TikTok video showing Retes driving to work and slowly trying to back up as he’s caught between agents and protestors. Through the tear gas and dust, his family recognized Retes’ car and the veteran decal on his window. The full video shows a man — Retes — splayed on the ground surrounded by agents.
Retes’ family went to the farm, where local TV reporters were interviewing families who couldn’t find their loved ones.
“They broke his window, they pepper sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor,” his sister told a reporter between sobs. “We don’t know what to do. We’re just asking to let my brother go. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car.”
Retes was held for three days without being given an opportunity to make a call. His family only learned where he had been after his release. His leg had been cut from the broken glass, Retes told ProPublica, and lingering pepper spray burned his hands. He tried to soothe them by filling sandwich bags with water.
Retes recalled that agents knew he was a citizen. “They didn’t care.” He said one DHS official laughed at him, saying he shouldn’t have come to work that day. “They still sent me away to jail.” He added that cases like his show Kavanaugh was “wrong completely.”
DHS did not answer our questions about Retes. It did respond on X after Retes wrote an op-ed last month in the San Francisco Chronicle. An agency post asserted he was arrested for assault after he “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement.” Yet Retes had been released without any charges. Indeed, he says he was never told why he was arrested.
The Department of Justice has encouraged agents to arrest anyone interfering with immigration operations, twice ordering law enforcement to prioritize cases of those suspected of obstructing, interfering with or assaulting immigration officials.
But the government’s claims in those cases have often not been borne out.
Daniel Montenegro was filming a raid at a Van Nuys, California, Home Depot with other day-laborer advocates this summer when, he told ProPublica, he was tackled by several officers who injured his back.
Bovino, the Border Patrol chief who oversaw the LA raids and has since taken similar operations to cities like Sacramento and Chicago, tweeted out the names and photos of Montenegro and three others, accusing them of using homemade tire spikes to disable vehicles.
“I had no idea where that story came from,” Montenegro told ProPublica. “I didn’t find out until we were released. People were like, ‘We saw you on Twitter and the news and you guys are terrorists, you were planning to slash tires.’ I never saw those spike tire-popper things.”
Officials have not charged Montenegro or the others with any crimes. (Bovino did not respond to a request for comment, while DHS defended him in a statement to ProPublica: “Chief Bovino’s success in getting the worst of the worst out of the country speaks for itself.”)
The government’s cases are sometimes so muddied that it’s unclear why agents actually arrested a citizen.
Andrea Velez was charged with assaulting an officer after she was accidentally dropped off for work during a raid on street vendors in downtown Los Angeles. She said in a federal complaint that officers repeatedly assumed she did not speak English. Federal officers later requested access to her phone in an attempt to prove she was colluding with another citizen arrested that day, who was charged with assault. She was one of the Americans held for more than two days.
DHS did not respond to our questions about Velez, but it has previously accused her of assaulting an officer. A federal judge has dismissed the charges.
Other citizens also said officers accused them of crimes and suddenly questioned their citizenship — including a man arrested after filming Border Patrol agents break a truck window, and a pregnant woman who tried to stop officers from taking her boyfriend.
The prospects for any significant reckoning over agents’ conduct, even against citizens, are dim. The paths for suing federal agents are even more limited than they are for local police. And that’s if agents can even be identified. What’s more, the administration has gutted the office that investigates allegations of abuse by agents.
“The often-inadequate guardrails that we have for state and local government — even those guardrails are nonexistent when you’re talking about federal overreach,” said Joanna Schwartz, a professor at UCLA School of Law.
More than 50 members of Congress have also written to the administration, demanding details about Americans who’ve been detained. One is Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat. After trying to question Noem about detained citizens, federal agents grabbed Padilla, pulled him to the ground and handcuffed him. The department later defended the agents, saying they “acted appropriately.”
How ProPublica reported this:
Americans have reported a wide range of troubling encounters with immigration agents. To get a wider sense of agents’ conduct, we cataloged all incidents we could find of citizens being held against their will by immigration officers.
Critically, there is no way to know the complete scope of these stops since the government itself does not track them. But we were still able to fill in the picture a bit more.
We reviewed more than 170 cases overall, which we sorted into two categories.
The first is Americans who were held because agents questioned their citizenship. We found more than 50 such cases. The second category is Americans arrested by immigration agents after being accused of assaulting or impeding officers at protests or during immigration arrests of others. In that category, we tallied about 130 Americans, including more than a dozen elected officials. In many of these cases, the government never charged these individuals or the cases were dismissed.
We also tracked another nine citizens who reported being concerned about racial profiling after being extensively questioned by immigration officials. This includes a Mescalero Apache tribal member who was pulled out of a store and asked for his passport, and a California man who was previously deported by mistake and got another deportation order in the mail.
We did all this by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We compiled cases from the beginning of the current Trump administration through Oct. 5. Our accounting of arrests in Portland, Oregon, and Chicago is particularly limited, since the events there are still unfolding.
We did not review cases of Americans detained in airports or at the border, where even citizens are more likely to encounter increased questioning. We also did not review cases of Americans arrested at some point after alleged encounters with immigration agents since those involved a judicial process. We similarly excluded arrests of immigration protestors by local police who, unlike many of the federal agencies, booked protesters into a local jail where they could access the legal process and their families could find them.
Sherry says
Every “decent” American citizen should be outraged by this report! I must say I’m not the least bit surprised. When you arm the “Proud Boy Insurrectionist/Racists” types and give them almost unlimited government power, these kinds of horrific incidents were bound to happen!
I hope to see lawsuits flying furiously! Unfortunately, we taxpayers will be on the hook for those settlements though. Fascism at its best!
Deborah Coffey says
This isn’t the country I want. When we gain power again, let’s deport all these ICE agents to give them a taste of their own medicine; Somalia would be good. Deport Trump to Africa. Deport his entire cabinet to Venezuela.
Pig Farmer says
Antarctica would be better.
Steve says
Pre World War 2 Germany
Its coming soon says
This country is moving towards civil war. Many of us no longer have 1 thing in common with democrats and their desire to ruin our country. None of us know when it will start but its coming and many are ready.
Laurel says
Okay, proud boy. Lighten up.
Deborah Coffey says
Jeremiah 5:21 states, “Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not.”
R.S. says
ICE agents are frequently too young and inexperienced, a serious flaw in the recruitment patterns of the Trump administration. We should not exercise revenge against these immature and misguided youngsters. The person who should be jailed, deported, or seriously restrained is the ultimate head of the organization that is inflicting this rape on the public. Vd. the pooping plane video.
Maria says
They are here illegally. You think they get better treatment in their countries? Afraid not that’s why they came here. If you harbor illegals your door will get blown off. I for one am glad they are getting them out of here. The media loves to blow things out of proportion. Go ice agents!
Laurel says
Maria: You missed the whole article, didn’t you?
A republic if you can keep it says
Maria, you are an embarrassment to this country, state, county and city. Your name doesn’t sound American native Indian so I’m guessing you have arrived in the last 50 years? The people you are accusing, cut grass, fix roofs and work in construction. They clean hotel rooms, work in agriculture. When the already high prices continue to increase due to the lack of people doing these “jobs” you will blame the democrats or make up some crap to excuse the racist in the White House. People in other countries are denied freedom, tortured , raped, all used to maintain dictators in power. Afghanis who supported American troops are in danger of losing their lives and have asked for an opportunity to come to the US. Current administration is only allowing 7,500 people in total from all the countries in the world to obtain entry to the USA. Most will come from South Africa (as long as the color of their skin is light .) this is what you support. Most people that are detained don’t have light skin and are innocent of any crime.
A Republic if you can keep it says
María , as sure as there is a God in heaven the poison that lives inside of the false idol in the White House will sicken him and those around him. There is so much evil in this man, yet people who call themselves Christian’s blindly follow him. Unfortunately he expreses racist feelings along with the need to blame others for our problems that many supporters are too cowardly to express out loud . He will disappear as all men do, but his stain will remain on this country.
Joe D says
Unbelievable! If I didn’t KNOW this article was describing law enforcement and government officials in the US, I would SWEAR the story was based on a dictatorship in South America or in the old Eastern European Communist Bloc!
I am ASHAMED to admit I’m an American, and have to accept that this situation is currently happening in the SUPPOSED “freest” country in the WORLD…OMG!
The dude says
If and when the orange sh!t stain leaves office, he will issue blanket pardons to all ICE thugs.
Bet on it.
Kennan says
Well done Sherry and Deborah!
I have very little to add, other than to add that I would suggest people check out news outlets like: Democracy Now! Real news in real time, unfiltered with many video clips to drive points home. Often times heartbreaking, but necessary and real in a news world, that quite frankly tends to be more about ratings.
I’m probably wasting my time, but I challenge some of you MAGA….TS out there to take the cotton out of your ears, open your eyes and see what’s happening to your country. Your country and my country. A country that was built on the backs of immigrants like my parents and so many that came before us.
When fascists like Christy Noem and Tom Holman fabricate lies saying 70% being violent criminals as they arrest thousands of American citizens? 82% are not criminals at all! All the while the refuse to present one thread of evidence to back their BULLSHIT claims. No due process!! Arresting people as they show up to court dates as required to do the right thing?
Every one of these motherfuckers from Homeland security and the DOJ should be arrested for dereliction of duty, As well as wiping their asses with the Constitution. law and order? The only violent and unruly people in this scenario is ICE itself. first they fearmonger and come after brown people, then they come after people that don’t agree with this administration. This is how it works people. WAKE THE FUCK UP.
Doug says
At Keenan – I have loved America for 62 years and support everything ICE is doing to deport illegals who leech off of my tax dollars. If people like you stopped showing up at the ICE scenes and protesting, this wouldn’t be an article worth reading. But, my ears have never been clearer, and I certainly can hear and read through your BS along with many others who suffer from the same political medical condition. They are certainly not natives to this area (we locals call them ‘Yanks’). So, in a roundabout way, based upon your comment, you would probably be ok with NYC electing a Socialist Mayor. As you say, “This is how it works, people”. Then you’ll slowly see America become a third-world country like Venezuela and Cuba. Why do people risk everything and flee Socialism to a free country, like America? Why, because it’s beyond proven Socialism doesn’t work. Trump is doing what a majority of the American people voted for, whether you and people like you like it or not. It’s time to take control of your life, move out of your parents’ house, get a job, and a life. Your TDS will slowly subside, and you’ll stop being so credulously obsessed with everything you read from a small, liberal, online news source. That’s how it works, Keenan, but then again, if the shoe fits.
Laurel says
Doug: The Cuban Americans in Miami, who got here in makeshift boats, as you would state “illegally,” would be interested in your viewpoint. Their requirement was simply to make it to shore. Those who were intersepted in the water were often turned back. Those who made it to shore are now thriving business people.
By the way, Cuba isn’t socialist, it’s communist. It’s hard for me to accept what you say when you don’t know the difference. Study harder.
Kennan says
Most Third World countries are run by authoritarians or dictators. That is what you’re seeing now. I appreciate your passion, Douglas, but facts or facts. Obviously I’ve triggered a nerve. None of this is political, my misguided friend. I don’t judge anyone for voting in the last election, but I didn’t because I couldn’t risk my integrity for voting for Kamala Harris Because she would not separate herself from the support of the genocide being inflicted on civilians in Gaza.
The Middle East is an area that I have some experience and expertise in. I knew things would be worse with Trump, but I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either of these 21st-century Holocaust supporters. Hamas and Palestinians are two different things, just like Jews and Zionists. Remember that dog there may be a quiz later.
Move out of my parents basement Douglas? Really? Gonna be 60 this year Dougie. Homeowner too.
As for Zorhan Mamdani and socialism…. You managed to spell it right, but there are many degrees of socialism that work just fine. Capitalism doesn’t work the way we do it unless you’re in the top 10% financially. 60% of this country is living paycheck to paycheck. Richest country in the world, huh?
You seem like the guy that swung at every pitch in baseball. Is that right Dougie? Is that what you do?
Finally, there are many good news organizations that actually employ journalists. They are news for the sake of news without the political ideology. Stop absorbing the propaganda delivery system being pushed by Fox News and so many others. You’re feeding into it Dougie. I don’t want the president and Fox News throwing red meat at you so you can be a useful idiot for them. I don’t want this for you, Dougie!!!! I really don’t! Stop thinking like a Crip or a Blood. This is our country. Being an American, but thank for yourself.
I don’t wanna be a good American. I wanna be a good human being.
Tata Dougie.
Sherry says
A HUGE “Thank You” Kennan! This is a truly excellent comment!
Kennan says
Oh, one more thing, Dougie:
Dipshit Pete Hegseth has blown 14 Venezuelan boats out of Caribbean waters, and killed 64 people. Nobody from this administration has even tried to present any evidence that points to those boats bringing in drugs at all. You know why? Because fentanyl doesn’t come in from Venezuela. The administration knows this. They are so desperate for wins that they are willing to kill people to get it. Venezuela, whether you like them or not has shown remarkable restraint in the face of the threats that Trump has been making. Threats that will be met by other South American countries, whether it be in the form of freezing them out economically or something else. Donald Trump is the biggest threat to world peace since World War II. If he doesn’t start a war, some other idiot from somewhere else that believes his rhetoric will start a war. Bravo. Nothing more American than getting everybody killed.
HayRide says
Fishing boats aren’t speedboats; what more satellite evidence do you need?
John Stove says
The Republican party of “Law and Order” has become the party of liars and bull shi**ers…..they cant be bothered by following due process and get warrants and doing a legal background check BEFORE they detain or arrest someone.
Their orange faced imbecile of a convicted felon pedophile leader has determined that there is a quota of arrests needed and if you sweep up an American citizen they just say “oh sorry”.
The Republicans who voted Trumpo into office, who support him and all his enablers will be taught around the world for years to come as the most corrupt, inept and just plain moronic cult in the history of the USA.
HayRude says
Scare tactics much, and “Kristi Noem watched”, are you serious, try reporting with more accuracy next time
Atwp says
Am sure most if not all ice agents are white males. This is another way to impower white men to arrest and hurt people. Innocent Americans being arrested and hurt but the capital rioters are set free. Most of them were white males. The common denominator is Trump. Where he goes chaos and destruction follows.
HayRide says
Why does every post you make demonstrate how much you hate white people each time? Don’t you have anything good to say ever?
Pierre Tristam says
In all fairness it’s not as if white people haven’t been doing this to Black people on these shores since, um, let’s say 1619. I was going to say that it’s improved with time, but when the supremacist in the White House so eagerly restores Confederate statutes, orders Black history whitewashed and makes his cabinet a near-mirror image of Woodrow Wilson’s (in skin tones only, not policy), I’m not so sure. Not to mention our own white tongues telling a Black man what he ought and ought not say: that’s a rather distasteful 400-year-old habit too.
R.S. says
And, Pierre, don’t forget that many Blacks in ruling positions have been ousted, and most of the cities under ICE attack have black or minority mayors. It adds up!!!
Atwp says
A lot of Latinos are being targeted and arrested, a lot of them voted for Trump. My question is do ice ever arrest white folks? Latinos had the right to vote for Trump, what can I say.
Skibum says
The wanna-be dictator and his corrupt sycophants don’t care how many American citizens they abuse in their unconstitutional purge of anyone who’s skin is darker than theirs. Make no mistake… this IS the 2025 version of Nazi stormtroopers kidnapping families including children and the elderly, locking them up without legal due process, vanishing them to places unknown where they hope the people will neve be seen or heard from again.
Even outside of the jurisdiction of the U.S., in international waters and within the sovereign territory of other nations, drumph has ordered our military to fire on boats carrying people from a distance without ever verifying who they are, what cargo, if any, the boats may be carrying, where they came from or where they are going, and no effort is made to even look for survivors after the fatal attacks which are in violation of our nation’s laws, Congress’ authority to declare war on another country, and most importantly, international law.
This administration thinks those in power have the authority to kill people at will, lock up political opponents, illegally kidnap and hold U.S. citizens without any due process rights that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and they dare our federal judges and courts to try to stop them, making ridiculous assertions that court orders from “woke” or democrat appointed judges can be ignored and laughed at.
Don’t people realize and understand the gravity of what is happening right here in America? Do the maga mush brains think that just because they are not the ones being targeted today in now way guarantees that they will not themselves be in the crosshairs of corrupt politicians tomorrow, next week or in the near future? There were more than 7 million “no kings” protesters marching and demonstrating all across America just a couple of weeks ago, the LARGEST national protest movement in American history, simply because more and more Americans are standing up against authoritarianism and injustice, and standing strong for democracy!
The convicted felon in the WH should be in prison where he belongs! Those who are kidnapping American citizens off of our streets and from their homes need to be held accountable for their illegal actions at the behest of this corrupt, criminal enterprise they call the current federal administration! It is looking more and more likely that it may well be up to the American people to stop them before our democracy and our Constitution are tramples into the ground and relegated to the dustbin of history.
Independant voter says
Every American whether Republican or Democrat should be outraged that Trump is sabotaging our government, stealing the taxpayers blind.
He said from day one if he was re-elected he would be a dictator and he has kept his promise.
He has turned the Proud Boys into his personal army of revenge against anyone he instructs them to do legal or illegal doesn’t matter.
Our Supreme Court is allowing this to happen to our country for which they took and Oath of Office to protect. They are allowing Trump to seek revenge on anyone that isn’t kissing his ring.
Congress is being led around like idiots, and no one has any respect for the Republicans for not standing up for our country and our democracy. Stop being intimidated and do the job you took and office to do.
Michael J Cocchiola says
Trump’s ICEstopo in action.
This is not America. We’ve given it up to a lying, thieving, murderous sexual pervert. He has polluted the well of American democracy. Now he’s holed up in his private Versailles on the Potomac (close enough!) and rules through hate, fear and violence.
Are you delusional enough to think he’ll ever leave his throne willingly? Think again.
HayRide says
He will not step down willingly; you watch
Bob says
What I heard they also tackled them. Then they hog tied them. Tied them to a post and whipped them
Kennan says
Yeah, the swamp was drained, all right!
They simply put everything they found in the bottom of the swamp in the White House and in the cabinet.
THIS IS WHAT YOU GET.
Ray W. says
In the context of a false arrest of an innocent person, this has to be the quote of the month.
“[T]here was a full investigation, a signed warrant, one arrest, two strip searches at two different jails, multiple days in custody and a bond hearing, and no one bothered to notice that a 49-year-old Black grandmother from Georgia who’d never been in trouble with the law before wasn’t the same woman as a 43-year-old white suspect from Kentucky”, said Harry M. Daniels, attorney for Nickie Sledge.
According to a story, as reported by the Atlanta Black Star News, Cherokee County, Georgia, Sheriff’s deputies had collected, among other evidence, “video and still” evidence that a Kentucky-based white married couple were believed to have used a cancer-stricken and bedridden grandfather’s credit cards to purchase $3500 worth of goods from Walmart while they were in Georgia.
After their Walmart purchases, deputies believed from the “video and still” evidence that the husband and wife had left Georgia because the couple had last been seen near a Kentucky motel just off I-75.
Given the information collected by the deputies, a Cherokee County, Georgia, judge issued an arrest warrant for one “Nikki” Sledge, the 43-year-old white wife, on charges of “two counts of abuse, neglect or exploitation of disabled or elderly.”
After issuance of the warrant, on December 24, 2024, Nickie (not “Nikki”) Sledge decided to take her five-year-old grandson to a movie theater in Conyers, Georgia. While in the theater, she received a fabricated text from a Rockdale County, Georgia, deputy informing her that her car had been struck in the parking lot. Lured by the fabricated text, she walked out of the movie with her grandson. When told of the charges, she told the deputies that she believed she was being “punked.” A female deputy told her, “No ma’am, you’re not being punked.”
For the past 20 years, Nickie Sledge has owned and operated an HR consultancy business. She lived in Lithonia, Georgia. She never lived in Kentucky. She had never been arrested. The only times she had been inside a jail was when she visited her county jail to offer Bible studies to inmates.
Once arrested, Nickie Sledge was taken to the Rockdale County jail, where she was strip searched and booked. As the warrant had been issued from Cherokee County, at 2:00 a.m., she was transferred to the Cherokee County jail, where she was strip searched and booked again.
After three days in jail, Nickie Sledge obtained a copy of her case report; she showed it to a corrections officer that the warrant had been issued for the arrest of a white woman. The officer took the case report to a supervisor, but the wrongfully arrested woman couldn’t be released until a judge could be found.
According to the attorney, once a judge was found, the judge said: “It says on here ‘family violence.’ Well, I can clearly see she ain’t related.”
State prosecutors dropped the charges against Nickie Sledge in February 2025.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
In Volusia Count, Circuit Court judges, like prosecutors and public defenders, rotate to take weekend first appearance duties. County Court judges handle weekday first appearance duties.
One Sunday morning, I arrived at the county jail before 7:00 a.m. to cover first appearances. Circuit Court Judge Briese was already on the bench. At 8:30 a.m., give or take, he started with the inmates. I don’t remember how many inmates were set on the morning docket, but it might have been 60 or 70.
If there was any constant in Judge Briese’s professional life it was that he was thorough, which, among other things, meant that he listened to any and all arguments before he decided to do whatever the law required of him.
One of the inmates, arrested on an outstanding Maryland warrant for failing to pay child support, told Judge Briese that he, the inmate, had appeared before a Maryland judge the previous week, at which hearing the Maryland judge had set a “purge” amount.
It was obvious to all that if the inmate had been in a Maryland jail the week before when the judge had set a “purge” amount on his child support, that meant that the outstanding Maryland warrant had to already have been served on the inmate. That also meant that the only way the inmate could have been released from Maryland custody was by paying the “purge” amount. If these things were true, there was no lawful reason to hold him in Florida, regardless of what was on the Maryland warrant that was still claimed to be active.
Judge Briese told the corrections officers to hold the inmate.
Once everyone else’s cases had been addressed, Judge Briese set out to find whether the man should be held in Florida on the Maryland warrant.
At some point in time from about 11:30 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m., Judge Briese commented to no one and to everyone that no one should ever be held in custody one minute longer than the law required.
At that time, about 30 years ago, very few people had cell phones. It took hours for Judge Briese to track down a Maryland clerk to find out whether the case had been handled the week before and then to track down the Maryland judge who had handled the case. He was on a golf course.
When Judge Briese finally got to speak with the Maryland judge, the Maryland judge remembered the case and told him that he had, indeed, set a “purge” amount for a man by that name about a week ago and that the man had been in custody at the time he set the “purge” amount. The only way the man could be out of custody was if he had paid the “purge” amount, as ordered by that judge.
Judge Briese ordered that the inmate be immediately released.
Years later on a Friday morning, a different circuit court judge ordered the release of a client. After four p.m. that day, a family member called to tell me that the jail was refusing to release my client. I called Booking. They confirmed what I had been told.
I drove to the courthouse in hopes that the judge was still there. As I ran up the stairs to the second floor of the Justice Center, I spotted Judge Briese standing near the top of the stairway. He asked why I was running so fast. I told him I needed to catch the judge before he left. Judge Briese said the judge had already left for the weekend. He asked me to tell him what happened. I told him that the jail was misreading the judge’s order of release and was insisting on holding the man in jail.
Judge Briese immediately had a clerk bring him the file. He read that morning’s order and called Booking. He orally ordered that the inmate be immediately released.
This time, too, as I recall, he said no one should be in jail one minute longer than ordered.
Our nation was founded on the concept of liberty. No accused person should ever be in custody one minute longer than required by law, particularly no 49-year-old Black woman who in no way could be confused with a 43-year-old white woman with a different first name.
This begs the question: Just how thorough were those many deputies and jail employees when they detained, arrested, strip searched, booked, and then held a local Black woman, and then strip searched and booked her a second time, when the warrant clearly reflected that the issuing judge had ordered the arrest of a white woman who lived in another state?
I have commented on this many times. There is a particularly virulent form of circular reasoning that permeates state attorney offices, but it apples to law enforcement, too. It goes like this:
Prosecutors are good guys.
Good guys don’t make mistakes.
I am a prosecutor.
Therefore, I don’t make mistakes.
Can it be argued that this type of circular reasoning was at work throughout the Black woman’s arrest and detention, only in reverse?
Suspects are bad guys.
Bad guys make mistakes.
You are a suspect.
Therefore, you make mistakes.
No one can argue that the Black woman was the person described in the warrant. She told the deputies that something had to be wrong. They wouldn’t listen. No one would listen until she persuaded them to listen. End of story.
Laurel says
So my Republican friends, most of you say your are of the Christian faith. So I ask you, what would Jesus say about arresting and kicking out immigrants? Please educate me with his words.
Thank you.
Whiplash says
Why do we have so many people on this site who refuse to give the President any credit for all the good he has done! He ended eight wars, gave us a great economy and stock market, is ending the illegal drug trade and saving America lives from fentanyl, reducing the price of lifesaving drugs, getting our cities safe again, deporting over 2,000,000 illegals, etc, etc, etc! Now he is working on stopping the killing of Christians in Africa by Radical Muslims!
I would be remiss if I did not say that, no American should ever be arrested without probable cause and certainly not because of the color of their skin! That being said those wrongly accused and arrested have recourse throughout the courts, unlike other countries where there is none!
One person wrongly arrested is not acceptable and those doing so must do better! I for one find that 170 mistakes out of the need to rid the country of almost one million (1,000,00) illegal violent criminals , among them murders, rapists, pediphiles, is a small price to pay for the safety of all Americans!
Needless to say Trump is not perfect and can be totally obnoxious but who among us are perfect! He should be criticized when he is wrong but certainly deserves much credit for all the good work he’s done and I hope he will continue to do!
Palm Coast Citizen says
It is healthy to recognize when a president or administration has made positive strides, and it is just as healthy to discuss where things fall short. Public discussion often focuses on problems not because people ignore the good, but because what is not working is what most needs attention. That is how accountability functions in a democracy.
Some of the claims mentioned are more complex than they sound. For example, the United States was not engaged in eight separate wars to “end,” although troop reductions did occur. The economy and stock market were strong during much of Trump’s term, but those trends began years earlier. Fentanyl deaths continued to rise during that time, and overall deportations were actually lower than under President Obama’s first term.
Every administration has achievements, but it is not unfair or disloyal to scrutinize the rest. Civic responsibility includes asking difficult questions, fact-checking claims, and recognizing nuance rather than repeating talking points, no matter who is in office. Criticism is not the opposite of respect; it is one of the ways a free people keep power honest.
Kennan says
Whiplash huh?
APPROPRIATE.
Laurel says
Wow, have I got a ballroom for you!
You had better vote for who Trump wants or he will retaliate.
Had to believe so many Americans are so niave! How did we get here?
Kennan says
No whiplash! Not what Trump has done for the country. More importantly.: WHAT TRUMP HAS DONE TO THE COUNTRY.
I think you know this already, but you like many others are afraid to venture outside your gang affiliation. The more people start understanding what’s good for their country and vote their own interests, the more they will learn to very important things: you will either be an American or a racist.
That’s quite frankly how simple it is. Things don’t get this simple that often. FOCUS
Kola says
FACTS DON’T LIE!!!
ICE reveals stunning statistic after exposing Halloween weekend’s ‘worst of the worst’ arrests
Homeland Security highlighted that 70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the US.
Kennan says
Yeah, you’re getting talking points and so called facts from the very organization committing most of the crimes. Can you say conflict of interest? Every other reputable report says different. Embarrassing. We are no longer a serious country. The very people who support what they know is dishonest and wrong, will eventually be staring down the barrel of the most dishonest, dangerous and transactional administration in American history. The waste they talk about is all the money they will take away from children, minorities, old people, and yeah…..YOU. Where do you think that money goes?
Just a few hours after after SNAP was taken away from struggling Americans, Trump has a GREAT GATSBY themed ball at Mara Lago.
Never ceases to amaze me how LOW Trump can go. Trump hates this country and its people. America is Trump INC nothing more.
Ray W. says
It is true that on October 20, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency overseeing ICE operations, issued a press release in which it was claimed:
“70 percent of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens convicted or charged with a crime in the U.S.”
It is also true that he Cato Institute, hardly a liberal think tank, has long had a department devoted to studying immigration issues.
On June 20, 2025, David Bier, the director of Immigration Studies for the Cato Institute, issued a study based on documents obtained from ICE that otherwise had not been publicly released.
During the 2025 fiscal year, which started on October 1, 2024, based on records from the detention of 204,297 individuals, 133,687 of those detained, or 65%, had no criminal convictions. Another 28%, bringing the total to 93% of those detained had not been convicted of any violent crime, meaning 7% of those over 200,000 detained immigrants had been convicted of a violent crime. In other words, of those 35% of the immigrants detained by the government through the first eight months of the fiscal year who had any type of criminal conviction, 20% of that 35% had a violent criminal history.
According to the study, 53% of the convictions amassed by those 35% of the detained immigrants fell into “three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.”
As an aside, as I read the Cato Institute press release, I was reminded of a quote that has long been attributed to Churchill without corroboration: “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Gambling is considered a vice, as is prostitution, possession of a controlled substance, alcohol offenses including public drunkenness and DUI. Vice has a broad definition, but much of that definition can be considered acts that are immoral enough to be called criminal. Lie laundering can be considered a vice, but no legislature has made it a crime.
This from the end of the Cato Institute press release:
“ICE’s deportation agenda is not what is being advertised to the American public. Congress should mandate more transparent reporting from ICE and require that it target only those who pose genuine threats to public safety.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Each FlaglerLive reader can decide on their own whether a 35% criminal conviction figure gleaned by a conservative think tank study of ICE records collected from the detention of over 200,000 immigrants, records that had never been released to the public by ICE, can suddenly turn into a 70% criminal detention figure four months later.
I am not saying that it can’t happen, but the likelihood of that happening is statistically highly unlikely.
Kola’s comment is important because it shows that he or she accepted at face value a statistic that was claimed by Homeland Security.
It should be obvious to the entire FlaglerLive community by now that no one should ever take at face value anything said by any member of the professional lying class that sits atop one of our two political parties. I am not saying the professional liars cannot tell the truth from time to time.
Immigrants are not a drain on the American economy. Some are, but study after study establishes that the vast majority of our immigrant population positively contributes to our economy. Haitian immigrants were not eating dogs and cats. President Trump did not inherit the worst economy in the world (it was the envy of the world at the time of his inauguration, according to the Wall Street Journal and The Economist). Inflation is not going down. Electricity prices are not going down. Grocery prices are not going down. No one can buy gasoline at the pump for under $2.00 per gallon, unless some program is going on, such as a recent Buc-ees promotion that gave a dollar off each gallon of gas up to 20 gallons after a motorist purchased a car wash that costs at least $16. Tariffs are not being completely paid by exporting countries. Coal is not coming back. American energy extractors are not drilling, baby, drilling, though they are still drilling at a slightly dropping rate. The list goes on and on.
Laurel says
Ray W.: Thank you for the facts.
What is stunning to me is, how many people actually accept whatever is thrown at them, just so they can feel “right.” That be accepted by a tribe is far more important than thinking for oneself, and possibly realizing a different answer.
No matter how many times I ask “What would Jesus do” I get no answer. That is more than just being naive.
Sherry says
@ kola. . . not to confuse you with actual facts. . . this “credible data” from the CATO Institute indicates that 65% of those ICE has arrested during the trump administration had NO criminal record. Of those booked with “criminal records”, 93% were NOT violent crimes :
New nonpublic data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind. Also, among those with criminal convictions, they are overwhelmingly not the violent offenses that ICE continuously uses to justify its deportation agenda. ICE has shared this data with people outside the agency, who shared the numbers with the Cato Institute.
As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. Most convictions (53 percent) fell into three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes. The appendix table at the end of this post has data by detailed crime and broad crime categorization.
Ray W. says
Hello Sherry.
Let us not forget that a different Cato Institute study of ICE detention figures, released on October 30, 2024, titled “Trump’s Immigration Policies Made America Less Safe. Here’s the Data”, revealed that during the first Trump administration, ICE released into the American countryside 306 immigrants with murder convictions, among the more than 8,000 violent convicted criminals who were released. More than 58,000 immigrants with any type of criminal conviction were released during those first four years.
The subheading to the study was: “Trump released more criminals into the United States than Biden”
Why did the Trump administration release so many criminally convicted immigrants from detention facilities?
According to the study, President Obama had issued an executive order for immigration officials to primarily focus on deporting the most serious criminal immigrants in detention. On President Trump’s first day of his first administration, he signed an executive order revoking President Obama’s order. In its place came an executive order for immigration officials to primarily focus on deporting asylum seekers, not immigrants convicted of serious crimes.
Here is how that Cato Institute study opens:
“Listen to just about any of former president Donald Trump’s rallies, and you’ll hear claims that President Joe Biden’s border policies have made the country less safe. At a recent town hall, Trump said Biden is releasing murderers, ‘drug dealers, drug addicts, everybody’ into the country.
“But new data reveal that Trump was the one whose immigration policies damaged the country’s security. In fact, he released more convicted criminals into the United States than his predecessor.
“This is not to lend credence to Trump’s efforts to demonize immigrants as dangerous or violent. Data from the Census Bureau shows that immigrants — both legal and illegal — are at least half as likely as U.S. citizens to be incarcerated for crimes committed in the United States. (This is why deporting everyone her illegally would increase crime rates.)”
Make of this what you will.
Sherry says
Dear Ray W.,
Thanks so very much for the additional disturbing and much needed context on this important subject!
Consequences are too often “unseen” for those who act out of “insecure vengeance”.
This is a great example of how trump’s foundational lack of self esteem and character has very far reaching impact on policy and practice in our federal government. IMO. . . The man is “unfit” for office in countless ways, and it all begins with his very personal deeply disturbing psychological dysfunction!
His niece’s book “TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH- How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man”, by Mary Trump, should be a critical warning to us all!
Skibum says
Kola, real facts don’t lie. But anything disseminated from this corrupt administration’s masked, many times unidentified thugs is extremely suspicious. ICE wants to give the American public facts? Fine… remove ALL of the unnecessary masks from officers, order each and every one of them to start being professional, ethical, truthful law enforcement officers, hold all of them accountable for adhering to long established department policies and both state and federal laws… and then just maybe the American public will begin to regain some confidence that what we are being told is truthful information.
I see what ICE and other federal officers are doing out in our nation’s communities, and I am disgusted! And I’m a retired, 29-year career law enforcement officer who has never seen this extent of contemptable, unprofessional and sometimes totally unconstitutional behavior from those in law enforcement in my entire professional career!
ric Santo says
To Whiplash: Most of what you spew is Fox news Facts (eg. alternative truth or just lies). Ended 8 wars…funny most of these wars no Americans ever heard about or his involvement in them. I heard he resolved a scuffle between Don Jr. and Eric- thats #9!
Secondly: One arrested American citizen is too many let alone 170. Blackstone formula states “it is better for 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man to suffer”.
Lastly: Trump has a horrible approval rating (worst in modern history). As of today, 63% of American think he is NOT doing a good job.
I am glad that your rose colored glasses help you and your MAGots deal with this absolute failure of a president. Unfortunately, the other 63% of American have to deal with reality.
Laurel says
Again, I’ll ask, how would your savior, Jesus, respond to rounding up people and tossing them out of the country, often sending them to prisons in countries they have never been to?
Many of you claim to be Christians, and want the rest of us to be also, yet you explain nothing to me that backs your Christianity. My questions, consistently, go unanswered. Surely, this should be easy for y’all to answer. Go ahead, please.
R.S. says
In other words, 30% are innocent? Too many for my morality and I wonder about how much additional sloppiness is stuck in the remainder of these “facts” or are those “alternate facts”?
Dennis C Rathsam says
WOW!!!! You all need glasses! 77 million voted to clean out America! As ICE, AKA federal agents, are being attacked for doing the will of the American people. TRUMPS doing the job he was ELLECTED to do! Get over it already! Fools that attack ICE agents will get exactly what the get. A Good olde fashion ass beating! You liberal dmocrat fools have one plan,its the same plan that got TRUMP ELLECTED ! HATE, LIES, & DISINFORMATION! Who’s the leader of the Jackass party? SHHHHH its a secret! The more you all bash TRUMP the bigger he becomes. The more hate you give, the more the democratic party sinks into the abiss! Just look at this SCHUMER SHUT DOWN of our gov! Kids & Seniors need help, workers not getting payed, all because of illegal healthcare for non Americans! The GOP fights for transparency as the Jackass lie! The more the democrats complain the more we in the GOP, SMILE! TRUMPS DOING A GREAT JOB
Skibum says
Dennis, what an excellent faux pas you wrote in the very first sentence. “Clean out” America is what the convicted felon, sex abuser, pedophile protecting idiot in the WH is doing, starting with America’s wealth, which he and his billionaire buddies are conspiratorially grabbing for themselves while taking food out of the mouths of the poor, taking healthcare away from American families, and crapping all over our U.S. Constitution.
Sherry says
In the election MORE people actually voted AGAINSTSherr trump than voted for him! Maga, has your head exploded yet?
According to Ballotpedia: 77,897,589 voted against trump, and LESS people at 77,303,568 voted for him
LOL! LOL! LOL!