John,
ICE is out of control.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not, as promised, going after the “worst of the worst.” What we see instead is an agency targeting non-criminal immigrants as they seek work at Home Depot, arresting lawful green card and visa holders, and detaining U.S. citizens, with little or no regard for due process or even basic verification of citizenship status.
In Van Nuys, California, ICE agents even body-slammed a 79-year-old citizen and car wash owner to the ground and detained him for 12 hours with broken ribs, a dislocated elbow, and a head injury, without granting him any medical attention.
In citywide sweeps across the country, more than two-thirds of those arrested had no criminal record whatsoever. These operations are sold as public safety measures, yet the outcomes reveal something very different: a dragnet that prioritizes raw detention numbers over legality, accuracy, or actual threats.
This escalation did not happen in a vacuum. It followed a widely reported internal dressing-down from Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, who demanded that ICE dramatically increase arrest and detention totals, pushing agents to maximize volume regardless of due-process constraints. That directive has filtered down into enforcement practices that reward speed and quantity, not lawful outcomes -- creating predictable and dangerous abuses.
Send a direct message to Congress to demand they investigate ICE’s methods, recruitment, training, and disciplinary procedures, to stop the racial profiling and violent abuses of residents, U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike.
Across multiple states, ICE has arrested immigrants who appeared for scheduled court hearings because they were attempting to follow the lawful immigration process, or for other court cases. These courthouse arrests sabotage the justice system, punishing people for acting responsibly and showing up as required.
Meanwhile, over 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by masked ICE officers during raids or protests. About two dozen of them were held for over a day without being allowed to make a phone call to family or a lawyer, who did not know where they were. According to ProPublica, Americans have been kicked, dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and moved between holding facilities, while officers repeatedly refused to review valid proof of citizenship.
Instead of protecting civil rights, the U.S. Supreme Court has given a green light for ICE to use racial profiling in making arrests. Just the color of a person’s skin, having a Spanish accent, or working in a car wash, is enough to justify a stop. Speaking for the Trump-aligned majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh mistakenly wrote, “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”
Chicago illustrates the pattern clearly. A large, highly publicized raid on a civilian apartment building generated national headlines, yet official records later confirmed that not one of the 37 arrests announced that day resulted in criminal charges. In several neighborhoods, residents described aggressive tactics during routine stops and home visits, including intimidation and warrantless questioning -- signs of an agency under pressure to produce numbers at any cost.
When agents are ordered to prioritize quotas over due process, individual acts of brutality become systematized violations. Congress must intervene to determine how these directives were formed, by whom, and how they still shape ICE’s conduct today. Congress has the authority -- and the responsibility -- to subpoena internal records and hold public hearings to uncover and halt ICE’s unlawful practices.
Tell Congress to investigate ICE. It’s time to stop these abuses now.
Thank you for standing up against ICE’s repeated and continuous excessive use of force.
– DFA AF Team
