ICE Agents Are Terrorizing Los Angeles With Brutal Tactics

ICE agents have established a pattern of brutal use of force in immigration raids.

By Jonah Valdez, The Intercept

Since June 6, agents have embarked on a militarized rampage and terror campaign across the greater Los Angeles area.

Pursuing the Trump administration’s daily quota of 3,000 arrests, federal agents have ripped through predominantly Latino cities and neighborhoods. In “roving patrols,” as the government has described them in court filings, agents without warrants have abducted day laborers, street vendors, car wash workers, and others swept up in the government’s dragnet.

Despite the Trump administration’s pledge to target “violent criminals,” the vast majority of those detained do not have criminal records. That has not stopped the government from deploying violence against those in its path.

Throughout the first month of its focused operation in and around Los Angeles, federal agents regularly used force against unarmed individuals, many of them U.S. citizens.

The Intercept analyzed more than a dozen immigration operations since June 6 involving federal agents from a hodgepodge of agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Marshals Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. By reviewing footage and interviewing people who the authorities detained and those who witnessed raids, The Intercept identified several violent patterns.

Agents have aimed firearms and sprayed chemical irritants at onlookers and protesters. They have launched tear gas and flash bang grenades into crowds. They have beaten the people they detain, struck them with batons, and restrained them face down in a prone position, pressing them into the pavement and restricting their abilities to breathe.

Agents often deployed these violent tactics against the targets of immigration raids — people they presumed to be undocumented immigrants. In the majority of cases reviewed for this story, federal agents used force against U.S. citizens who were attempting to document raids or intervene by putting their bodies between the agents and their neighbors.