I heard someone online talking about ICE deporting at least 70 U.S. citizens and I was [slightly] shocked. So many mistakes have been made in terms of ICE arrests in this administration that the statistic just isn’t as shocking as it should be (as it would be if it happened under normal circumstances).
ICE arrests of U.S. citizens have been reported several times since the mass deportations kicked off with coffin-dweller and Nosferatu impersonator, Stephen Miller, leading the charge. Story after story has come out about U.S. citizens getting caught up in ICE raids. Recently, articles were about U.S. citizens who had been stuck sitting in ICE detention centers for weeks.
I wrote extensively about the Venezuelans who were sent to CECOT. I cried off and on for days after a Times photographer talked about the men he saw who he just knew didn’t belong there. He described one man crying for his mother as guards repeatedly slapped him.
It killed my empathic soul.
I later wrote about investigations by CBS/60 Minutes and ProPublica finding that 75% of the 238 men sent to CECOT had never committed a crime. ProPublica discovered DHS records proving that the Trump administration knew they were innocent before they were deported.
Innocent Men
A gay makeup artist fled persecution and stayed in another country while he applied for asylum (the LEGAL way). He was eventually granted asylum and he entered the country through a port of entry.
There’s the young man who taught children’s swimming lessons and adored his little brother with autism. He was deported for his “gang tattoo” of the Autism Awareness ribbon on his calf. (shown above)
Then there’s the son who worried his mother when he didn’t come home one day. It wasn’t until days later that she spotted him sitting on the floor of CECOT in photos shown on TV during a news anchor’s report on the recent deportations to El Salvador.
Those are just a few of over 140 non-criminals who were deported to CECOT. It pains me to remember that Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation included: “citizens 14 years or older..”
Because there haven’t been any reports about children who were now going to grow up in CECOT, I’m fairly certain they didn’t have any 14-year-old Venezuelans in custody to deport.
Mother whose son was arrested by ICE and sent to El Salvador without her knowledge and his sister at their home in Venezuela. credit: Texas Tribune
To make the deportations to El Salvador worse—in light of news about ICE arrests and deportations of U.S. citizens—without due process, we can’t even know for certain that no U.S. citizens were sent to CECOT.
ICE Arrests Turn Violent
There have been videos circulating online and played on cable news that show ICE agents beating and “roughing up” immigrants for no reason. After the fact, immigration officials have attempted to claim that they were assaulted first. However, videos from eyewitnesses and nearby businesses prove that isn’t the case.
The Trump administration and DHS have been deputizing local law enforcement to help them in their mass deportation efforts. My first thought when I saw Rümeysa Özturk’s abduction was, “If ICE Agents are wearing plain clothes and hiding their faces, what’s preventing psychos from putting on masks and kidnapping immigrants in broad daylight?”
She appeared to be scared when they first came up and surrounded her, as would anyone in her situation. I agree with the suggestion to call the police if you see someone being “arrested” by men without uniforms.
The suggestion is a good idea for safety reasons, but also to cause enough of a hassle for DHS that the department requires agents in the field to wear uniforms to avoid having to deal with police departments getting involved every time they make a public arrest in plain clothes.
Racism and Hate
Think about what type of person would volunteer to terrorize and arrest people who haven’t committed any crimes. In the same way that careers in law enforcement attract people who enjoy having authority and power over others, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers could be in their position for the wrong reasons.
I’m sure there are ICE Agents who do the job out of a desire to keep citizens of the U.S. safe and protected, but there are also people who are drawn to the job because of racism or a hatred of immigrants.
In one video, officers punch Narisco Barranco, a 48-year-old father of three Marines in the head repeatedly while several of them pin him to the ground. It was a display of the disdain and hatred some of these ICE officer feel towards immigrants. To say they would have treated him the same way if he were white just isn’t likely to be true.
After the officers beat and handcuffed the man, they were so rough shoving him into the back of their SUV that they dislocated his shoulder. His sons, who served or are currently serving in the U.S. Marines spoke of a feeling of betrayal that the country they fought for would treat their father this way.
They also said their father had been in custody for over 24 hours without food, water, or medical treatment for his injuries.
Barranco had been living and working in his Santa Ana community for over 30 years. This is how the Trump administration is thanking people who do the jobs Americans won’t do, and who pay taxes—including Medicare and Social Security, even though they will never have access to those programs.
At a time when there are concerns that the Social Security program could run out of money, how does it make sense to deport hard workers who are helping to fund it?
In 2022, undocumented workers paid $97 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. The ICE arrests and deportations of millions of workers are just another example of the ways in which this administration is costing the government more than they claimed to have saved.
Antifa HQ is not sharing any of the videos here, because they are disturbing and difficult to watch. Anyone interested in seeing the video can simply search for “Walmart parking lot ICE arrests” or something similar.
Who Are You? What Agency are You From?
We’ve heard people asking those questions repeatedly as masked men in plain clothes are dragging a loved one away. Most of the time the response is silence. Without a uniform or badge that identifies who they are or who they work for, they can’t expect people to comply and willingly go with them. Especially if they are refusing to identify themselves when asked directly, “Who are you?”
In situations like the one above, people should begin thinking of the men as rogue actors engaging in a kidnapping. The police should be called to the scene and, without endangering lives—particularly if guns are involved—resist ‘ICE’ arrests until local law enforcement arrives and the masked men are positively identified as immigration officers.
We must not allow them to hide their identity. Even if just to eliminate the sense of empowerment and lack of accountability that comes with being unidentified. It makes ICE arrests even more dangerous—by giving agents permission to behave in ways they would be too embarrassed/ashamed to behave if their faces weren’t hidden.
ICE leadership came out and spoke about the reason for the masks, suggesting it was to protect the agents and their families from Democratic voters radicalized by the inflammatory rhetoric coming from Democrats. Project much?
When President Trump attacks someone publicly, they begin receiving death threats immediately.
Judges received an unprecedented number of threats because of the President and Republicans’ constant attacks and demonization of judges for doing their job and upholding the law.
If Chuck Schumer or Bernie Sanders attacks someone publicly… nothing. That’s where the story ends.
Yes, there are people out there who will act out and engage in political violence on both sides of the political spectrum, but far-right extremism is much more common.
On the Right there are Neo-Nazi marches, White Nationalist rallies, multiple mass shootings carried out because of the rhetoric about immigrants “invading” and “destroying” the country, racism, the Great Replacement Theory, Kyle Rittenhouse, the man who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, the recent assassinations and attempts in Minnesota, the man who set Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s house on fire as the family slept, January 6th, and the list goes on and on.
There haven’t been any recent examples of Left-wing extremism over ideological differences that I can think off. (My brain is pretty much mush after everything that’s happened since January 20, 2025, so if I’m missing something, please let me know so I can update this article right away.)
There are immigration officials that look more like soldiers covering their faces and walking around city streets with long guns. They are abusing people and behaving like the KKK—seemingly enjoying their ability to violently assault innocent people for the crime of “not being white.”
I’ve seen the expressions of sheer terror on faces of migrants as they are grabbed and dragged away by men wearing jeans, flannel shirts and black fabric masks that make them appear faceless.
Ironically, when a US citizen mother and 2 daughters had their door busted down and house raided by 20 federal agents in Oklahoma, they were wearing badges or uniforms that identified which agency they represented.
The mother reported seeing agents from the FBI, the US Marshals Service, and ICE. They destroyed the house, took all of the electronic devices and thousands in cash she had to live on until they were settled into the new home.
The local news station covering the Oklahoma raid contacted all of the agencies with a request for comment. They responded claiming no involvement. The FBI later changed it’s story from “not involved” to “being involved in the planning, but there weren’t any agents on the scene during the raid.”
The Oklahoma mom and daughters are in a situation where they are U.S. citizens and their home was unlawfully raided. Not only that, but after learning they were citizens, federal officials still proceeded to tear through the house and take their electronics and cash. It’s complicated, but how is she supposed to get her things back without knowing which agency took them in the first place! Read about the details of this incident.
Without uniforms or badges—and many of the agents refusing to identify the agency they’re with when asked—how are we supposed to know if someone is being abducted by white supremacist psychos who will murder them or if they’re being detained by actual federal law enforcement agents?
Masks are “Government Tyranny and Control”
They refused to wear masks that covered their nose and mouth, now ICE officers who protested masks during a deadly pandemic are wearing masks that cover their entire face.
Irony and hypocrisy are dead.
During the Pandemic, we were forced to deal with people acting as though their liberty, freedom and rights were being violated by CDC safety recommendations.
Protests were everywhere. What they saw as a fascist dictator ripping up the Constitution, was a federal health agency—tasked with protecting the health of American citizens—recommending extremely common-sense efforts to prevent people with the virus from getting their spittle or snot on grandma and killing her.
The same people who were ready to go to war over being asked to please cover their face holes when coughing/sneezing to prevent the virus from spreading and killing a million Americans, including healthy adults and children, now willingly wear masks covering their entire face. Neo-Nazis often do the same.
Third Country Deportations
The Trump administration now has plans to deport people to countries they’ve never been to before. In a case where a deportee’s country of origin refuses to take people back, they plan to ship them off to a country like South Sudan.
In choosing a country like South Sudan, it’s obviously done to be cruel and to punish those being deported. It appears that Trump has made deals with some of the countries on their “list”. Panama, for example, agreed to accept people in the hopes that the President won’t use military force to take back control.
Other countries agreed to avoid losing financial assistance from the U.S.
Cruelty is obviously the point when you take someone with no money, no belongings, and drop them into a country they know nothing about, have no friends or family they can call for help, have no money, nowhere to live, and don’t speak the language. Add to that the country is in the middle of a civil war and it’s hard to imagine a way to be more cruel to an innocent person—particularly someone like Narisco Barranco, who has been living and raising a family in the United States for 30 years.
When you combine the reality of these third-country deportations with recent reporting about ICE arrests and deportations of U.S. citizens—that’s nightmare fuel.
I wrote about a woman named Ma Yang, who was brought into the U.S. by her parents as a baby from Thailand. She had citizenship status that had been unknowingly revoked after she plead guilty to marijuana charges after her attorney assured her that a guilty plea wouldn’t affect her status.
After serving her time in jail, she was released and taken into ICE custody. She and her attorney signed a form agreeing to a deportation order to Laos in exchange for the ability to leave the detention center. Her attorney wasn’t concerned, he said, because people who’ve lived in the country since they were a baby rarely, if ever, get deported, and there hadn’t been any deportations to Laos in a long time.
Even though Ma Yang had lived and worked in her community for decades, had 5 children with her partner of 16 years, who she cared after a traumatic brain injury, the Trump Administration deported her to Laos.
Upon arrival in Laos, she was handed over to the military. From there she was taken to a boarding house where she was still staying at the time of the news report about her case. When Yang was interviewed by a local news outlet, she said she was still staying at the boarding house because she was too afraid to leave.
She knew no one, didn’t speak the language, had no money, and ICE hadn’t returned her documents, so she had no ID.
She was worried about how she would get a job in order to get a place to live in her current situation. She also missed her partner, who was now learning how to parents their 5 children alone.
Read more about the Ma Yang.
Read more immigration news on our new Immigration Topic Hub.
