Bring Me The News
“I’m literally a U.S. citizen. I’m literally a U.S. citizen.”
An employee at Target is detained in January 2026 in Richfield, Minnesota.
Video credit: Bring Me The News
Experts have long warned that immigration dragnets and the erosion of civil rights for immigrants will inevitably result in the erosion of rights for citizens.
Miami Herald
“I’m a U.S. citizen, please help me.”
A woman is detained for the third time in Key Largo, Florida, while driving a car registered to her partner, an immigrant.
Video credit: Miami Herald
Since the start of this Trump administration, we’ve watched those warnings come true.
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The Trump administration says none of this is happening.
“DHS is NOT arresting U.S. citizens by mistake.” “There are no ‘indiscriminate’ stops.” Allegations of “racial profiling are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.” “The pattern is NOT of law enforcement using force.” “ICE does not zip tie or restrain children.”
But that is precisely what is happening, and at a far larger scale than previously reported.
We know because we have once again done what the government hasn’t:
We have tallied and cataloged every case we can find of an immigration agent holding a citizen during the current administration.
More than 500 cases. That includes:
More than a hundred Americans held after agents questioned their citizenship. Nearly all were people of color.
At least 70 American children and teens detained, some of whom were handcuffed.
Of the more than 300 Americans we tracked as detained for allegedly assaulting or obstructing agents, we found fewer than half were actually charged in federal court, and many of those cases were dropped or dismissed.
At least 63 Americans detained while recording.
36 Americans held for at least a day without being able to contact a lawyer or their family.
Roughly a dozen citizens deported, mostly children.
Collectively, these cases show that as the administration has relentlessly pursued immigrants, federal agents have run roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens too.
We’re showing you every case — the reality that the administration denies — along with the receipts.
Each box represents a detained citizen.
Jun 2025
A Southern California enforcement operation starts on June 6
Sep 2025
Operation Midway Blitz starts on Sept. 8 in Illinois
Dec 2025
Operation Metro Surge starts on Dec. 1 in the Minnesota
In January 2025, agents held a 21-year-old citizen at gunpoint and put him in handcuffs during a raid at the Philadelphia car wash where he worked.
In April, a 20-year-old was held in a Florida jail for more than 24 hours, despite having proof of his citizenship.
In June, a dual citizen of Mexico and the U.S. was detained while working in California. He was held for four days without access to a lawyer or his family.
During the enforcement surge in Chicago last fall, known as Operation Midway Blitz, there were “no administrative arrests of U.S. citizens,” according to the Department of Homeland Security. “ICE has significant protections in place to ensure U.S. citizens are not arrested, detained, or mistakenly removed.” But we found that federal agents detained more than 120 citizens in Illinois during the height of the surge.
In November, agents took an 18-year-old citizen off the street, eventually dumping him in the woods.
In December, an American in Baltimore was picked up and held for 25 days, unable to see her 5-year-old son over Christmas.
In January, hours after Renee Good’s killing, agents tackled and handcuffed a school staffer in Minneapolis. He was terrified, he recalled: “I feel lucky to be alive.”
In April, when agents stopped a man in Texas, he told them, “I’m a citizen, it’s fine.” He was deported four days later.
In May, a New York teen was thrown to the ground, bloodied and then dumped in an unfamiliar neighborhood. “He just grabbed me and threw me on the floor,” the teen recalled.
In September, agents detained and injured an Illinois man they thought was someone else.
We shared details and footage of many of the incidents with former immigration officials. They reacted with anger and disbelief.
“This is just terrible,” said Eric Balliet, who spent more than two decades at Homeland Security Investigations and Border Patrol, both agencies under DHS, including in President Donald Trump’s first administration.
“I’ve never seen so many U.S. citizen encounters in all my years,” said Darius Reeves, who oversaw the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Baltimore office before retiring last year. “It’s an embarrassment.”
In tallying these detentions, we included anyone who authorities held against their will for any period of time — whether they were handcuffed, held at gunpoint or otherwise prevented from leaving by immigration agents. The courts consider someone detained if they aren’t free to leave.
Immigration agents do have authority to detain Americans in limited circumstances: if they can reasonably suspect they are in the country illegally, or if they allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers.
ProPublica shared its findings and information on each case with DHS. The department defended agents’ conduct. “DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted. We do our due diligence,” the agency said in a statement. It added that anyone who obstructs agents “will of course face consequences which include arrest.”
We compiled our list by scouring social media, court records and local media to confirm and compile incidents.
Our work doesn’t include all of agents’ problematic interactions with citizens. We didn’t count incidents where, say, an agent shot but didn’t detain a citizen. And as with the tally we did last year, the new list is an undercount. For instance, witnesses estimate that more than 200 citizens were detained in an Idaho raid last fall, but we only included the 30 citizens who we were able to identify.
Willy Wender Aceituno, a naturalized citizen who voted for Trump twice, said he never imagined that the immigration crackdown he supported would entangle him.
Then, last November, Border Patrol agents broke his truck window, yanked Aceituno out and threw him onto the pavement of a parking lot, where one agent knelt on his back. (DHS says he “refused to comply” with agents’ commands.)
“ICE isn’t looking for criminals,” Aceituno said. “They’re looking for Latinos. Having papers in this country does not protect you.”
“Upon Probable Cause”
Under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement generally must have probable cause to arrest someone. But there’s a lower bar, reasonable suspicion, for stopping someone to question them.
The Trump administration has repeatedly said its agents are just questioning citizens, not detaining them — even when they’re in handcuffs or held for hours. DHS also cites a concurring opinion issued last year by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh stating that agents can consider factors like “apparent ethnicity” when making stops. Citizens around the country have been detained because, they’ve said, of their skin color, accents or jobs.
Ever since his arrest in November, Aceituno said his U.S.-born daughter carries her passport at college. “She has a Latino face,” he said, adding, “My daughter’s white friends aren’t carrying their passports.”
“Secure in Their Persons, Houses, Papers and Effects”
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution also prohibits officers from entering homes without a judge’s warrant.
An ICE memo revealed by a whistleblower this year showed that agents had been doing it anyway. The agency asserted that administrative warrants that didn’t involve a judge gave agents the ostensible authority to force their way into homes looking for someone with a final deportation order. Some of those incidents have also resulted in Americans being detained.
In January, Jeyli Salguero, her parents and her sister were asleep at home when armed federal agents broke through the front door and rushed inside.
“The first thing I yelled when I stepped out of my room was that I was a U.S. citizen and I had the right to record,” Salguero recalled. “That’s when they snatched my phone.”
The agents told Salguero’s family they were looking for her brother, who does not live there. After half an hour, the agents released Salguero and her mother, but detained her father, who had temporary protected status, and her sister, who was undocumented. The sister was eventually deported to El Salvador, and her father was later released from detention.
Salguero told us that agents left her and her mom alone in their wrecked house with the Minneapolis winter air coming in through a broken door.
Salguero is one of several plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit against the government for going into homes without a judicial warrant. DHS has moved to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it has “paused” the policy.
“Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures”
The Fourth Amendment is also intended to protect people from “unreasonable” use of force during arrests. Previously, we’ve documented how agents have used chokeholds that DHS banned other than when deadly force is authorized. We’ve also documented how immigration agents have broken car windows while pursuing people they believe are in the country illegally. But they’ve been doing it to citizens, too. Many of those citizens have filed lawsuits.
Darren Eichler was working at a Christian cemetery in a Chicago suburb last October when he and his coworkers moved to help a man who was wading in the nearby river. They soon realized — too late — that the man was running from immigration agents, who emerged from the brush near the river and demanded access to a gated area of the cemetery. When the men refused and started filming, agents used bolt cutters to cut open the gate, then fired pepper balls and tackled the men.
Eichler said his face felt like it was on fire and he had trouble breathing. “I pleaded with them for an hour to please call an ambulance.” Eichler told ProPublica. He was eventually brought to a hospital, still handcuffed, while the agents stood over his bed. Eichler’s co-workers were held for several hours at a nearby federal office. No one was charged.
DHS did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment about the incident.
“The Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble”
The First Amendment protects protesters and those documenting agents’ conduct. The amendment guarantees the freedom to assemble — in other words, to protest peacefully — and the freedom of speech, which courts have interpreted to include recording in public.
The Trump administration has, however, aggressively pursued the arrest and prosecution of citizens who were protesting, often claiming the protesters were assaulting officers or interfering with enforcement activities. We counted more than 300 people accused of assaulting or obstructing officers, about 130 of them at protests.
Top DHS officials, including former Secretary Kristi Noem, went further, claiming that filming ICE agents was interfering with arrests. Last summer, three siblings driving in Texas were detained after they stopped to film an immigration arrest. One of the siblings was a young teen. “They tackled me down and an agent put one knee behind my knee, where I felt a sharp pain,” he told ProPublica. He was separated from his mother, who has a green card. “They were saying my mom wasn’t a U.S. citizen, and I was scared they were gonna take her away.”
The siblings have filed claims for damages with the government. Asked about the incident, DHS said it respects “the First Amendment rights of individuals to observe and express themselves. However, if such actions interfere with or obstruct our operations, ICE will take necessary steps to address the situation.”
Our review did uncover instances that appear to show some protesters or other civilians assaulting officers. One person pleaded guilty to throwing pieces of cinder block at an agent. A woman in California pleaded guilty to pulling off an officer’s mask.
Many protesters were accused of crimes but never actually charged. We found 137 instances of citizens who were charged with federal crimes, most of whom were charged with assaulting or obstructing federal agents. In nearly half of those instances, the charges were dropped or dismissed. Three dozen citizens have been sentenced to prison or probation, and another three dozen cases are pending, as of September 15.
Some of those arrested, like clarinet player Oriana Korol, were initially charged with felony assault before pleading guilty to a misdemeanor — in Korol’s case, for trying to kick an officer. She said she did so after officers shoved her and pepper-sprayed her twice in the face. Just moments before, the band had been playing the “Ghostbusters” theme song as part of a peaceful protest.
Video footage shows agents leading Korol away, handcuffed, while one pulls her tear-gas-soaked mask over her mouth. “Please pull it down,” Korol tells the agents in the video. “I’m going to have an asthma attack. I have asthma. Why are you doing this to me? Please.”
Unlike earlier administrations, Trump has detained significant numbers of immigrant children living far from the border. Citizen kids have been swept up too — at least 70 of them. We’ve found about 20 kids who were handcuffed or zip-tied.
DHS said that ICE doesn’t zip-tie or restrain children, or separate families. But agents handcuffed a 15-year-old with disabilities outside a school in Los Angeles in 2025. The agents said they mistook the teen for an alleged gang member. A few months later, officers detained more than a dozen American children during a raid on an Idaho horse track. Anabel Romero said her children are still deeply shaken by their detention.
Romero told us how her 7-year-old son warned his older sister about going to another race this month: “He said, ‘Watch out for ICE, make sure you have your phone to film — I’ll come save you.’”
“Without Due Process of Law”
As the government has rushed to deport people as quickly as possible, Americans have also been swept up and removed from the country too. About a dozen American kids have been deported with their parents, allegedly over their parents’ objections.
DHS said: “Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates.”
One American adult in Texas was also deported this spring.
The car Brian Morales Garcia was in was pulled over earlier this year in central Texas. Officers didn’t believe him when he said he was a citizen. And they wouldn’t let him get his birth certificate. Morales Garcia was held for four days without being able to call his lawyer or anyone else. Then he was deported to Mexico.
After suing, Morales Garcia was allowed back into the country just last month using his birth certificate.
DHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Morales Garcia’s deportation. In earlier court filings, officials disputed Morales Garcia’s citizenship and claimed he had admitted to being born in Mexico.
“I couldn’t process what they were doing to me.” Morales Garcia told ProPublica. When he was first stopped in Texas, he had told officers, “I’m a citizen, it’s fine.”
Explore All Incidents Where Citizens Were Detained
This is every incident ProPublica could find in which one or more citizens were reportedly detained between January 2025 and September 2026. We asked DHS about each incident. We searched for any federal criminal charges that were brought in relation to each incident and included the most up-to-date status we could find for those cases.
506
citizens
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One citizen was injured and detained by ICE agents who were looking for someone who matched his description in Evanston, Illinois. A responding Evanston police officer said one agent had blood on his hands and the citizen was taken to the hospital. DHS claimed the man didn’t cooperate with “lawful commands” and agents detained him until he identified himself.
Two
citizens
were
detained in
Alamo, Texas.
Two
citizens
were
detained in
Norfolk, Virginia.
One
citizen
was
detained in
Laguna Vista, Texas.
One
citizen
was
detained in
Olathe, Kansas.
One
citizen
was
detained in
Boise, Idaho.
One
citizen
was
detained in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
One
citizen
was
detained in
Salt Lake City, Utah.
Two citizens who are enrolled members of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe were detained in Bemidji, Minnesota, during a worksite raid.
A citizen leaving a coffee shop in Annapolis, Maryland, was handcuffed, denied a phone call and held for almost two hours. DHS said it took the citizen to another location to interview him because “agitators” had gathered.
One
citizen
was
detained in
Newark, New Jersey.
A citizen documenting ICE activity in Ventura, California, was tackled and tasered while he was already pinned to the ground.
One
citizen
was
detained in
Newark, New Jersey.
One
citizen
was
detained in
Newark, New Jersey.
Six
citizens
were
detained in
Newark, New Jersey.
