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Time of India
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
ICE in hot water: Dozens of US citizens wrongfully deported in shocking immigration blunder
ICE deported U.S. citizens : shocking report reveals over 70 Americans mistakenly removed from the country- In a startling revelation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deported dozens of U.S. citizens over the years, raising serious concerns about civil rights violations and the integrity of immigration enforcement. According to a recent report highlighted by Migrant Insider, at least 70 American citizens were deported between 2015 and 2020, with hundreds more wrongfully arrested or detained by ICE agents. The findings come amid a surge in immigration raids, particularly in Southern California, where even legal citizens are reportedly being swept up in enforcement actions. How could ICE deport U.S. citizens? The idea that American citizens can be deported seems unthinkable—but that's exactly what has happened. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed that between 2015 and 2020, ICE arrested 674 individuals who were potentially U.S. citizens , detained 121 of them, and ultimately deported 70 people from the country. Migrant Insider emphasized that 'the actual number could be much higher,' citing inadequate safeguards and record-keeping by ICE. Also Read: Uber stock skyrockets 7% today - what's driving the move? Know the details This issue isn't isolated to recent months. The problem has reportedly existed for years, and individuals like Job Garcia, a U.S. citizen, have been detained by ICE on multiple occasions without cause. Why is ICE targeting U.S. citizens during immigration raids? The increased immigration enforcement raids, especially in states like California, have drawn sharp criticism as U.S. citizens have been mistakenly swept up. Some cases are due to misidentification, while others stem from flawed databases or outdated records. ICE reportedly lacks a reliable system to verify citizenship before taking enforcement actions. Live Events In the words of the GAO report, 'ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens.' What rights are being violated when citizens are deported? The deportation of American citizens isn't just an administrative error—it's a violation of constitutional rights. As Migrant Insider puts it, 'That's not just a bureaucratic mistake — it's a constitutional violation.' Under U.S. law, citizens cannot be forcibly removed from their own country, and such actions raise deep legal and ethical questions. Civil rights groups argue that these incidents highlight the need for greater accountability within ICE and better training for agents. Without immediate reforms, the risk of wrongful detention and deportation will persist. Also Read: US stock market today: Markets cheer fragile Israel‑Iran ceasefire — Dow jumps 350 points as S&P 500 hits new record; Nvidia, Apple lead tech rally while Nasdaq surges past 17,700 How accurate is the reported number of U.S. citizens deported by ICE? While GAO numbers point to 70 confirmed deportations, experts believe the real count may be higher. The lack of consistent documentation and review processes means many cases may go unreported or unnoticed. Advocates are now calling for a full-scale audit of ICE enforcement actions to identify any other wrongful deportations. Moreover, the number of 674 individuals arrested and 121 detained further suggests a broader pattern of mistakes that could affect many more citizens than currently documented. Also Read: Bitcoin price jumps above $106k as Trump's ceasefire boosts crypto rally and altcoins like Ethereum, Solana surge What actions are being taken to prevent wrongful deportations? Currently, there appears to be no formal system in place within ICE to verify U.S. citizenship before detaining or deporting someone. That's a major concern for lawmakers, legal experts, and immigration advocates. The report urges federal agencies to implement better safeguards and oversight. Some proposals include: Improved training for ICE officers on identifying citizenship. Centralized access to verified identity records. Independent audits and review panels for all deportation cases. Until such reforms are enacted, many fear the mistakes will continue. A wake-up call for immigration enforcement reforms The revelation that ICE deported at least 70 U.S. citizens is a chilling reminder of the flaws in America's immigration enforcement system. With hundreds more reportedly detained or arrested, the need for stronger safeguards and accountability has never been clearer. As public outrage grows, pressure is mounting on federal authorities to fix the broken system before more innocent citizens are wrongly exiled from their own country. FAQs: Q1. How many U.S. citizens were deported by ICE between 2015 and 2020? A1. ICE deported at least 70 American citizens during that period, per a GAO report. Q2. Why are U.S. citizens being arrested by ICE agents? A2. Many were wrongfully detained due to misidentification and lack of verification systems.
The Independent
22-06-2025
- The Independent
US citizen caught in ICE raid says arrest was worth it if others got away
A U.S. citizen who was violently arrested in a California ICE raid and detained for 24 hours said it was all worth it if an undocumented person was able to use that moment to flee. Job Garcia, a 37-year-old PhD student at Claremont Graduate University, was arrested during an ICE raid last Thursday at a Home Depot in Hollywood, ABC 7 reported. Video captured an ICE agent telling Garcia, who is a U.S. citizen, 'You want to go to jail? Fine, you got it.' Garcia recalled the horrifying moment he was placed into custody by the officer: 'The pressure of like, the knee on my back, and his hand on my neck, I thought like 'Is this it for me?'' Footage of the violent arrest, which came as ICE agents detained about 30 people at the store, quickly went viral. Before he was detained, Garcia and several other shoppers were yelling at the officers as they targeted a man in a truck by smashing his window. 'A split second after that is when he lunged at me. I was still recording, so he pushes me, puts both hands on me, and I pushed his hand off. And then, he didn't like that, so he grabbed my left hand,' Garcia said. Garcia said the officers seemed surprised when he told them he was a U.S. citizen, but they still decided to arrest him. He was first taken to a holding area at Dodger Stadium, where he overheard agents discussing how many people they'd grabbed. "Like, 'How many bodies did you guys get today?' And one of them said 31, and they started like, 'Yay! It was a good day today.' And they were like, high-fiving each other," Garcia said. Garcia said he also overheard officers talking about potential charges they could slap him with. 'At first it was assault of a federal agent, but only later, the narrative started switching because the video was out,' Garcia said. Some 24 hours later, Garcia was finally released. Despite the circumstances, he told ABC 7 it would have been well worth it if it gave undocumented migrants a window of opportunity to flee and find their families. 'However long period that was, if an undocumented person ran away and got away and got to get to his family, and got to get to his pregnant wife, then I'm OK with that,' he said. It was not immediately clear whether Garcia would be charged with any crime, although he told ABC 7 he plans to take legal action for the violation of his civil rights. Anti-ICE demonstrations have spread across the U.S. after taking off in California earlier this month following raids of workplaces. The number of people without a criminal record being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and held in detention has jumped 800 percent since January, as officials face pressure to boost numbers, according to reports. This uptick has resulted in 51,302 people being imprisoned in ICE centers as of the start of June, marking the first time that detention centers held over 50,000 immigrants at once. Less than a third of those detained are convicted criminals, with the remainder pending criminal charges or arrested for non-criminal immigration offenses, such as overstaying a visa or unauthorized entry to the country. The latest data is from June 1, published by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Since January, when the Trump administration entered office, ICE has not published clear and official figures on arrests or deportations.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Yahoo
'A good day': Detained U.S. citizen said agents bragged after arresting dozens at Home Depot
A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested. 'How many bodies did you guys grab today?' he said one agent asked. 'Oh, we grabbed 31,' the other replied. "That was a good day today," the first agent responded. The two high-fived, as he sat on the asphalt under the sun, Job Garcia said. Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officials say some have illegally interfered with agents' jobs. In response to questions about why Garcia was arrested and if he'd been charged, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. recommended a reporter contact the Department of Homeland Security. DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment. Garcia said he was shaken by what he heard while he was detained. 'They call them 'bodies,' they reduce them to bodies,' he said. "My blood was boiling." Garcia, a photographer and doctoral student Claremont Graduate University, had been picking up a delivery at Home Depot when someone approached the customer desk and said something was unfolding outside. "La migra, La migra," he heard as he walked out. He quickly grabbed his phone and followed agents around the parking lot, telling them they were "f— useless" until he came to a group of them forming a half-circle around a box truck. A Border Patrol agent radioed someone and then slammed his baton against the passenger window, his video shows. Glass shattered. He unlocked the door as people shouted. In the video, a stunned man can be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door. It's unclear from the footage what happened next, but Garcia said an agent lunged toward him and pushed him. "My first reaction was to like push his hand off," he recalled. Then, he said, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his back and threw his phone. The agent brought him to the ground and three other agents jumped in, Garcia said "Get the f— down sir" and "give me your f— hand. You want it, you got it, sir, you f— got it. You want to go to jail, fine. You got it," an agent can be heard saying in the video. "You wanted it, you got it," the man yelled. An agent handcuffed him so hard "that there was no circulation running to my fingers," Garcia said. Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing. "That moment, I thought I could probably die here," he said. The agent put Garcia's phone back in his pocket. The recording kept running. As Garcia was put into a vehicle, his video captured an agent twice saying: "I've got one back here." "You got one what?" Garcia shot back. "You got one what?" He said an agent told him in broken Spanish to "wait here,' though it could not be heard on the video. "I f— speak English, you f— dumbass," he clearly shouts back. No agent asked if he was an American citizen, he said. Nobody asked for identification. 'They assumed that I was undocumented," he said later in an interview. The video ends after about four minutes, while he is waiting in the van. Read more: Raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood shatters an immigrant refuge Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed. They were so tight, his hands began to swell. The agents switched him to handcuffs that looked like shoelaces. They took off around a corner, stopped to shuffle him into another van and sped off down the 101 Freeway. "I smeared my blood in their seat," he said. And he thought, "They're going to remember me." With him in the van was a Mexican man, face downcast, who said his wife was six months pregnant. "My wife told me not to go to work today," the man said. "Something doesn't feel right," he said she told him. "It broke my heart," Garcia said. "I wish he was the one who got away when they were trying to grab me." On what he described as a ramp going into Dodger stadium near Lot K, Garcia was taken out of the car and told to sit on the asphalt as agents shuffled detainees into different vans and processed them for about an hour. A woman ran his background for criminal offenses. It felt surreal and enraging. 'They were trying to build some sort of case," Garcia said. He told The Times he was arrested at 17 for driving without a license. After they transported him, agents later fingerprinted him and tried to interrogate him. The agent said they wanted to "take your side of the story." Garcia declined. He said he overheard an agent tell someone, 'Trump is really working us." While held at a downtown detention facility, he met Adrian Martinez. Martinez, a 20-year-old Walmart worker and also a U.S. citizen, had been arrested on Tuesday while he tried to stop the arrest of a man who cleaned a shopping center in Pico Rivera. The two spoke for about 10 minutes, as Martinez waited to go to court. "You're the Walmart kid, right?" he asked him. Garcia told him what had unfolded outside the Home Depot. "That's exactly what happened to me," he said Martinez told him. "They were bullying this older guy. I didn't like that so I went and confronted them and they put their hands on me and I pushed their hands off.' U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted a photo of Martinez on X and said he "was arrested for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent in the face after he attempted to impede their immigration enforcement operation." Martinez was charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to impede a federal officer. The complaint makes no reference to a punch, but alleges that Martinez blocked agents' vehicles with his car and then later a trash can. 'A complaint generally contains one charge and does not include the full scope of a defendant's conduct, or the evidence that will be presented at trial," said Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. "Considering this is an active case, we will not be providing further comments outside of court proceedings.' Martinez was released Friday on a $5,000 bond. 'U.S. Attorney Essayli and U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino outrageously alleged that Adrian assaulted a federal agent," Martinez's attorneys said in a statement. "However he has not been charged with an assault charge because he didn't assault anyone, and the evidence of that is clear." Garcia said his cellmate was worried about these protests. He asked, "Don't you think the protesters who are out there destroying property, rioters, is a bad look?" 'Rioting is the language of the unheard," he said, riffing on a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Yahoo
"A good day:" Detained U.S. citizen said agents bragged after arresting dozens at Home Depot
A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour at Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested. 'How many bodies did you guys grab today,' he said one agent asked. 'Oh, we grabbed 31,' the other replied. "That was a good day today," the first agent responded. The two high-fived, as Garcia sat on the asphalt under the sun. Job Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officials say some have illegally interfered with agents job. In response to questions about why Garcia was arrested and if he'd been charged, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. recommended a reporter contact the Department of Homeland Security. DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment Garcia said he was shaken by what he heard while he was detained. 'They call them 'bodies,' they reduce them to bodies,' he said. "My blood was boiling." Garcia, a photographer and doctoral student Claremont Graduate University had been picking up a delivery at Home Depot, when someone approached the customer desk and said something was unfolding outside. "La migra, La migra," he heard as he walked out. He quickly grabbed his phone and followed agents around the parking lot, telling them they were "f— useless" until he came to a group of them forming a half circle around a box truck. A Border Patrol agent radioed someone and then slammed his baton against the passenger window, his video shows. Glass shattered. He unlocked the door as people shouted. In the video, a stunned man can be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door. It's unclear from the footage what happened next, but Garcia said an agent lunged toward him and pushed him. "My first reaction was to like push his hand off," he recalled. Then, he said, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his back and threw his phone. The agent brought him to the ground and three other agents jumped in, Garcia said "Get the f— down sir" and "give me your f— hand. You want it, you got it, sir, you f— got it. You want to go to jail, fine. You got it," an agent can be heard saying in the video. "You wanted it, you got it," the man yelled. An agent handcuffed him so hard "that there was no circulation running to my fingers," Garcia said. Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing. "That moment, I thought I could probably die here," he said. The agent put Garcia's phone back in his pocket. The recording kept running. As Garcia was put into a vehicle, his video captured an agent twice saying: "I've got one back here." "You got one what?" Garcia shot back. "You got one what?" He said an agent told him in broken Spanish to "wait here,' though it could not be heard on the video. "I f— speak English, you f— dumbass," he clearly shouts back. No agent asked if he was an American citizen, he said. Nobody asked for identification. 'They assumed that I was undocumented," he said later in an interview. The video ends after about four minutes, while he is waiting in the van. Read more: Raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood shatters an immigrant refuge Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed. They were so tight, his hands began to swell. The agents switched him to handcuffs that looked like shoe laces. They took off around a corner, stopped to shuffle him into another van and sped off down the 101 freeway. "I smeared my blood in their seat," he said. And he thought 'they're going to remember me." With him in the van was a Mexican man, face downcast, who said his wife was six months pregnant. "My wife told me not to go to work today," the man said. "Something doesn't feel right," he said she told him. "It broke my heart," Garcia said. "I wish he was the one who got away when they were trying to grab me." On what he described as a ramp going into Dodger stadium near Lot K, Garcia was taken out of the car and told to sit on the asphalt as agents shuffled detainees into different vans and processed them for about an hour. A woman ran his background for criminal offenses. It felt surreal and enraging. 'They were trying to build some sort of case," Garcia said. He told the Times he was arrested at 17 for driving without a license. After they transported him, agents later fingerprinted him and tried to interrogate him. The agent said, we want to "take your side of the story." Garcia declined. He said he overheard an agent tell someone, 'Trump is really working us." While held at a downtown detention facility, he met Adrian Martinez. Martinez, a 20 year old Walmart worker and also a U.S. citizen, had been arrested on Tuesday while he tried to stop the arrest of a man who cleaned a shopping center in Pico Rivera. The two spoke for about 10 minutes, as Martinez waited to go to court. "You're the Walmart kid, right," he asked him. Garcia told him what had unfolded outside the Home Depot; "That's exactly what happened to me," he said Martinez told him. "They were bullying this older guy. I didn't like that so I went and confronted them and they put their hands on me and I pushed their hands off.' U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted a photo of Martinez on X and said he "was arrested for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent in the face after he attempted to impede their immigration enforcement operation." Martinez was charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to impede a federal officer. The complaint makes no reference to a punch, but alleges that Martinez blocked agents' vehicles with his car and then later a trash can. 'A complaint generally contains one charge and does not include the full scope of a defendant's conduct, or the evidence that will be presented at trial," said Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. "Considering this is an active case, we will not be providing further comments outside of court proceedings.' Martinez was released Friday on a $5,000 bond. 'U.S. Attorney Essayli and U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino outrageously alleged that Adrian assaulted a federal agent," Martinez's attorneys said in a statement. "However he has not been charged with an assault charge because he didn't assault anyone, and the evidence of that is clear." Garcia said his cell mate was worried about these protests. He asked "don't you think the protesters who are out there destroying property, rioters, is a bad look?" 'Rioting is the language of the unheard," he said, riffing on a quote from Martin Luther King. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
