Report: US ICE Misused Crowd Control Weapons Against Protesters 412 Times within 1 Year
A new report showed US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers engaged in a misuse of force against individuals at immigration protests 412 times over the span of a year.
The report was authored by the Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley (HRC), which said they used legal proceedings and news articles on incidents occurring between June 1, 2025, and May 31 to determine their findings, according to The Hill. ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the matter.A majority of the cases occurred in Los Angeles, with 174 reports of misuse of force at public demonstrations.The city of Minneapolis in Minnesota saw the second highest number of reports with 94 incidents followed by Chicago, which saw 56 incidents. “The data show that, on aggregate, crowd-control weapon misuse was not uniform in time and space but rather occurred in discrete “waves” that moved from city to city,” the report says. “The initial wave of misuse occurred almost exclusively in Los Angeles, followed by a spike in the greater Chicago area in September-November 2025, and subsequently, in the Minneapolis area in January 2026. Portland bucked this trend, as incidents occurred at a lower level throughout our study period,” it adds.In total, incidents of misuse of force from ICE officers occurred in across 16 cities in 13 states.
The top three states mentioned face an increase in immigration operations as the second Donald Trump administration zeroes in on removing undocumented immigrants causing an uproar from the public community. Mass protests in opposition to removals were sparked in places across the country last year and early this year as the No Kings movement and 50501 group capitalized on shock by organizing events through a network online.“States with high levels of immigration enforcement, such as Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and Florida, have almost no incidents (3 total),” the report says. “While there were other immigration enforcement operations within this timeframe, they did not result in widespread misuse of crowd-control weapons. The vast majority (more than 90%) of incidents occurred in five cities,” it continues.Incidents occurred more frequently at ICE detention facilities, federal courthouses and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offices, “where agents may have chosen to use force with higher frequency,” per the report.Most of the weapons used were chemical irritants. Thirty-six percent of the incidents in the report involved chemical irritants, 26 percent used hybrid weapons, 22 percent used kinetic projectiles and 11 percent used discretionary devices.
The report says there were 23 incidents involving vulnerable individuals, with 12 including children, 8 pregnant or elderly persons and 3 against those with a visible disability.More than half of weapons misuse was against demonstrators at 50.7 percent. Forty-three percent of cases involving weapons misuse were against journalists, 2.9 against minors, 1.7 against bystanders and less than one percent against legal observers and healthcare workers.It also noted that the presence of leaders in charge of Trump’s surge in immigration enforcement also impacted violent events.The report said former border patrol commander Greg Bovino’s documented presence in each metropolitan area “closely tracked the surge in misuse of force incidents in Los Angeles and Minneapolis”.Forty-six incidents were recorded on the day of his first documented appearance in Los Angeles and 68 incidents occurred in the following seven days, compared to just nine in the seven days prior.“In Minneapolis, 12 incidents occurred on the day of his arrival (January 7, 2026), rising to 40 within the first week and 50 within two weeks, against just one incident in the preceding week,” the report says.“In Chicago, Bovino was first documented on September 10, 2025. A stark 55 of 56 incidents occurred after Bovino’s arrival and the surge beginning nine days later,” it adds.
Bovino was ultimately fired and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who hired him, was also reassigned by the president following the deaths of protester Alex Pretti and US citizen Renee Good.Pretti and Good were both killed in Minnesota within the span of two weeks of one another in January.Since then, reports of widespread violence at the hands of immigration authority had seemingly died down until an undocumented immigrant was shot in Houston last week followed by a fatal shooting of a motorist at the hands of an ICE agent in Maine on Monday.Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) and others are calling for a full investigation.Over the past few months, elected officials within the GOP faction have been openly critiquing the administration on deadly immigration enforcement measures nationwide.So far, there have been nine deaths at the hands of immigration authorities this year.
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