ICE Capades: The Roundup
PWS weekly on the ghoulish acts, dastardly deeds, and unseemly actions of the country's now-biggest LEO
As ICE becomes one of the largest law enforcement organizations on the planet, it couldn’t be more crucial for real-time reporting by journalists with experience on both the migration and authoritarianism beats. As part of efforts to provide that coverage, PWS brings you the weekly “ICE roundup”
US has now revoked Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 600,000 Venezuelans
At midnight on Friday, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants in the US suddenly found themselves without documented status, after the administration of President Donald Trump finally pushed through their decision to end Temporary Protected Status for migrants from the South American country.
On October 3, the Supreme Court, in a ruling of just three paragraphs, upheld a decision it had made in May and put 350,000 Venezuelans who had been granted TPS in 2023 at risk of deportation. This affirmation by the court allows the US government to “de-certify” another 250,000 Venezuelans whose temporary residence permit expired on November 7.
The American Immigration Council has criticized the decision as part of ongoing efforts to criminalize migration more broadly. For people like María Fernanda Angulo, however, a Venezuelan who spoke to El País about the decision, the situation is far from an obscure legal or intellectual debate.
“I’ve been here working legally, doing things the right way,” she says, but as soon as she learned that Trump had won the November 2024 election, she began to worry. “I saw it coming,” she said.
Living in South Florida, she now fears that she, or her children, will be swept up in migrant raids by ICE or CBP. “I’ve lost everything,” she told the Spanish Newspaper. “The life we’ve built here has collapsed.”
CBP agent brags about shooting Chicago woman 5 times
ICE and CBP have been caught in a series of lies about the shooting of Marimar Martinez, a migration activist in Chicago. As part of ongoing court proceedings, Martinez’s lawyer accuses the federal government of evidence tampering and false statements leading up to the incident.
This week, court documents revealed that the CBP officer responsible for the shooting, Charles Exum, had been boasting about his marksmanship to colleagues.
“I have a MOF amendment to add to my story. I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” he wrote. “Read it. 5 shots, 7 holes.”
Exum explained to the judge that ‘MOF’ was meant to abbreviate “Miserable Old Fucker.”
ICE and CBP operations are becoming more violent
A woman involved in a traffic accident at an ICE checkpoint in Chicago was violently dragged from her vehicle by masked men in a scene captured on video on Wednesday.
“I was in shock and terrified,” Dayanne Figueroa, U.S. citizen and paralegal, said of the moment when she was dragged from her car and pinned to the asphalt. “Agents crashed into me. I was not involved in any protest or related activity and I intend to seek justice for how I was treated.”
Also in Chicago, an employee of a child daycare center was violently tackled by ICE agents in front of children at the Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center. Agents entered the school and demanded to search the premises as well. The director, who refused to grant permission to the agents, said the search was conducted illegally against his will.
A man in L.A was shot in the back after trying to protect children at a bus stop where ICE was conducting an operation, his lawyers said this week. ICE falsely claimed that Carlos Jimenez tried to ram officers with his car. On-scene video clearly shows those claims are lies.
The incidents are just three of hundreds of increasingly aggressive operations nationally after US President Donald Trump demanded that DHS increase its daily arrest numbers from 1000/day to 3000.
“Inhumane conditions” in ICE detention centers (again)
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered authorities to improve a Chicago-area immigration facility after a group of detainees sued, alleging they were being kept in “inhumane” conditions.
“People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets,” U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said. “They should not be sleeping on top of each other.”
The issue has become a recurring pattern for ICE sites that were designed to be temporary holding centers for just a few hours, but which are being utilized as medium-term migrant prisons.
The Round-Up
ICE is considering using its considerable resources to purchase warehouses to serve as “Mega-Detention Centers,” according to White House Statements.
A toddler was detained by DHS agents during a Home Depot raid. ‘Wait, what?’ you might say. Yes, you read that correctly. They arrested a baby.
ICE agent Guillermo Diaz-Torres was arrested for drunk driving near the Broadview processing center in Chicago. He threatened to arrest the arresting agents as he was detained. “Wait, are you Haitian?” said Diaz-Torres, according to bodycam footage. “I’m gonna deport your ass.”
We’ve been covering ICE’s massive expansion of intelligence and surveillance programs for months. NPR has a story this week about some of the tools currently being deployed and field tested by the biggest law enforcement agency on the planet.
The ICE ‘Chilling Photo of the Week’
CBS news reported on the violent detention of a man showing up for his migration proceedings in Chicago, as masked men dragged away a crying man who was attempting to regularize his migration status. This is a screenshot from that video.
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