The Final ICE Capade: The Last Roundup

One year into a project that started out as a weekly documenting ICE actions, we are realizing we are gonna need a bigger boat

When I started writing the ‘Roundup’ posts for Pirate Wire Services earlier this year — weekly updates on ICE and Border Patrol actions — it came from a place of deep personal significance. Migration and borders have become deeply defining aspects not just of my work but also how I view the world.

I’ve spent nearly a decade reporting on migration from borders across the Americas. During that time, I have talked to thousands of migrants, criss-crossed the deserts, mountains, jungles, seas, and border cities. They are places where violence is regularly inflicted on those seeking better lives abroad and residents of frontier regions alike.

Before January at PWS, we often wrote of how most of that violence rarely directly touched the lives of most people living in the United States. The majority, though certainly not all, occurred far from the US. And when it did happen in the US, administrations often made sure it did so quietly, such as when the previous US president Joe Biden massively expanded ICE, even while condemning some of their actions publicly.

This was intentional. Up until this year, most politicians, lawyers, and certainly law enforcement, didn’t really want ICE or CBP to be names people in the US tossed out over family arguments at the dinner table.

It was better for them all if people in wealthy countries didn’t give much thought to the inherent brutality of border enforcement across the Americas.

Now, almost a year later, that dynamic has changed completely. Migration enforcement violence is no longer targeted solely towards vulnerable populations in the global south; it is occurring in some of the largest cities in the United States.

And they aren’t merely attacking migrants, but also anyone who supports them.

In Chicago, activist Marimar Martinez was shot 5 times by agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after officers claimed she tried to ‘assault’ them with her vehicle. The claims quickly fell apart, however, as have hundreds of other false claims made by DHS personnel terrorizing communities across the country.

As masked agents tear gas even affluent suburban neighborhoods, their respective organizations gleefully post footage of operations meant to terrify and intimidate.

You’ve been lied to about borders your whole life

Meanwhile, the lines that used to separate the different paramilitary agencies have grown increasingly blurred. CBP is running coordinated operations well within the center of the country, and high-ranking CBP officers have been placed in charge of ICE operations. The decision was made to encourage a more “hard-line” attitude towards mass deportations.

Making journalists’ jobs more complicated, DHS is an overwhelming firehose of lies. A judge this week in Chicago, after reviewing bodycam footage, criticized the agency for filing hundreds of likely false incident reports. One agent even used ChatGPT to make up lies about why he arrested a protester.

Due to all of this terrifying madness, the PWS ‘ICE Capades: the Roundup’ vertical experienced some serious mission creep. We aren’t just doing weekly updates on ICE — we are now covering all DHS agencies, and their impacts on civil rights, Latino communities in the US, and what is effectively becoming a state crime beat.

That’s a lot for a small team that is also busy covering all of Latin America, and trying to maintain freelancing careers that pay our rent!

So we’re going to rethink this vertical going into 2026. We believe the subject matter is crucial for the public interest, and there’s no way we’re abandoning the coverage, but this weekly aspect of the newsletter is no longer the ‘ICE Capades’. It’s the “DHS Capades”, and that name is terrible, haha.

In the meantime, this will give us some bandwidth to focus a bit more on LATAM, as we have done for years.

But don’t worry! We’re not leaving you marooned this week. As you may have noticed, we snuck quite a bit of ‘the Roundup’ into this message to our readers, but we aren’t done yet!

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ICE is a Terror organization

The rest of ‘the Roundup’

A recruitment ad posted by DHS of a masked terrorist cosplaying as a police officer

• A DC federal judge put a stay on ICE plans to use IRS data to track down migrants with informal status, calling the practice “unlawful.”

• New ICE detention data shows that 40% of those arrested by ICE have no criminal record. That number in January, when we started this vertical, was 4%

• The Chicago judge who reviewed bodycam footage of CBP actions called CBP chief Gregory Bovino a liar multiple times in her ruling. She also described some of his answers as “evasive.” The document is a long list of CBP agents misrepresenting migrants and protesters during their “Operation Midway Blitz” in the windy city.

• CBP operation “Charlotte’s Web” in Charlotte, North Carolina, has ended after just a few days. DHS officials said they were definitely leaving the city, then they definitely weren’t. Then they definitely were again. There seems to be some disagreement within the agency itself over exactly what is going to happen, but the most recent statements from DHS is that some activities will continue, but large deployments, such as in Chicago and LA earlier this year, are off the table.

• The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.

What we’re reading

Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol officer, has another piece out about her experiences in that agency about the expansion of CBP as a national paramilitary force via their control and influence within DHS. It’s called “Border Patrol is Taking the Powers it Wants,” and you can find it here.

Border Patrol is taking the powers they want.

Chilling DHS photo of the week

During CBP “Operation Charlotte’s Web” in North Carolina, Border Patrol agents violently detained a restaurant worker during an immigration raid: captured here putting an informal migrant in a headlock as he screams in terror.

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Hasta pronto, piratas!