The new tactics are filled with public resistance and despair from suspects facing ice detention and deportation.
Ice continues attacking workplace after pause
A week after President Trump stopped in a raid at a particular workplace, ICE is set up to continue those operations.
Fox-26 Houston
Mask agent. A terrifying suspect. Emotions run high as the screaming crowd is pushed in and handed over the phone camera.
Amid the surge in immigration enforcement across the country, federal agents are hospitalized with wounds as they make increasingly public and dangerous arrests of people they believe they are undocumented.
White House officials say assaults against agents increased by 500% as President Donald Trump’s massive deportation campaign.
Executives say bold tactics are needed to fight back what is called “invasions” of immigrants. However, policing experts say that the offensive approach is causing unnecessary, dangerous encounters.
In a recent case in Nebraska, a female ice agent was thrown to the ground and choked by a member of the accused Tren de Aragua gang who previously said he was a Venezuelan soldier, according to court documents. The suspect escaped and was later captured with the help of local police.
Bystander video captured the suspect on the ground on crowded streets and caught the suspected agent chasing the farm. One widely circulated video showed an agent grabbing a US citizen by his neck in a Walmart parking lot, resisting taking it. Federal prosecutors charged the man with assault after he allegedly punched an agent.
“Just this week, an ice officer was dragged 50 yards in the car while arresting an illegal alien sex offender,” Homeland Security Advisor Tricia McLaughlin told USA Today. “Every day, ice men and women risk their lives to protect and protect the lives of American citizens.”
Trump, Those who have pledged to expel one million immigrants this year, He ordered US immigration and customs enforcement agents to “do it with all forces to achieve the very important goal of providing the single largest deportation program in history.”
In a social media post on June 15th, he said: “Every day, the brave men and women of the ice are under threat from violence, harassment and even radical Democratic politicians, but nothing prevents us from carrying out our mission and fulfilling our mandate to Americans.”
Art del Quet, vice-president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the union’s 16,000 members welcome Trump’s tough new approach to immigration enforcement.
Detainees are fighting back more and more, he said, they know they have no escape: “That’s why you’re watching an attack on the agent.”
“It’s not about public safety anymore.”
However, there is an increasing number of pushbacks from the public. Recent immigration in the Los Angeles area has sparked widespread protests and small riots downtown as people threw rocks at law enforcement, set patrol vehicles on fire, and federal agents responded with tear gas and pepper spray.
In some cases, federal agents are trying to film games with crowds and stop or stop what they think is enthusiastic detention, especially if masked agents refuse to identify themselves.
Police experts say ice agents exacerbate tensions with practices that many American police departments have largely dismissed.
There is little objection to detaining violent criminals, but masked agents cause panic to get down into the car parks of their home warehouses and arrest a car park or food vendor that has mostly no criminal history.
“The aggressive police tactics employed by the federal government are causing problems,” said longtime police superintendent Diane Goldstein, who is currently leading the law enforcement litigation partnership.
“Their direction and their leadership put them directly in a horrifying situation,” she said.
The ice tactics on display are dramatically diverging from the previous ice agents’ previous work, said Jason Hauser, a former official with the Department of Homeland Security’s Terrorism Bureau. Houser is an Afghan combat veteran who was the ICE chief staff during the Biden administration.
Previously, ICE agents prioritized serious criminal offenders for their arrest, Houser said. A team of agents can work days or weeks to minimize risk to the public and the agents themselves, carefully and at the right time to make arrests before investigating one subject.
ICE agents are trained to “think about prioritizing public safety, risks and removability,” he added.
The Department of Internal Justice training program emphasizes that whenever possible, particularly in the absence of an immediate threat to public safety, a focus should be on elimination of emissions and avoiding arrests in public areas.
“Now we have a political allocation: ‘Give me 3,000 arrests’ (per day).’ And all the gloves are off,” Hauser said. “It’s not about public safety anymore.”
Before Trump, the attack had declined.
According to Department of Homeland Security statistics, an increase in attacks on officers and agents this year will reverse the three-year trend of declining incidents.
Despite daily interactions with millions of daily people, ice, customs and border patrol agents were rarely attacked by work.
According to DHS data, the agency recorded 363 assault cases in 2024, down from 474 incidents in fiscal 2023 and 524 in fiscal 2022.
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which includes both customs officials and patrol agents, has 45,000 law enforcement agencies, making it the nation’s largest law enforcement agency. Additionally, ICE has around 6,200 deportation agents on its staff.
White House officials declined to answer USA Today’s questions about the number underlying the 500% increase in assault, including the total number of injuries and their severity. It is also unknown how many additional federal agents have been reassigned to immigration enforcement so far.
Masked Agent Refusing to Identify Yourself
In Huntington Park, California, authorities took this week into custody a man who appears to be pretending to be ice agents. The situation they said was possible because actual ice agents refuse to properly identify themselves when actively restraining people.
Mayor Arturo Flores said the way the ice agents are acting does not present a “fair and legal image of government.” He said he can understand why people are angry and scared, especially knowing that there are potential vigilantes and spoofs active in the area.
In response to the accused’s arrest, Huntington Park leaders asked local police to verify the identity of the suspected ice agent operating in the city.
The suspect was found with multiple police radio, official federal documents, flashing lights and a 9mm handgun, according to city police.
“If people can’t trust who is enforcing the law, public safety will weaken us and fear will begin to take hold,” Flores said at a June 27 press conference. “What we’re saying is simple. If you’re acting with federal authorities, show it.
“Someone is going to pull a gun.”
It is a fundamental fact that it underlies the tension between the ice and the public. Ice has arrested a record number of people with no criminal history.
An analysis by the Libertarian Cato Institute shows that ICE arrests four times more people a week without criminal convictions or criminal charges than the government agency that took place at the same time in June 2017 when Trump was also president.
“This is a radical tactical change compared to Trump 1.0,” says David Beer, director of immigration studies, in a post in X.
An ICE official said it was responding to interference from the public.
They say advocacy groups are agents who try to make arrests, put agents in danger and allow them to escape the target. Federal agents testifying before a Senate committee on June 26th said bystanders filmed officers during a recent enforcement operation and posted photos online in threatening messages.
There have also been an increasing number of cases where people call local police stations to report that the presence of armed masked men was bundling community members into unmarked vehicles.
ICE officials often say that when hundreds of “sanctuaries” jurisdictions across the country hand over immigrants after being sentenced to criminal penalties, agents often reduce the need for dangerous public arrests.
But before Trump’s enforcement ramp-up, about 70% of people arrested on the ice were transferred directly from the prison system to ICE custody, according to immigrants’ nonprofit freedoms. Trump’s new approach has led agents to make more arrests in their communities in places like Home Depot.
According to Goldstein, pushes to fill quotas run towards raids and roundups, running towards roundups. She worries that the offensive tactics combined with masks will ultimately lead to a shootout. 28 states have a “stand on your ground” law that allows citizens to shoot if they are threatened.
“If you cover up someone who escaped to you, someone would pull out the gun and someone would get injured,” she said.
Trump’s homeland security leader does not appear to have plans to retreat.
“Federal law enforcement is facing an increasingly increasing number of attacks,” DHS wrote in X.
