“Donald Trump and his allies have built a mass deportation machine that treats every driver, every neighbor, and every bystander as expendable”
The Trump administration’s chaotic, unsparing and bloody mass deportation agenda has been on full display in recent days, following yet another reported in-custody ICE death and a series of brutal, public arrests targeting U.S. citizens and immigrant community members alike.
ICE’S DEATH TOLL CONTINUES
Syracuse University’s Austin Kocher writes that late last week, Carlos Josué Marchena, a 37-year-old Costa Rican immigrant who had been in ICE custody since January, reportedly died while locked up in a LaSalle Corrections-operated camp in Louisiana. If confirmed, it would make him the 25th individual to die while in ICE detention since the beginning of the year, and the third to die at Winn Correctional Center since January 2025, Kocher said.
“ICE has not yet confirmed this death publicly and English language media has been slow to pick up the story, but online reports from Spanish language outlets such as Conexión Migrant, Teletica, and others have been reporting on the story since Friday,” he wrote. Telemundo’s Spanish-language report below:
A BULLET STILL LODGED IN HIS BACK
Then over the weekend, an ICE agent shot and seriously injured a Door Dash driver while he was on the job in Austin, Texas, CNN reports. Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said 28-year-old Venezuelan immigrant Wilber Rafael Garces Perez had called his wife to tell her he’d been shot and “was yelling in pain,” NPR reported. CNN described “a gaping gunshot wound in his back.”
But Lincoln-Goldfinch said that when she and others went to the hospital, they were reportedly run off the property and kept out of the loop on his whereabouts until Monday morning.
Subsequent reporting has since revealed that Garces Perez, who has no criminal record and entered the U.S. legally, has not been permitted to recuperate in a hospital and was instead being interrogated in ICE detention “while a bullet remained in his back,” the AP reports. “Perez also said he had no pain medication,” the report continued. Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) said ICE is currently attempting to deport the injured man in order to escape accountability:
ICE wants to deport Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a DoorDash driver who they just shot in Austin yesterday. The federal government can't shoot someone and then try to make them disappear to escape scrutiny.Wilber Rafael Garces Perez needs a doctor right now, not a deportation.
— Congressman Greg Casar (@repcasar.bsky.social) 2026-09-21T13:31:26.657Z
“I’m very angry about this,” responded Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. “I’m extremely unhappy. A person being shot on the streets of Austin by someone purporting to be law enforcement, particularly when it’s ICE, is something that causes me to be unhappy and angry about it.”
“And while I’m unhappy and I’m angry about it, I’m not surprised at all,” Mayor Watson continued. “It’s happened in other cities with the nature of ICE and the way ICE is doing its business these days and the chaos that we see it performing and fomenting. There’s no reason for us to be surprised by it.”
KAVANAUGH STOPS REMAIN A THREAT TO US ALL
The very same day that Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was left with a gaping wound in his back, a vicious Kavanaugh stop in the Chicago suburb of Evanston was the latest example of why the administration’s mass purging of immigrants represents a threat to all communities. The unnamed U.S. citizen’s crime?
Simply looking like another person that ICE agents were allegedly seeking.
“A video posted to Facebook on Sunday shows the end of the incident as agents drove off near El Pueblito Mexican Grill on Howard Street, including a man lying near the curb with at least two agents near him,” Evanston Now reports. Responding Evanston police said that an agent “told the officer that agents had attempted to identify an individual who resembled a person they were seeking … Agents later determined he was not the person they were seeking and learned that he was a U.S. citizen. He was released.”
Or, more accurately, abandoned on a street with injuries to his head, neck, and teeth:
Video of this incident shared on FacebookThis appears to be the end of the incident. I'm told Evanston police responded and the man was a U.S. citizen and was taken to a local hospitalPolice made contact with the agents near Dodge/BrummelStory with more info TK momentarily
— Matthew Eadie (@mattheweadie.bsky.social) 2026-09-21T00:36:15.366Z
The brutal assault and wrongful detention of Americans by their own government continues to be the predictable result of Kavanaugh stops, a government-sanctioned racial profiling policy that has targeted U.S. citizens at home, on the way to a medical appointment and after leaving the hospital, walking through a park, walking to the bus stop, at the airport, and, in the case of one Alabaman, while at work in May 2025 and again three weeks later.
Construction worker Leo Garcia Venegas was then detained for a third time outside his home. This week, he won a major victory in his ongoing case against the federal government.
Are these the “minor inconveniences” Justice Brett Kavanaugh was mentioning when he said race can be a factor in immigration enforcement?
‘YOUR PARENTS CAN’T HELP YOU NOW’
This anti-immigrant purge does not spare American children, either. Earlier this month, two U.S. citizen teens had plans to drive to a recruiting office to sign up to serve their country as Marines. But their country violently attacked them instead.
“The two teens said they were filming an ICE-involved incident happening at a nearby elementary school in Alamo, Texas, last week,” The Daily Beast reported Sept. 14. “It was then that federal agents used force and pepper-sprayed the pair.” Video captured by a bystander showed a team of agents repeatedly punching one boy while a second rubs at his face and flails in distress. “The person filming the scene appears to repeatedly yell at the agents that the boys are minors,” the report continues.
The San Antonio Express-News reported that ICE violently detained the second boy, 17-year-old Luis Ochoa, in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. But Ochoa said that when he tried to tell the agents that he and his friend are American citizens, he was reportedly told, “I don’t give a damn … Your parents can’t help you now.” Luis and his friend – again, both U.S. citizens and minors – would eventually eight hours in detention.
In an interview with Telemundo, Luis’ mom, Teresa Ochoa, “said the moment her son was detained was one of the most agonizing moments of her life, as she feared that they would take him to Mexico,” The Daily Beast continued. “How are they supposed to serve a country that doesn’t even uphold their basic rights?” she asked.
“He is a minor; it’s traumatic enough for an adult — for something like this to happen to him is really tough,” she continued. “It was eight hours without hearing from him; they wouldn’t give me any information — they behaved very badly.”
SALAZAR CONDEMNS ICE RAIDS SHE FUNDED
So very badly that one of the administration’s allies has cut a video purporting to push back on some of Trump’s mass deportation efforts, The Guardian reported. “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar claimed in the clip. “In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy.”
But what Rep. Salazar doesn’t say in the ad is that she’s repeatedly voted to fund DHS, to the tune of $240 billion since the start of the Trump administration – and with no safeguards attached. Last year, she touted her vote for the Big, Ugly Budget bill, which gave ICE and CBP a massive infusion of $170 billion. “More jobs. More freedom. More money in your pocket,” she said at the time. Wrong, wrong, so very wrong.
Then this year, she again voted to give ICE and CBP another massive infusion of funds. Like the earlier funding, this $70 billion in taxpayer dollars came with no strings attached.
ACCOUNTABILITY IS COMING
“These violent encounters reflect the reckless pressure of administration-imposed arrest quotas during a summer surge that saw ICE record more than 50,000 arrests in a single month for the first time in history,” America’s Voice said in a statement on Monday. “That same surge has already claimed the lives of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas, Johan Sebastián in Maine, and Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.”
But Americans have been watching this cruelty against their neighbors and are repelled, with ICE collapsing into one of the least trusted federal offices in the nation. That includes caving favorability numbers across every partisan group. “Voters have made it clear that enough is enough and this November, will hold those responsible for funding this machine of terror accountable,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas.
“Whether it is an agent shooting yet another Latino man or federal agents assaulting yet another U.S. citizen Donald Trump’s mass deportation obsession is making us all poorer and less safe,” Cárdenas said. “It doesn’t matter who ICE thought either of them was. No family should have to wonder whether a traffic stop or a case of mistaken identity will leave someone they love bleeding in the street. Donald Trump and his allies have built a mass deportation machine that treats every driver, every neighbor, and every bystander as expendable. The country is paying for it in blood, in fear, and at the well being of our economy and security.”
