Unchecked violence, unaccountable to the rule of law, un-American by any measure of honor and decency. Part two of a two-part series
No matter our legal status or citizenship, we have all been fair game under the bloody, chaotic and lawless $240 billion mass deportation agenda of the Trump administration. In the final part of this two part series, Year Two only gets worse: deadly brutality killing U.S. citizens, brazen thuggery and lawlessness, and unabashed cruelty that shocked the conscience of Americans in 2026. To this moment, the ICE onslaught continues to threaten the safety and wellbeing of our families, communities and the economy. See part one here.
YEAR TWO: ICE-COLD WINTER LEADS TO MORE DEATH AND CHAOS
- In January, an ICE agent shot and killed RENÉE NICOLE GOOD, a Minnesota mom of three who had just dropped off her children at school. Like in the case of RUBEN RAY MARTINEZ, officials falsely claimed that Good had attempted to strike the agent with her vehicle. This is a lie they would go on to parrot in other cases of state-inflicted violence. That same month, mass deportation agents killed Veterans’ Affairs ICU nurse ALEX PRETTI, shooting and killing him while he attempted to tend to a fellow observer who had been knocked down. Their brutal deaths sparked mass protests across the country and marked a sharp blow to ICE’s credibility, with Quinnipiac noting 63% of voters disapproving of the way the agency was enforcing immigration laws compared to the month before Good and Pretti were killed, when 57% said they disapproved.
- In Minnesota, ICE agents used FIVE-YEAR-OLD LIAM CONEJO RAMOS as human bait in order to arrest him and his father, eventually detaining the pair at the migrant family jail in Dilley, Texas. Liam reportedly fell ill in the days before a court ordered his release, suffering from a fever, vomiting and depression. In the “scathing” ruling allowing Liam and his dad to return home to Minnesota, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery “wrote that the father and son ‘seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law,’” Mother Jones reported. Despite winning release, Liam’s dad, ADRIAN CONEJO RAMOS, said the boy struggles with trauma. “The truth is, he’s not the same boy he was before. Ever since he went in there, he’s suffered psychological trauma; he’s very scared,” he said. “He can’t sleep well at night. He wakes up three or four times a night screaming, ‘Daddy, Daddy.’”
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- Lawlessness was a hallmark of ICE’s invasion of Minnesota, with a federal judge excoriating the agency for violating more court orders in January than “some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” In total, ICE violated nearly 100 court directives that month alone. However, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, chief of the federal district court in Minnesota, “noted that his tally was ‘almost certainly substantially understated’ because it had been ‘hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges,’” The New York Times reported. “This list should give pause to anyone — no matter his or her political beliefs — who cares about the rule of law,” he added. One poll released the following month showed that just three in ten Americans approved of ICE’s performance, with the majority – 62% – saying that the agency is making their communities less safe.
SPRING 2026: ICE INVITES ITSELF TO SCHOOL GRADUATIONS
- ICE jailed a NYC high schooler and asylum-seeker for nearly a year for simply trying to follow the rules by attending his immigration appointment. DYLAN LOPEZ CONTRERAS was sent to an abusive detention camp in Pennsylvania, where he said officers treated him and other detained immigrants like “criminals.” ICE also refused to deliver hundreds of letters that supporters had written for the student, ultimately giving him just three of them. Despite being separated from his family and friends for more than 300 days, his worry was for others still in detention. “I still have so many friends inside,” he said. “We have to continue fighting for them.” Polling during this time showed that Latino voters were souring on the administration’s cruelty, with one Equis poll finding that these voters believed, by a 65-30 margin, that ICE was going too far. “Among Latinos who believe Trump’s actions on immigration have gone too far, the majority cite either the separation of families and detention of children (42%) or the detention and deportation of U.S. citizens and legal residents (26%), rather than the impact on the economy (19%), as their reason for thinking so.”
- DACA recipient and essential healthcare worker JUAN CHAVEZ VELASCO was abducted by ICE while attempting to visit his hospitalized newborn. When Chavez Velasco tried to inform agents that he had valid DACA status, they replied, “That doesn’t matter.” The Texas dad would become one of at least 260 DACA recipients to have been detained since the start of the administration – a once unthinkable number. Other young immigrants have also faced the loss of their protections due to intentional government delays that have stretched out their renewal process for months. “I was very distraught. I was scared,” Chavez Velasco later said of his ordeal. “I remember on my way to the processing facility telling them I had DACA. They told me that didn’t matter, that doesn’t protect me anymore, and in my mind I was thinking they were wrong.”
- U.S. citizen KEVIN GONZÁLEZ made national headlines when he pleaded for federal immigration officials to release his detained parents so he could say goodbye. Kevin, just 18, was dying of stage four colon cancer and had just days left to live. “I ask that [immigration authorities] help me fulfill my last wish, if possible,” said the young man, who was under care of his grandmother in Mexico. It took an order from a judge to win their release, and the couple quickly rushed to Mexico to reunite with their son. Kevin died just one day later. “Through it all, Kevin never gave up. He held on to his final wish,” NBC News reported. “‘I knelt on his feet, I told him I was sorry if I ever disappointed him as a father and that I loved him,’ Kevin’s father said, translated from Spanish.”
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SUMMER 2026: THE SUMMER SURGE AND THE MOUNTING PUBLIC DISGUST
- Monthly ICE abductions soared to record highs, with DHS detaining 43,000 individuals in June, 49,000 in July and nearly 51,000 in August. Many have been U.S. citizens. “Unlike earlier high-profile raids that drew thousands of protesters into the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis,” this summer surge “fanned out” across the country and stalked hospitals, construction sites and truck stops, The New York Times reported. This was an intentional – and ultimately unsuccessful – attempt to band-aid the administration’s plummeting approval on immigration deadly killings and unjust arrests. An America’s Voice polling memo following the surge found Trump’s approval on immigration, once his strongest issue, keeps sinking with ICE collapsing into one of the least trusted agencies in the government. Two polls in the memo showed 58% of Americans both disapproving of his handling of immigration and believing ICE has used too much force.
- LORENZO SALGADO ARAUJO, a father of three U.S. citizens, violently lost his life following ICE’s summer surge. The construction business owner was driving some of his work crew to a job site in Houston when ICE shot and killed him. Salgado Araujo, who had called the U.S. his home for 35 years and was actively working to obtain legal status, became the 10th person to be fatally shot by ICE this year. Just days later, Maine dad JOHAN SEBASTIÁN became the 11th person to be fatally shot by ICE after he was also wrongfully targeted while working as a DoorDash driver. A witness described Johan Sebastián’s widow “crying at the scene, holding her daughter’s hand,” the Portland Press Herald reported. The child, just three-years-old, was still wearing her Bluey pajamas. YouGov polling conducted after their killings found that 60% of Americans had heard about their deaths, with 69% of that group saying that ICE has used too much force.
- MIGRANT CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS TWO have been forced to appear in the complex immigration court system without legal representation, the end result of the administration both ending a long-standing contract with experienced legal providers and speeding up their cases “at an unprecedented rate.” One child broke down in tears after a judge asked, “Would you like to request voluntary departure, or should I issue a removal order?” When the judge later asked a group of minors if this was their first time in immigration court, all raised their hands. The judge then asked them about voluntary departure, treating the question as if it meant anything for these children.
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FALL 2026, THE RECKONING: ICE BRUTALITY FLIPS PUBLIC OPINION, ICE SUPPORTERS AND CONGRESSIONAL ENABLERS FEEL THE HEAT
- In Springfield, Ohio, 20-year-old PIERRE DAMAS BEL, a college freshman with dreams of going into medicine, took his own life after the administration shackled him despite having no criminal record. The administration’s targeting of this bright young man was a direct result of its unjust decision in July to strip roughly 350,000 Haitian immigrants of their legal status, leaving families – many with U.S. citizen kids – that had followed all of the government’s rules vulnerable to separation and, ultimately, deportation. Many of these contributors are essential workers in the healthcare industry, which has already been dealing with shortages. Patients will suffer – and possibly die. “If the United States becomes inhospitable to noncitizens, which I think Trump is doing, we’re going to have a lot of problems staffing our entire healthcare system,” said one public health expert. PRRI polling released ahead of the administration’s stripping of legal status for Haitian immigrants found that they received “high public support regardless of partisan divides,” with 65% of Americans supporting asylum for Haitian individuals fleeing dangerous conditions. “In short, there is a disconnect between the Trump administration’s immigration policies and Americans’ more humanitarian views.”
- ICE continued its brutal campaign through the fall, shooting WILBER RAFAEL GARCÉS and OSCAR BELGAL during traffic stops and leaving both men seriously injured. Despite Garcés having what CNN described as a “gaping gunshot wound” in his back, the 28-year-old Austin DoorDash driver was denied proper medical attention for 11 days. “When ICE can shoot a man in the back and then barely give him any medical treatment and let him suffer, there’s a reason for that because we have gotten to a point where we see people as less than human,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro. In New York, ICE’s targeting of Belgal looked more like a carjacking than a law enforcement operation, with witnesses asking if the plainclothes, armed men were ICE agents or not. Agents had shot Belgal with his five-year-old child in the car. One witness told The Guardian “that the car had only light tints on the windows and that ICE “had to see that the kid was inside.” Like Garcés languished in detention with a bullet still in his body.
📍𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐘𝐎𝐑𝐊: ICE agents shot a man in his car while a child was also in the car. The victim is at least the 25th person to suffer gun violence at the hands of federal immigration officers. @repespaillat.bsky.social attempted to see the victim, but was denied by ICE. #AbuseofPowerWatch
— Abuse of Power Watch (@abuseofpowerwatch.bsky.social) 2026-10-09T15:33:19.954Z
- This month, the administration raided the home of DEMOCRATIC MINNESOTA REP. ILHAN OMAR as part of a baseless effort to reportedly strip her of her U.S. citizenship and deport her. Not only is Rep. Omar being targeted out of racial animus and a personal vendetta that goes back years, the administration ”is tacitly declaring the citizenship of all foreign-born people provisional, their Americanness something that can be revoked,” as New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg notes. Ahead of the midterms, Trump has also been attempting to intimidate all Americans and their right to vote by threatening to unlawfully deploy ICE to the polls. One Numbers/Verasight poll finds that nearly half of Americans oppose this plan. While it’s clear that the administration’s goal is to scare Americans into staying home, 54% “said ICE presence would make no difference to their decision to vote in person,” Democracy Docket said.
IN NOVEMBER, AMERICANS WILL HOLD LEADERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS
“Lawlessness and violence are the centerpiece of Trump’s mass deportation purge. What our nation is witnessing is abuse of power, plain and simple,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “Donald Trump and the allies who bankrolled his mass deportation campaign have built a rogue, out-of-control machine that fires on families, terrorizes children, and turns federal law enforcement against its critics, all without accountability. No American citizen, no family, no neighbor, and no elected official is safe from a DHS that operates as if it is above the law.”
Just this week, America’s Voice unveiled a new billboard ad campaign in five key states highlighting the armed and masked agents, roundups, and violence that have marked immigration enforcement over the past 18 months:
#ICYMI: Today, we launched billboards in five states – TX, NC, GA, MN, IA – showing what immigration enforcement has done to American communities at the hands of ICE – terror, lawlessness, violence.🗣️ Our message is clear: #EndMassDeportation NOW.➡️ Learn more: EndMassDeportation.org
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2026-10-19T20:45:14.463Z
“This lawlessness and violence did not happen by accident,” Cárdenas continued. “Congress funded this machine of fear and destruction, and Congress has the power to stop it. Lawmakers must stop ICE, demand independent investigations, and stop bankrolling this cruelty before more people are hurt.”
