Washington, DC – In one week, ICE agents showed that citizenship offers no protection from an enforcement machine that treats everyone as a suspect, ensnaring three U.S. citizens in encounters DHS mischaracterized until video and documentation proved otherwise. On August 10, a masked ICE agent in Falls Church drew his gun on Carolina Molina, falsely accusing her of trying to run over agents, a claim her dashcam contradicts. Two days earlier, agents in Norfolk detained Brittany Ramirez Corona after her husband was swept up in the same operation, handcuffing her and dismissing her valid Virginia ID as fake. And in Atlanta, agents pinned John Phillips to a jet bridge wall and handcuffed him as he boarded a flight, mistaking him for an unrelated man in England who shared his name and birthdate.
The same week, DHS advanced a plan to spend up to $20 million on electric shock gloves for ICE officers, even as agents continue working masked and unidentified. The plan comes as ICE confirmed a third death at Delaney Hall in New Jersey, after Guatemalan national Jose Chajon-Raxon suffered a seizure and died, news DHS withheld for more than a week after a member of Congress revealed it. More than 53 people have now died in ICE custody since Trump took office.
Joanna Kuebler, Chief of Programs at America’s Voice, issued the following statement:
“From the beginning, mass deportation was never about public safety. It was always about targeting anyone and everyone this administration deems undesirable, for whatever reason. Stephen Miller and Donald Trump have total disdain for our immigrant community, our civil liberties, and the US constitution. They prefer the monstrosity they have created: an out-of-control, trigger-happy ICE agency to do their bidding. This kind of chaos and recklessness has left death and destruction in its wake. We saw it with Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián last month, and if it continues, we will see it again. Congress and DHS owe the American people real accountability before this administration’s recklessness costs someone else their life.”
