A masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent grabbed Monica Moreta-Galarza’s hair as she clung to her husband, pleading with the agents who have been detaining him. She was wrestled away from him as her crying youngsters have been held again by different agents.
Moreta-Galarza was taken to a close-by room for an unknown interval earlier than she was seen in movies captured by onlookers within the hallway of an immigration courthouse in Manhattan in late September, telling a special federal agent in Spanish: “You guys don’t care about anything!”
The agent, sporting a flannel shirt and baseball cap, replies, “Adios, adios,” as he grabs the mom and forces her a number of ft down the hallway, shoving her into the wall earlier than pushing her to the bottom.
Moreta-Galarza was rushed to the hospital for doable head trauma.
Her expertise is a snapshot of an array of incidents nationwide caught on digital camera by bystanders, revealing heavy-handed tactics by federal agents since President Donald Trump took workplace in January, experts informed NCS. Videos over the months have proven ICE agents sporting face coverings and plainclothes, driving unmarked cars and swarming worksites and streets throughout their deportation operations. Tensions flared once more in Chicago this week when an immigration operation resulted in a crash, bringing anger from residents and tear fuel.
Many of the incidents on this story, together with Moreta-Galarza’s, have been reported by NCS and authorities confirmed ICE agents have been concerned, with eyewitness movies displaying the generally violent nature of the arrests.
The Department of Homeland Security stated in an announcement to NCS federal agents are dealing with “smearing” by claims the company is using “harsher approaches,” and stated they “put their lives on the line every day to enforce the law.”
Echoing previous statements DHS has made after lots of the incidents, the company stated it is focusing on arrests of the “worst of the worst” and agents are dealing with a surge in assaults towards them. Last month, investigators stated a shooter focused ICE officers at an ICE field office in Dallas, killing two detainees and injuring one other.
ICE and US Customs and Border Protection agents are skilled “to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and themselves,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated within the assertion.
Federal officers beneath DHS are “highly trained” in de-escalation tactics and “regularly receive ongoing use of force training,” McLaughlin stated.
Former Homeland Security officers and immigration experts argue the aggressive tactics are a results of the immense strain on immigration agents to ramp up arrests of undocumented immigrants because the administration tries to meet its deportation targets. Historically, the companies charged with these arrests, like ICE, have been strained, making White House-imposed targets tougher to meet. The administration says it’s a complete government effort.
Officers from different federal companies, such because the FBI and CBP, the company chargeable for border safety, have additionally been pulled into immigration enforcement efforts, flooding the streets of blue cities akin to Los Angeles, Washington, DC and Chicago.
Law enforcement sources informed NCS the more and more aggressive tactics they’ve noticed from immigration agents in latest months have led to confrontations between DHS and agents from different federal companies engaged on joint activity forces.
John Sandweg, former appearing director of ICE beneath President Barack Obama, stated the tactics are not geared toward combating criminality – they’re designed to enhance general arrests.
“You don’t arrest people in immigration court … who are on stays of removal unless you’re looking for cheap, fast and easy arrests,” stated Sandweg, who stays involved with present ICE and DHS personnel.
In circumstances like Moreta-Galarza’s, a superb agent can nonetheless perform their mission whereas treating individuals with “dignity and respect,” stated Sandweg.
“Of course she’s going to have that reaction,” he stated, “you just arrested her husband and the father of her children … maybe not to be seen in this country ever again.”
While DHS has largely doubled down on its protection of the tactics ICE agents have been using in lots of the incidents captured on video, the company condemned the actions of the agent who shoved Moreta-Galarza and “relieved him of his current duties,” calling his actions “unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE.”
It’s unclear whether or not the officer is nonetheless employed by ICE. The company didn’t reply to NCS’s questions on disciplinary actions towards the officer, his present standing or his identify.
ICE and CBP sources freed up after drop in border crossings
Illegal border crossings reached “all-time lows” in July, DHS stated, which allowed sources at ICE and CBP to be freed up, in accordance to Sandweg. ICE has additionally referenced the steep decline in border crossings as a cause its agents are now “focused on the core mission.”
ICE is slated to obtain a landmark $75 billion in federal funds via 2029 from the president’s sweeping agenda bill for detention enlargement and enforcement and removing operations, together with hiring new agents, NCS has reported.
The surge in company sources comes at a time when ICE is aggressively making an attempt to recruit extra agents. This might make much more agents obtainable, as they have been beforehand tied up coping with border circumstances or spending hours, generally days, pursuing one arrest and quietly working with native authorities to goal “truly the worst of the worst,” stated Sandweg.
Over the previous decade, Sandweg stated enhanced border exercise and asylum claims have been “an incredible strain on ICE resources,” as agents had their palms full with taking individuals into custody, processing, supervising and eradicating lots of the migrants who have been apprehended on the border.
Now, ICE and CBP sources are extra obtainable to bolster non-border operations, Sandweg stated.
Both companies have been concerned in large-scale deportation efforts unfolding in areas beforehand shielded from immigration enforcement, akin to faculties, church buildings and courthouses, which hinge on the Trump administration’s determination to roll back a 2011 policy stopping immigration enforcement in delicate areas.
None of these operations could be doable, in accordance to Sandweg, if border crossings hadn’t fallen drastically since final summer season when former President Joe Biden issued an govt motion barring migrants who cross the border illegally from in search of asylum as soon as a threshold of common each day crossings is met.
Trump officers have stated the differing tactics stem from so-called “sanctuary policies” which have been round since the 1980s in lots of Democratic-controlled areas that restrict prisons and jails from cooperating with ICE, so immigration arrests happen in the community slightly than at a detention facility.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly cited sanctuary insurance policies as disruptive to immigration enforcement – and threatened to have an elevated presence in these cities. Homan, a veteran of immigration regulation enforcement, additionally served beneath the Obama administration.
As the second Trump administration shifts how ICE has historically operated, Sandweg says the vary of ICE’s tactics geared toward climbing up arrests and driving migrants to self-deport is working to construct an company “designed to amp up immigration enforcement to levels we’ve never seen in this country.”
While DHS didn’t particularly handle NCS’s request for remark about whether or not its tactics are designed to maximize arrests, the company stated in its assertion it was focusing on violent criminals, together with murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles and rapists.
Federal information reveals most immigrants taken into custody don’t have critical legal convictions, in accordance to a report by NCS Investigates. More than 75% of individuals booked into ICE custody in fiscal yr 2025 had no legal conviction apart from an immigration or traffic-related offense, in accordance to ICE information from October via the top of May.
ICE has launched large-scale raids at worksites like Home Depot parking lots in numerous cities and the Hyundai Metaplant in a small southeast Georgia neighborhood final month – assisted by CBP and different federal and state companies. Nearly 500 people, principally Korean nationals, who labored on the manufacturing plant have been arrested on suspicions they have been residing and dealing illegally within the US.
Undocumented individuals who haven’t been convicted of any crime and have been arrested in raids just like the one at Hyundai have turn out to be “collateral” within the bigger mission to battle criminality, says Jerry Robinette, former ICE Homeland Security Investigations particular agent in cost throughout the Obama administration who additionally labored for the company beneath President George W. Bush.
These individuals get caught when an officer checks their standing and discovers they’re within the nation illegally, which is a civil – not legal – offense, he added.
“As much as they want to target the worst of the worst, you look at who you end up arresting. You’re not being as successful as you would like,” Robinette stated. “You are getting a lot of collateral.”
More in depth immigration raids, just like the one at Hyundai, are coming, Trump’s border czar informed NCS’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union: “The short answer is yes, we’re going to do more worksite enforcement operations,” Homan replied.
Children and adults have been pulled from their properties as federal agents raided an condominium complicated in Chicago final month, arresting 37 undocumented immigrants in one other latest, large-scale raid.
DHS stated gang members and violent criminals have been among those arrested, the company stated in its assertion.
It’s only one instance that exhibits the tactics fueling protests for weeks outside the ICE facility in Broadview, close to Chicago, the place federal agents have at occasions used pepper balls, rubber bullets and tear fuel to clear protesters, placing tensions on full show.
Protests on the website this month once more was heated clashes between protesters and armed agents from CBP and ICE, main to a minimum of 18 arrests, together with 5 who have been charged with aggravated battery to a police officer and resisting and obstruction.
In the Chicago condominium raid, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is investigating claims youngsters have been separated from their mother and father and “zip-tied,” in addition to aged individuals who have been detained for 3 hours, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told NCS’s Jake Tapper.
DHS rejected Pritzker’s claims in a information launch, saying youngsters have been by no means zip-tied within the raid and added the company has “routinely debunked the absurd claim” that it’s focusing on US residents.
The kind of aggression from federal agents the general public is witnessing in lots of of those latest incidents has some similarities to the Fifties-era federal program geared toward mass deportations, referred to as “Operation Wetback” beneath then-President Dwight Eisenhower, in accordance to Jean Reisz, co-director of the University of Southern California Immigration Clinic.
The Trump administration is echoing rhetoric from that period, referring to immigrants “as being ‘the worst of the worst,’ as being dangerous, as being invaders,” Reisz stated, which empowers agents within the streets to “use aggression toward those who could be viewed as resisting.”
The public fury this yr over how ICE is working is rooted in how the Trump administration is pushing the boundaries of varied particular person rights — akin to birthright citizenship — which have been protected for over 60 years, Reisz stated. Just final month, the Trump administration requested the Supreme Court to evaluation the constitutionality of the president’s govt order seeking to end birthright citizenship.
DHS didn’t reply to NCS’s request for remark in regards to the comparability with the Fifties-era federal program.
In footage: Protests in LA after immigration raids
This summer season, tensions reached a tipping level throughout weeks of protests in Los Angeles after a wave of detentions within the metropolis, when protesters’ confrontations with native police and federal officers escalated into violent clashes that prompted a controversial, federal deployment of National Guard troops. Federal agents used flash-bangs and tear gas to disperse crowds, with some hitting demonstrators, in addition to protesters setting hearth to self-driving vehicles.
Robinette stated the “optics” of the tactics federal immigration agents have been using are “not good for us as an agency,” however they are a results of officers having to observe orders from prime administration officers and confrontations with individuals resisting as they execute the orders.
The political pressures on ICE have induced “a lot of headaches” because it offers with protesters who don’t simply have points with the company however are additionally pushed by political grievances associated to the Trump administration, Robinette stated. “The job is getting difficult.”
The sweeping raids have instilled a “persistent mental anxiety” inside the immigrant neighborhood when encountering native police or National Guard troops who may report them to federal immigration officers, stated Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock with the National Immigration Law Center.
“Even if you’ve got your papers, even though you’re a US citizen, you kind of have to check over your shoulder and that’s having a pretty negative impact on people mentally,” Whitlock stated. “And then that translates to a fear or flight response that happens when you do encounter them.”
Scenes from among the incidents captured on video in latest months have proven federal agents wearing masks or plainclothes whereas arresting individuals — one thing they’ve traditionally finished solely whereas performing undercover work or arresting among the nation’s most harmful criminals, experts say.
Surveillance video exhibits second Tufts pupil is arrested by federal agents
In Los Angeles, masked agents have been seen yanking a Colombian immigrant out of her car and detaining her on the bottom. In Washington, DC, video confirmed masked federal agents struggling to arrest a man before he appears to be tased and subdued on the pavement. In Massachusetts, Turkish nationwide and Tufts University grad pupil Rümeysa Öztürk was bodily restrained by six plainclothes officers, most of whom have been sporting face coverings.
There is no federal coverage dictating when officers can or ought to cowl their faces throughout arrests. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has stated federal officers are covering up to protect their families after some have been publicly recognized after which harassed on-line, together with kinfolk.
“I am sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, and their family on the line, because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” Lyons stated.
But there is a danger of escalating encounters when individuals can’t determine them as federal agents, stated Jeffrey Swartz, a Cooley Law School professor and former prosecutor and decide.
“We’ve never tolerated people who are engaged in law enforcement, who keep who they are and their identification secret from the people who might have complaints about the way they’re being treated,” stated Swartz. “Police officers have always identified themselves.”
DHS stated the “vilification” of ICE “must stop,” claiming its agents are dealing with a 1,000% enhance in assaults towards them since Trump took workplace in January. ICE famous “criminal illegal aliens” have focused its federal agents previously.
A evaluation of federal court docket information by Colorado Public Radio, nevertheless, revealed a 25% enhance in individuals dealing with expenses for assault towards federal officers via mid-September, as in contrast to the identical interval final yr.
When requested by NCS whether or not ICE is giving any directives for its agents to put on face coverings, DHS stated: “When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves and their families from being targeted” by gangs, murderers, rapists and different violent criminals.
The Trump administration is on tempo to deport nearly 600,000 people by the top of Trump’s first yr of his second time period, DHS stated late final month. It is not clear what the breakdown of deportations is by company.
Including the 71,400 deportations recorded by ICE between October 2024 and the top of December earlier than Trump took workplace, ICE was already on tempo to surpass 300,000 deportations by September 30 – the very best quantity recorded in a single fiscal yr for the reason that Obama administration, when round 316,000 individuals have been eliminated in fiscal yr 2014, NCS reported. CBP recorded greater than 132,000 deportations this yr.
The company stated 70% of ICE arrests are “of criminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or have pending charges in the US.”
Former ICE officers, like Sandweg and Robinette, fear in regards to the long-term impression on the company due to the pressures they’re dealing with this Trump time period.
Sandweg says the lasting impression might be “devastating” for an company that has traditionally labored as an in depth and quiet associate of state and native regulation enforcement.
With agents now working side-by-side with native companies taking part within the revived 287(g) program – permitting ICE to authorize state and native regulation enforcement officers to carry out particular immigration enforcement duties beneath its supervision – it’s fueling tensions with native leaders, who have expressed concerns about ICE overstepping or protecting them at the hours of darkness.
“My biggest concern is … what’s going to happen for the future of the agency?” Robinette stated. “This agency, since its birth, has never gone through anything like this.”
The robust presence of federal officers in communities has “impacted the psyche of the American public,” deterring individuals from partaking with native and federal authorities, fracturing belief and instilling concern and uncertainty, stated Thaddeus Johnson, a former regulation enforcement official in Tennessee and a senior fellow on the Council on Criminal Justice, an impartial nonpartisan group.
Johnson stated he’s involved the impression will undercut the legitimacy and authority of native and state companies lengthy after federal agents go away communities.
For individuals on the receiving finish of harsher ICE tactics – akin to Moreta-Galarza in New York – the expertise will be re-traumatizing and gasoline distrust. After she was pushed and shoved by the ICE agent, the mom informed reporters she fled violence in Ecuador solely to undergo “the same thing” within the US.
She and her household have open asylum claims, in accordance to US Rep. Dan Goldman, who added they are right here “lawfully but are being targeted by ICE regardless.”
“They encircled us, then they slammed me against the floor, they grabbed my kids and dragged them away,” Moreta-Galarza informed NCS affiliate WXTV. “They slammed me against the floor and caused my head to slam against the floor. Everyone from ICE fell on top of me.”