A growing number of U.S. citizens—many of them Latino—say they’ve been detained by immigration agents in what critics are calling blatant racial profiling and overzealous policing.
Of course, citizens aren’t supposed to be arrested or detained unless agents believe they’ve broken the law. But across the country, reports are piling up of Latino citizens being stopped, questioned, and even jailed—just for looking “foreign.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement hasn’t released statistics on these incidents in months, but the Department of Homeland Security is already doing damage control. Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Axios that claims of citizens being wrongfully detained are not true, and accused the media of “shamefully peddling a false narrative” to smear ICE agents.
“Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE,” McLaughlin said.
But anecdotal evidence paints a murkier picture. Axios reviewed news reports, social media clips, and complaints from advocacy groups and found several cases where citizens were taken by ICE, sometimes for days.
In May, ICE detained Florida native Leonardo Garcia Venegas while he was on the job at a construction site in Foley, Alabama. They accused him of carrying a fake Real ID, ordered him to his knees, and handcuffed him, according to Noticias Telemundo.
Then there’s Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who spent 10 days in ICE custody after agents arrested him in Arizona and refused to believe his citizenship.
Last month, ICE briefly held Elzon Lemus, an electrician from Brentwood, New York, during a routine traffic stop, saying he matched the description of someone they were looking for.
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In California, plainclothes ICE agents briefly detained Jason Brian Gavidia, born in East Los Angeles, outside of a Montebello body shop and demanded to know where he was born.
“I’m an American, bro!” he shouted, as captured on video.
In Southern California alone, at least five more incidents have been reported, according to Guadalupe Gonzalez of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. And they don’t appear isolated.
ICE raids have continued aggressively across Latino-heavy regions like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Diego, and states like Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and New York—raising fears that the agency is targeting communities by ethnicity, not evidence.
Civil rights groups are pushing back. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund plans to file a $1 million federal lawsuit on behalf of Job Garcia, a U.S. citizen and photographer who was allegedly detained while filming an ICE raid outside of a Hollywood Home Depot. Garcia had no criminal record and confirmed his citizenship, but he was still held for a day.
“We do our due diligence,” McLaughlin insisted. “DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted and are not resulting in the arrest of U.S. citizens.”
But advocates aren’t buying it.
“Let’s just call it what it is: This is racial discrimination,” said councilmember Mario Trujillo of Downey, California.
Even Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who was physically removed from a Homeland Security briefing in June, weighed in on the matter.
“Reports of American citizens detained by ICE purely based on their race are wholly unacceptable and run afoul of our Fourth Amendment rights,” he told Axios. “No one should feel unsafe because of the color of their skin, but in [President] Donald Trump’s America—where indiscriminate immigration raids are commonplace—this is the stark reality.”
For now, ICE denies any wrongdoing. But to many Latino citizens, the message is clear: In Trump’s America, having the right papers isn’t enough.