An ICE agent who shot a man, lied about it, and fled the state has finally been arrested. Christian Castro is in custody at last.
It took Minnesota prosecutors, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the Texas Rangers, and the DHS Inspector General to make it happen — because ICE, the agency Castro worked for, spent months defending him and attacking the people trying to hold him accountable.
Here's what the evidence shows:
On January 14th, Castro was chasing Alfredo Aljorna through Minneapolis when Aljorna ran into his home. Castro fired a bullet through the front door of an occupied residence, wounding Aljorna's roommate, Julio Sosa-Celis, in the leg. That night, Castro told investigators he had fired in self-defense after being beaten for several minutes with a shovel and a broom by three men.
Based entirely on Castro's account, federal prosecutors charged Sosa-Celis and Aljorna with assaulting a law enforcement officer.
Then the surveillance footage emerged. A Minneapolis police camera captured the entire encounter. It lasted approximately 12 seconds. There was no prolonged beating. Castro's story fell apart, the charges against the two Venezuelan men were dropped, and prosecutors concluded Castro had not only shot an innocent man but filed a false police report to cover it up.
ICE's response when Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged Castro this month? The agency called the charges "unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt." A political stunt. That's what ICE called holding their agent accountable for shooting a man and lying about it under oath.
Castro was placed on leave and apparently decided that escaping to Texas was preferable to facing justice in Minnesota. He was tracked down by state investigators and arrested Friday morning with the Texas Rangers and DHS's own inspector general present for the takedown. Castro is the second ICE agent charged by Moriarty's office for conduct during Operation Metro Surge. The other, Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., was charged with assault for pointing a gun at motorists on a highway. He also has an active arrest warrant.
Moriarty called Friday's arrest "a critical step forward." It is also a demonstration that accountability for federal agents is possible — even when their own agency fights it every step of the way.
If you’re glad that ICE agents who abuse their power are finally being held accountable, please like and share this post everywhere!BREAKING: JUSTICE! An ICE agent who shot a man, lied about it, and fled the state has finally been arrested.
Christian Castro is in custody at last.
It took Minnesota prosecutors, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the Texas Rangers, and the DHS Inspector General to make it happen — because ICE, the agency Castro worked for, spent months defending him and attacking the people trying to hold him accountable.
Border czar warns there will be more ‘bloodshed’ unless Democrats ‘shut their mouths’
Tom Homan’s comments come after two men were fatally shot this week at the hands of ICE agents in separate incidents
Following the back-to-back fatal shootings of a Colombian native in Maine and a Mexican man in Houston by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration has tried to shift the blame onto Democratic leaders who have been educating immigrants on their rights.
“I'm scared to death because assaults with vehicles are sky high. There's been a lot of shootings. I'm scared to death that one of these days, our ICE officers aren't going to be quick enough. The bad guys can be quicker,” Homan told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Wednesday night.
“It all goes back to the Dems who want to continually attack ICE and tell people to evade them, tell people don't comply, tell people to resist, and tell people ICE isn’t a real law enforcement,” Homan said. “There's still going to be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws that they enacted.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on social media earlier Wednesday that federal agents “are facing a more than 1,300% increase in vehicle attacks,” and blamed Democrats, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California Governor Gavin Newsom, for teaching their constituents to “openly defy” ICE.
In February 2025, Ocasio-Cortez shared a “Know Your Rights” guide, telling her constituents not to open their door unless ICE has a warrant signed by a judge and to ask them to leave if they don’t have the proper paperwork.
Newsom also released a “Know Your Rights” fact sheet that included tips for identifying federal agents, but it cautioned: “Even if you believe your rights are being violated, don’t argue, resist or obstruct the officer.”
Mainer Joan Sebastian Guerrero, 25, and Texan Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, were killed by ICE at traffic stops on Monday and July 7, respectively. The Homeland Security Department said an ICE officer fired his weapon at Guerrero because he feared for “public safety,” and Salgado Araujo was shot in “self-defense.”
Following the fatal shootings, Mullin paused traffic stops, advising federal agents to “prioritize other existing operational methods” in an internal email seen by The Atlantic.
But Trump later overturned that order, writing on Truth Social Wednesday, “We must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
“The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch,” his post read.
Six immigrant children spent as long as 505 days in federal custody as their families waited
Immigrant children now spend an average of more than six months in federal custody nationwide— triple the previous peak of the last decade — after the administration of President Donald Trump imposed stringent new requirements for their release.
During the three months CT Insider spent reporting this story this spring, more than two dozen immigrant children sat in federal custody in Connecticut — some in group homes, others in foster care. Court records show many had parents or close family ready to take them in. But the federal agency responsible for vetting those sponsors, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, has kept children in custody for months by imposing requirements no federal regulation or law demands and restarting vetting it already completed, a CT Insider investigation found. One child was held more than 500 days, most of it in a program in New Haven.
In at least six cases, all filed since December, families won their children’s release only by suing.
Federal rules require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to transfer unaccompanied immigrant children within 72 hours to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement — a child-welfare agency, not an enforcement one, charged with care for children who arrive alone. For these six children, that part worked. They were moved within days.
What came next didn’t work as well. Families answered every demand — birth certificates, DNA tests, home studies, background checks. But the children stayed in custody as the government kept adding requirements for their parents' applications to be considered complete.
Once a parent or guardian applies for a child’s release, ORR regulations require it to decide within 10 days, absent unexpected delays.
Only when lawyers went to federal court did anything change.
Each child was released shortly after a lawsuit was filed — before the government ever had to defend the delays in court.
The federal government would not answer any questions about these cases and declined to comment for this story.
The delays these children face trace to last year, when the Trump administration overhauled how the office of Refugee Resettlement vets the parents and relatives seeking custody of these children — changes the administration says protect them from being released to unsafe sponsors.
In a sworn declaration filed in one of these cases, a top ORR official wrote that, unlike law enforcement or state child-welfare agencies, the agency has no way to monitor children once they’re released or take them back if a sponsor turns out to be unsafe. So, the federal government argues, it must “front-load” its safety checks before release. The federal government would not answer questions about the length of detention, including whether it considers the delays appropriate or if they are doing anything to shorten these children’s stays.
Here are the stories of those six children drawn from court records in lawsuits where the children’s detention was challenged as illegal. CT Insider changed the names of the children to protect their identities. Most families declined interview requests, saying through their attorneys that they fear retaliation from the federal government.
Jean, 12 years old — 505 days in custody
Jean was 12 when officials detained him at the U.S. border. He spent his 13th birthday in federal custody — and went on waiting.
The phone at the ORR shelter in California where he was staying would ring, but he refused to take the calls, according to records filed in a federal lawsuit challenging his detention. On the other end was his family — his father, his stepmother, his two sisters. Talking was too painful, a reminder that he could not be with them.
It was "not normal," he told his caseworkers, to be this alone. What he wanted — he said again and again — was to go home with his family in Fort Lauderdale.
By the spring, his family had answered every question the government raised, their lawsuit alleges. A corrected birth certificate. A favorable home study. Background checks that came back clean. In April, ORR released Jean’s two sisters to his stepmother — a sponsor it had already vetted and approved.
The agency kept Jean after a required DNA test showed his father was not his biological parent – a fact court records say his father didn’t know until the test came back His father said it changed nothing: the boy would always be his son. The government kept Jean detained anyway.
Average number of days the government held unaccompanied minors National data from October 2024 to April 2026.
Then ORR asked for a record no one could obtain, according to the lawsuit. Jean's mother had died when he was three months old, and her death certificate sat in a Haitian government office the gangs now held — records the State Department itself had declared unobtainable. When his stepmother could not produce it, ORR pressed her to withdraw. She did — and ORR transferred him from California to a long-term foster care program in New Haven.
Then she applied again from the beginning. ORR ordered another home study — the first had come back favorable — and denied her by telephone, with nothing in writing, citing the birth certificate she had corrected 10 months before — the original, issued in Haiti, had listed his stepmother, the only mother he had ever known, rather than his biological mother, who died when Jean was three months old.
Two hundred days became 500.
It took a federal lawsuit to end it.
In a court filing responding to the petition for Jean's release, government attorneys gave a litany of reasons why the boy was still in custody — a translator had raised concerns about the family’s first birth certificate submission, his father’s DNA test came back with a 0 percent match and an initial home study found his father had used a belt to discipline a minor child. (Florida child protection officials declined to pursue the discipline issue, according to court filings, because it “did not meet their criteria for abuse or neglect.”)
Government attorneys also questioned Jean’s stepmother — saying they couldn’t confirm his biological mother was dead, or that the stepmother had a pre-existing relationship with him, and noted ORR policies bar sponsors who knowingly submit false information.
But just over two weeks after the government's filing, U.S. District Judge Vernon Oliver ruled for the family and ordered Jean's release.
In making that determination, Oliver called the government’s process in the case “arbitrary and capricious.”
"Every minute that someone is unlawfully denied freedom," Oliver wrote in his final order, quoting a different case "results in an injury that really can never be remedied."
Jean was finally reunited with his family after 505 days, court records show.
BenjamÃn, 16 years old — 143 days in custody
The arrests didn’t take long.
According to a federal lawsuit and a declaration filed in the case, two Buffalo police officers stopped Dennis’ car in August 2025 and collected his driver’s license. They also demanded proof that he and his passengers were in the country legally. Dennis and his brother Benjamin turned over their paperwork and their friend, a U.S. citizen, provided his passport.
They waited, terrified.
Twenty minutes passed and two cars pulled up. Officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security got out and approached. Dennis and Benjamin were arrested, handcuffed and transported to a nearby federal facility. Their friend was driven there in the other car.
“They said they were going to take all of us to the ICE station to fingerprint us and that if everything was clear, we could go home,” Benjamin wrote in the declaration. “I was so scared that I was shaking, and my skin felt prickly.”
For hours, he wrote, the ICE officers questioned them and told them America would pay them $2,000 to leave the country — even though the brothers explained they had Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and Deferred Action, protections from deportation. Since last year, the Trump administration has been paying immigrants to self-deport.
Then the officers told them to sign some papers, written in English. No one explained what they were, according to court documents.
"I didn’t think I had a choice to say no, so I signed," Benjamin wrote.
His brother, who had just turned 18, was put in handcuffs, and ankle chains and taken away.
“I cried and begged them to please let me go with my brother,” he wrote.
Dennis was deported home to Ecuador.
There's been a dramatic shift in the number of unaccompanied children processed by the government
The next day, Benjamin wrote he was flown to a shelter in Texas where he learned what he had signed: a form in which he agreed to leave the country on his own. Benjamin was held in Texas for two months, then moved to a shelter in Groton. He couldn’t understand why he was there. He had been through it once before.
Court records show Benjamin first came to the U.S. when he was 12 years old. He was detained then, too, and released to his dad within weeks after the government vetted him and approved him to be his sponsor.
When DHS arrested him this second time, ORR started the vetting process all over.
Weeks became months.
“I don’t understand why they have not let me go back to my papa,” he wrote. “I feel like I am never going to get out of here.”
In Groton, the days are identical, he wrote. The shelter is a house. Benjamin spends all his time in three rooms: his bedroom, the living room and dining room. Class happens at the dining table where children also eat — ages 13 to 17, one lesson for everyone. Showers are at 5 p.m. On Saturdays, nothing. He can’t go outside unless a staff member joins.
“I feel trapped,” he wrote. “I feel like a delinquent.”
Two days before Christmas, Benjamin was released from federal custody — 143 days after his arrest, and four days after lawyers filed a lawsuit over what they called an illegal detention.
With Benjamin released, his lawyers dropped the case — and the federal government never had to defend his detention, or the delay, in court.
Camila, 5 years old — 118 days in custody
Camila is five.
She paints. She dances. She runs. She likes being around other people. This is from court records, where her mother in a sworn declaration tried to describe who she was before the federal government detained her.
She was born in Atlixco, an agricultural city in central Mexico, and lived there for the first five years of her life, first with her parents, then after both parents left to find work in the U.S., with her grandparents. She spoke with her mother almost every day on video calls. Birthdays and Christmas gifts arrived in the mail.
In the summer of 2025, her mother told her on a video call that she was going to be a big sister. A few months later, Camila crossed the border into Arizona. How a five-year-old got from central Mexico to the border, and with whom, isn’t in the records and her mom declined to share those details during an interview. What is: her parents weren’t allowed to take her because of their immigration status, so the government labeled her ‘unaccompanied’.
She spent the next four months in federal immigration custody — first in a detention center run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, then in a shelter in eastern Connecticut, where she was the youngest by far. And then she was moved to New Haven, the city where her mother lived. Camila's mother, who entered the country illegally, has a pending application seeking legal residency in the U.S.
At night Camila slept in a foster home. Her days were consistent: breakfast to evening was spent at an office building fitted with classrooms, where she was the only child in her class.
She got to see her mother once a week — for an hour.
A child psychiatrist who evaluated her in the final weeks of her detention wrote that she had nightmares and refused to talk about her family. The doctor wrote in that evaluation submitted to the court that Camila was processing what was happening to her through her play.
“She is having nightmares, is avoidant of discussion of her family and separation, and she manifests anxiety through her play,” Dr. Laine Taylor wrote. “Her play evaluation... clearly demonstrated that she is struggling with anxiety and fear.”
Camila is home now, released three days after lawyers filed a lawsuit challenging her detention. There is a new baby brother in the apartment.
She paints. She dances. She runs. She has a pink princess-themed room, but she sleeps with her mom.
“She doesn't like to be away from me,” her mom said during an interview. “When she's away from me, she thinks these people are going to come back for her.”
Liam, 15 years old — 255 days in custody
On Jan. 5, Liam’s mother received the call she’d waited eight months for. Her son Liam was finally coming home.
Minutes later, the shelter called her back. There was a mistake. She couldn’t pick Liam up yet, but they would call her back soon.
By the time U.S. District Judge Vernon Oliver heard arguments for and against Liam’s release on Jan. 15, his mother was still waiting for that follow-up call, according to the lawsuit she filed challenging his detention.
It all began in May 2025, when local police arrested Liam at 15 following a fight. Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived at the station after Liam’s father got there to pick him up, separated the two and took them both into custody. Liam went to an ICE office in Burlington, Massachusetts, then an ORR shelter in Texas for three months before finally landing at Noank Community Support Services, in Groton, Connecticut.
Whether, and how, ICE ever contacted Liam’s mother after his arrest is a matter of dispute.
Liam’s mother and his attorneys said in court filings that ICE called her when he was in Burlington but did not tell her she could pick him up there. She didn’t hear from him again until he was in Texas.
Meanwhile, the government made a series of seemingly contradictory statements, according to Oliver’s ruling. In one filing cited in the ruling, it said ICE couldn’t locate or contact her. In another, it said ICE asked her to pick Liam up but she didn’t show — and if she had, ICE would have also arrested her. That same filing said she was at the police station during his arrest.
In a May letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., pointed to allegations that federal officials have used children as bait to arrest their sponsors. Officials, Wyden said, have used the threat that they will arrest and deport a sponsor to pressure a child to accept voluntary deportation.
ORR removed a Biden-era regulation last year that prevented it from sharing information about sponsors’ immigration status with ICE or disqualifying sponsors because of their immigration status.
The government’s full response to Liam's habeas petition isn’t open to the public. But in a court filing defending its decision to designate Liam as an unaccompanied minor instead of turning him over to his mother, the government said it acted appropriately.
“DHS had no choice but to declare Petitioner a UAC," the government said, using the acronym for "unaccompanied alien child," the legal term for such immigrant children.
Oliver was blistering in his assessment of the government’s claims in Liam’s case, calling them “disturbing” and saying they were “full of significant incongruities.”
Before his arrest, Liam liked to play in his neighborhood and help his mother in the kitchen. In the shelters, he grew anxious and depressed. A psychological evaluation last December recommended his release “as soon as possible so he can return to his family, which is crucial for his well-being.”
Oliver ordered ORR to release Liam in mid-January, 27 days after the lawsuit challenging his detention was filed. His mother was finally able to pick him up the following day.
Miguel, 14 years old — 167 days in custody
Miguel was 14 years old and wanted to be a teacher. He should have been in middle school. Instead, he was taught inside the building where he was held in New Haven — a converted office fitted with classrooms — alongside his 16-year-old brother and an 11-year-old, both in federal custody.
Not able to enroll in a neighborhood school, he had been "isolated from peers and deprived of basic opportunities for the educational and social-emotional growth that's critical to [his] development," the lawyers seeking his release wrote in the petition asking a federal judge to release him.
Miguel was born in the highlands of Guatemala, into a family too poor to keep him in school. He and his brother worked the family's field, but it was never enough. Last December they crossed the border illegally to join their father, who had left to find work in the U.S. years earlier.
Their father, in Providence, court records show, wanted only to bring his sons home. It would take more than five months. From the first week, his attorney says in court records, he told the government he wanted to sponsor them — and was told to find an English speaker to help with an application that wouldn't come for nearly four months. When an official finally called, she said his immigration status made him ineligible, that he should find someone else, that the people he lived with might doom the case. None of it was true, his attorney told him. He moved anyway, then resubmitted documents the system had lost. He took a DNA test for a relationship no one questioned, and sat for a home study that his lawyers say no rule required.
The waiting wore on Miguel. The separation from his father, he said in a sworn statement, was so "painful" that it was "hard to think about anything else." He cried often, and the stress brought headaches and fevers. He described his detention as “being stuck in a waiting room for something that never happens.” He was "desperate,” his attorney said, to feel his father's hug again.
On May 19 — four days after his lawyers sued, 167 days into his detention — the government released Miguel and his brother to their father.
Luis, 16 years old — 167 days in custody
Luis was 16 and wanted to be a lawyer, or maybe an architect.
But rather than spending time in school, he and his younger brother spent nearly every day inside the same New Haven building. There were occasional excursions — a park, the aquarium — but when the weather was poor or cold, they did not go outside at all. At night, they slept in the homes of foster parents — people who, when they first arrived, were strangers. They were dropped off each morning before breakfast and picked up just before dinner.
In one respect the detention fell harder on Luis: unlike Miguel, he still faced deportation. His brother's immigration case had been terminated in February, but Luis' remained open and was due in immigration court in Hartford on May 21.
The waiting hit him hardest at night.
He couldn't sleep and was prescribed sleeping pills. He called the prolonged detention a "nightmare" and said in a sworn statement that "the pain is getting worse every day." He came to fear that "the day will never come" and described his and his brother’s confinement as "waiting somewhere they don't belong."
On May 19 — two days before that hearing — records show he and his brother were released to their father.
First, there are always huge, glaring problems with organizations like The Gestapo, The Stasi, the Soviet Secret Police, and various other iterations of Death Squads.
Better training is not on the fucking list.
ICE to temporarily halt conducting vehicle stops, sources say
ICE officers will receive new training on vehicle stops, sources said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been ordered to temporarily stop conducting vehicle stops in the wake of two deadly shootings in Texas and Maine, sources told ABC News.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gave the directive, a law enforcement source told ABC News, after he spoke with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who said she urged Mullin to "cease all non-urgent vehicle stops."
In most cases, ICE officers will stop a target on the street once they leave their house or office, but ICE will still use vehicle stops in cases involving the most dangerous targets, according to a source.
Multiple sources said the pause is temporary and that ICE officers will receive new training on vehicle stops.
Guerrero, a Colombian national, was not the target of the operation and ICE agents had been given a final order for another man they were targeting to be removed from the U.S., King told ABC News.
An ICE spokesperson said that the agency was “conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal," and when an “illegal alien departed the residence in a vehicle,” ICE agents “attempted to conduct a vehicle stop.”
Man fatally shot by federal officer in Houston was not ICE target, DHS says “The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon,” ICE said.
The Maine Attorney General's Office said "the suspect attempted to flee in the vehicle in the direction of the officer and was fatally shot."
Witness Daniel Boucher told ABC News that he watched agents pull the shooting victim from his car and put him on the ground.
"I heard the young man say, 'I tried to stop.' I clearly heard him say that," said Boucher, adding that he overheard one of the ICE agents allegedly say the driver tried to run him over.
"Hey, boss - here's an idea. Let's send ICE to Puerto Rico and tell them to profile everybody with brown skin who speaks Spanish! We'll hit those quotas in no time."
Seized Art, Eavesdropping Guards: Parents Describe a Clampdown at Dilley Detention Center as Kids Shared Their Stories
Detainees told ProPublica that art supplies have been removed in room searches, immigrants have lost access to Gmail and staff hover within earshot during video calls. The Trump administration and a private prison operator disputed detainees’ claims.
When guards appeared earlier this month outside the room Christian Hinojosa shared with her son and other women and children at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, she guessed what they might be after. She quickly donned her puffy winter jacket, then slipped a manila envelope inside it. “Thank God the weather was cool,” she said — the jacket didn’t raise suspicions.
Then, she said, she was instructed to leave the room while eight to 10 guards lifted up mattresses, opened drawers and rifled through papers. In the envelope were kids’ writings and artwork about life in America’s only detention facility for immigrant families, a collection of trailers and dormitories in the brush country south of San Antonio. She planned to share their letters with the outside world.
Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils and drawing paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to Hinojosa and three other former detainees, along with lawyers and advocates in contact with the families inside.
Guards have taken artwork, too, they said — even one child’s drawing of Bratz fashion dolls.
They said detainees have lost access to Gmail and other Google services in the Dilley library amid stepped up searches, seizures and restrictions on communications, making it more difficult for them to contact lawyers and advocates.
They and family members said guards sometimes hover within earshot during detainees’ video calls to relatives and reporters.
“We Are Kidnapped Help!”
Seven-year-old Mathias Bermeo, a detainee at Dilley wrote: “I’m writing this letter so that you can hear my story. I need you to help us. I have been detained for 23 days with my mom and my 3-year-old sister. I cry a lot. I want to get out of here go back to my school. They don’t treat us well here. There are many children. We are kidnapped help!”
The detainees and others interviewed for this story said these measures increased after the Jan. 22 arrival of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old in a blue bunny hat, sparked protests and congressional visits. They said the clampdown intensified as children and parents at Dilley wrote letters to share with the public and reporters and relatives recorded video calls with the detainees, including those published by ProPublica this month. The children’s stories, many told in their own words, fueled an outcry over the scope of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign, which the president had promised would focus on criminals.
The detainees said the more they tried to make their voices heard, the more difficult it became.
One mother, who asked to remain anonymous because her immigration case is still pending, told ProPublica that she and her three kids watched through a window as guards swept through their room in late January, removing drawings from the walls and placing colored pencils and crayons in plastic bags before taking them away.
With little schooling available at Dilley and weather too chilly for kids to want to play outdoors, drawing had been the children’s main diversion, the former detainee said. “What were they going to do now?” she said. “They were so bored.”
After the room inspection, the woman said, the children just “cried and cried and cried.”
“I Can’t See My Pet Willi”
A detainee at Dilley wrote, “I feel bad being here! Bad because I can’t because I can’t see my pet willi and I can’t eat what I want and I can’t see my friends from school and at home.”
CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs the Dilley facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a written statement that routine inspections of living facilities are a common practice and that detainees are informed of what items they are allowed to have in their rooms.
“We vehemently deny any claims that our staff have confiscated or destroyed children’s personal artwork or their related supplies,” the statement reads, adding that there are examples of kids’ artwork “proudly displayed” throughout the facility.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that “ICE is not destroying children’s letters,” but the agency acknowledged that in one case “all the written items in the cell were seized” as part of an investigation of a mother who DHS said refused to comply with a search and pushed a detention center employee. CoreCivic referred questions to DHS when asked about this incident. ProPublica was unable to reach the mother for comment.
This week, DHS issued press releases that it said were “correcting the record” about Dilley, saying “adults with children are housed in facilities that provide for their safety, security, and medical needs.” DHS’ and CoreCivic’s statements to ProPublica did not answer questions about Google services being blocked or whether guards listen in on Dilley detainees’ calls.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, visited Dilley after Liam and his father, both originally from Ecuador, were picked up in Minnesota and transferred in January. He went again last week and was asked at a Friday news conference about reports of children’s letters and drawings being suppressed.
“I believe those stories, because I’ve heard similar stories myself,” Castro said.
He said he’d been told repeatedly that guards had warned detainees not to talk to him. “Yes, I think there’s a lot of secrecy there,” Castro said.
DHS did not respond when asked to comment on Castro’s assertion about the guards. A CoreCivic spokesperson said, “We are not aware of any staff member warning residents not to speak with Rep. Castro.”
The Dilley Immigration Processing Center first opened during the Obama administration primarily to hold families that had just crossed the border. Then Biden ended the practice of detaining families in 2021. President Donald Trump restarted it even as border crossings in his second term hit record lows. Now ICE is ramping up immigration arrests inside the country, and Dilley holds many families who have been living in the United States for years.
The families spend their days behind a metal fence, sleeping in rooms that hold six bunk beds and a common area with a few small tables and desks. More than 3,500 people have cycled through the detention center since the Trump administration began sending families here last spring.
A ProPublica reporter who had been speaking with families at Dilley since late last year went to the center for an in-person visit in mid-January and asked families whether their children would want to write about their experiences. On Jan. 22, we received a packet of colorful drawings and handwritten letters from a detainee who had been recently released, which we later published.
Then on Jan. 24, dozens of detainees staged a mass protest in the yard, which was photographed from above, where they yelled “libertad” and held up hand-drawn signs. The signs were made using the detention center’s art supplies, former detainees said.
That protest and Liam’s detention triggered widespread media coverage and a visit by Castro, who arrived on Jan 28. Supporters gathered outside Dilley, and some clashed with state troopers. At the beginning of February, Liam and his father were released, and ProPublica published the letters it had received. By that time, it had become clear to detainees that their voices — especially children’s voices — had gotten broad public attention.
They kept writing.
“We were looking for help,” said Hinojosa, who collected letters at ProPublica’s request. “We were looking to be heard.”
Hinojosa, along with her 13-year-old son, Gustavo, both originally from Mexico, were released in early February after four months at Dilley to return home to San Antonio. (Although a 1990s legal settlement holds that children should generally not be detained for more than 20 days, DHS has said the settlement should be terminated because newer regulations have addressed the needs of child detainees.)
“My parents say it’s been 4 months but for me and my little sister,” a 9-year-old wrote in one of the letters Hinojosa gathered. “It feels like a year I just want to go to the United States to be with my grandparents and finally end this nightmare.”
“I’m writing this letter so that you can hear my story,” a 7-year-old wrote in another of the letters. “I need you to help us … I cry a lot. I want to get out of here go back to my school.”
“I see how they treat us like criminals,” wrote Edison, a seventh grader from Chicago who was born in Guatemala, “and we’re not.”
“We Are Not Criminals”
While detained at Dilley, 7-year old Diana wrote: “I lived in oregon We were detained in a hospital parking lot I feel bad because I miss my stuffed animals I don’t want to be here and I miss my friends and also miss my teacher and my house and my bed. we are not criminals I’m a very pretty girl.” Obtained by ProPublica. Alien Registration Number redacted by ProPublica.
CoreCivic said that Dilley residents are given a written description of property they’re allowed to have in their living areas, and that decorating rooms with personal items is permitted “provided they do not present a health or safety hazard.”
Former detainees told ProPublica they experienced room searches before January but that they typically were carried out by just two employees at a time, not eight or more.
After guards searched Hinojosa’s room following the protest, she said, she and the other residents were unable to locate their colored pencils, which were purchased at the commissary and stored in a little cup atop the writing table where the kids liked to doodle. “Even knowing that we had paid for those ourselves,” she said, “they removed them.”
“There were many, many families whose children had their pencils and what they created thrown away,” said a third mother, who also asked to remain anonymous because of her immigration status.
“I Just Want to … Finally End This Nightmare”
A handwritten letter with a drawing of four people trapped behind bars:
Nine-year-old Valentina wrote: “I have been detained for a long time. My parents say it’s been 4 months but for me and my little sister Jireth it feels like a year I just want to go to the United States to be with my grandparents and finally end this nightmare that my family has had to live through, I feel like I’ve had the worst days of my life I want God to help us get out of here so we can be happy again and study together as a family. Please help us and our parents get out of here thank you.”
Former detainees and their family members described close attention by guards during calls home, some of which happened via tablet computers in a common area.
Edison, the 13-year-old Chicago seventh grader, cried during a recent video call home that his father shared with ProPublica, saying he felt locked up.
The father, who asked that his son’s last name not be used, recalled the boy saying before the recording began, “Dad, there’s an agent here and he’s watching us.” He said his son sounded panicked.
The mother who said she watched guards sweep her room told ProPublica that after the January protest inside Dilley, a half-dozen guards were posted in a room where calls took place. “Every time someone came in to make a call,” she said, “they practically stood behind you.”
As families held at Dilley continue to try to make themselves heard, Hinojosa and other recently released detainees are determined to help.
Hinojosa carefully protected her fellow residents’ letters and drawings before her release. Every time she left her room, she wore the CoreCivic-issued puffy gray jacket and tucked the drawings and letters inside.
“I carried them around with me all day to prevent anyone from taking them,” she told ProPublica. “I knew they were valuable.”
Many of the pieces she carried were different from the vibrant paper drawings ProPublica received in January. With paper in short supply, Hinojosa said, children drew pictures on the backs of old artworks. With crayons and colored pencils now scarce, some drew in plain pencil.
Hinojosa walked out of Dilley earlier this month with her son Gustavo and with 34 pages of drawings and letters. They capture the names and lives of dozens of people.
Along with long notes from moms who remain inside are simple sketches by the kids detained with them: a teddy bear. A bus going home. A pet cat named Willi. A family of three stick figures trapped behind a wire fence. A family of six stick figures trapped behind a wire fence. A single small stick figure trapped behind a wire fence. Many of the drawings show faces, and most of the faces are frowning.
Democratic lawmakers in the New Jersey General Assembly have introduced legislation titled the Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered Act, whose acronym spells out an unsubtle message.
The FUCK ICE Act could establish a state-level civil cause of action, allowing individuals to sue over alleged violations of constitutional rights arising from federal immigration enforcement activity.
The proposed legislation highlights the heightened debate around federal immigration enforcement and local oversight.
What To Know
The bill is sponsored by Assemblymembers Katie Brennan and Ravi Bhalla. The legislation would permit individuals to bring civil actions in state court over alleged violations of the U.S. Constitution in connection with immigration enforcement operations. Supporters say the measure is designed to increase accountability and strengthen protections for immigrant communities.
Legislators have introduced a serious package of bills that seeks to limit federal immigration enforcement activities and reduce cooperation between state and federal authorities. The package includes proposals to bar former federal immigration agents from public employment in New Jersey, to impose a tax on private detention facilities that contract with the federal government and to restrict federal agents' ability to operate at state and local crime scenes. Another bill in the package would prohibit the use of state‑owned property as staging areas for federal immigration operations.
Lawmakers introduced the legislation less than two weeks after ICE agents detained 10 people outside a light rail station on the Hoboken-Jersey City border, according to state Democrats.
New Jersey has become a focal point for immigration activism, partly because of Delaney Hall in Newark, a privately run detention facility holding up to 1,000 migrants for ICE. The facility drew criticism over alleged permitting and safety issues. In May 2025, Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat, was briefly charged with trespassing during a visit, but the charges were later dropped. Democratic Representative LaMonica McIver was also charged with assaulting federal officers during the same incident, and her case is moving toward trial.
In January, Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill issued an executive order preventing ICE officials from using state property for enforcement actions and encouraged residents to submit videos of any interactions with immigration agents through an online reporting portal.
What People Are Saying
Democratic Assemblyman Ravi Bhalla said in a news release: "ICE has no place in our communities. When I was elected Mayor of Hoboken, one of my first acts was passing a strong sanctuary city ordinance. Now, the stakes are even higher, and it is incumbent on all of us to use the power we have to keep our residents safe. These bills help our local law enforcement do their jobs properly while giving the state more tools to stop these raids from happening in the first place."
Democratic Assemblywoman Alixon Collazos-Gill said in the news release: "We are using every tool available at the state level to protect due process, uphold human rights, and ensure accountability. I stand firmly with our immigrant neighbors in interest of their safety, dignity, and rights."
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: "Politicians are laying blame at the feet of law enforcement instead of looking in the mirror at how they have fueled the hatred and violent attacks we are seeing against federal law enforcement officers."
We won't remember them for long, and that's understandable given the probability that there will be many more before we get our shit squared away.
I just think I can stop for a minute and acknowledge their existence.
Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
Heber Sanchez Dominguez
Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz
Parady La
Victor Manuel Diaz
Geraldo Lunas Campos
Keith Porter
Renee Good
Alex Pretti
US witnessed many ICE-related deaths in 2026. Here are their stories
Shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good are two of at least nine deaths related to immigration law enforcement in US.
The killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by federal immigration agents this month has shocked the United States, prompting protests across the country and igniting calls for accountability.
But Pretti and Good are far from the only deaths linked to immigration law enforcement.
At least six immigrants have died in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency already in 2026, and a seventh person was fatally shot by an off-duty ICE officer.
Last year, 32 deaths were reported in ICE custody.
While most of the deaths were due to health complications, some of the late detainees’ families have made accusations of abuse and medical neglect against ICE.
Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, was killed by immigration officers on Saturday morning in Minneapolis. Good was shot on January 7, also in Minneapolis, after she tried to drive away from federal agents who surrounded her car.
Here are the stories of the others whose death is linked to immigration law enforcement:
Keith Porter
On New Year’s Eve, an off-duty ICE agent shot Porter, 43, to death in Los Angeles.
The exact circumstances of the shooting remain contested, and there are no known videos of the incident.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described Porter – who was Black – as an “active shooter”, but his family insists that he was merely firing his gun to welcome the new year, which is an illegal but widely observed US tradition.
“No parent should ever have to bury their child, and the pain of this loss is something I would not wish on anyone,” Porter’s mother, Franceola Armstrong, said in a statement on an online fundraiser.
“My son leaves behind two beautiful daughters, ages 10 and 20. They were his heart. Everything he did, every plan he made, was for them.”
No charges have been filed in the case.
DHS has pushed to justify the shooting, accusing Porter of shooting at the officer.
The department said the agent went outside his apartment complex to investigate the sound of gunshots, and when he encountered Porter, he ordered him to drop his weapon.
“When the subject refused to comply, the officer fired defensively with his service weapon at the subject to disarm him. The subject fired at least three rounds at the officer,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
The ICE agent was not harmed in the incident.
Porter’s family lawyer has raised questions over the DHS account, calling for evidence that the slain father of two fired at the officer.
Jamal Tooson, the lawyer, also criticised the ICE agent for confronting Porter with his weapon instead of involving the local police, who are well-trained and familiar with the community.
“Had he just stayed in his apartment for five minutes, Keith would be with us,” Tooson said in a news conference.
Geraldo Lunas Campos
Earlier this month, ICE announced that Cuban immigrant Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died on January 3 at the agency’s largest detention facility – Camp East Montana in Texas.
Since then, contradicting details have emerged about his death, which a medical examiner has ruled as a homicide – meaning caused by another person.
ICE initially said Lunas Campos “became disruptive while in line for medication and refused to return to his assigned dorm” and was placed in segregation.
He then became distressed, according to the agency.
“Medical staff responded, initiated lifesaving measures, and requested emergency medical services. Lunas was pronounced deceased by EMS,” ICE said in a January 9 statement.
The agency repeatedly highlighted Lunas Campos’s criminal record.
The authorities later changed their own story, claiming that Lunas Campos tried to kill himself.
“Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” DHS’s McLaughlin said. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness.”
But an autopsy report found that Linas Campos was killed by someone.
“Based on the investigative and examination findings, it is my opinion that the cause of death is asphyxia due to neck and torso compression,” Adam Gonzalez, deputy medical examiner for El Paso County, said in the report, according to The Washington Post.
“The manner of death is homicide.”
Lunas Campos’ three children have filed a legal petition aiming to block the deportation of any detainees who may have witnessed the incident, as they prepare to file a wrongful death lawsuit.
“According to an eyewitness to Mr Lunas Campos’s death, guards at the facility choked him to death,” the petition said.
Victor Manuel Diaz
Immigration authorities arrested Nicaraguan immigrant Victor Manuel Diaz on January 6 in Minneapolis as part of their immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Eight days later, he died in ICE custody at Camp East Montana in Texas.
“Contract security staff found Diaz unconscious and unresponsive in his room,” ICE said in a statement. “He died of a presumed suicide; however, the official cause of his death remains under investigation.”
But Diaz’s family is questioning the government’s story.
“I don’t believe he took his life,” Diaz’s brother Yorlan told ABC News. “He was not a criminal; he was looking for a better life and he wanted to help our mother.”
The family has also raised concerns over how the authorities are handling the investigation.
According to several US media reports, Diaz’s body was transferred to William Beaumont Army Medical Center for an autopsy, instead of the county medical examiner.
“This, taking of the body and doing the autopsy report and not letting the medical examiner do it? You’re then having the fox guarding the henhouse,” Randall Kallinen, the family’s lawyer, told the local outlet KTSM.
“It was with the federal government where the individual was staying and where he was killed. And now it’s the federal government who is controlling the investigation and the information included in the autopsy report.”
Parady La
Cambodian immigrant Parady La, 46, had been in the US since 1981. He had come to the US legally as a child but lost his Green Card due to criminal convictions.
Immigration authorities arrested him on January 6 and sent him to the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Philadelphia, where he started experiencing “severe drug withdrawal” symptoms, according to ICE.
“The next day, La was found unresponsive in his cell. FDC officers immediately administered CPR and several doses of NARCAN and called for medical assistance,” the US agency said.
NARCAN is a drug used for people experiencing a drug overdose, not withdrawals.
La was transferred to a hospital and diagnosed with “anoxic brain injury, post-cardiac arrest, shock and multiple organ failures” before he died, ICE said.
But La’s family is voicing scepticism about the level of care he received.
His nephew, Michael La, said ICE’s version of the events leading to his uncle’s death “didn’t add up”.
“As we keep fighting for information, we’re finding out that there’s like levels of information that just become locked, you know?” Michael La told local public radio WHYY. “We’re still fighting for answers and still trying to figure out what’s going on.”
Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz
A father of three, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, 68, had been in the US for more than 20 years when ICE picked him up in New Jersey in November and transferred him to a detention centre in California.
He died on January 6 of “heart-related health issues” after being transferred to a hospital.
But his family has said that he was feeling ill for weeks and was only given pain medication.
“As a father, he was an excellent dad,” his daughter, Josselyn Yanez, told the news website northjersey.com. “As a grandfather, the best grandfather of all. We hoped our father would get out of that place, that he would come out alive – not the way he did.”
Heber Sanchez Dominguez
Seven days after ICE picked up Heber Sanchez Dominguez, the 34-year-old Mexican national was found dead in his cell at the Robert A Deyton (RAD) Detention Facility in Georgia on January 14.
“RAD medical staff discovered Sanchaz (sic) hanging by the neck and unresponsive in his sleeping quarters at approximately 2:05 am,” ICE said in a statement.
The lack of details has prompted calls for investigation, including from Mexican officials.
Sanchez Dominguez was arrested in Georgia for driving without a licence before being transferred to ICE custody.
“In coordination with the relevant US authorities, the Consulate General has requested that the circumstances of the incident be clarified and is cooperating in the necessary steps to ensure that the investigation is carried out promptly and transparently,” Mexico’s consulate in Atlanta said after Sanchez Dominguez’s death.
The Clayton County Democratic Committee in Georgia also called on state officials to push for an investigation.
“We further demand the immediate release of all records and documentation related to Mr. Sanchez Dominguez’s detention, medical treatment, and the events leading up to his death. Transparency is not optional, it is a moral and legal obligation,” the group said in a statement.
Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
ICE has said that Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, a 42-year-old immigrant from Honduras, died on January 5 at a hospital in Houston, Texas, after being admitted for “chronic heart-related health issues”.
Nunez did not have a criminal record, but he had entered the country irregularly. ICE nabbed him during an immigration enforcement operation in November 2025 and transferred him to the Joe Corley Processing Center in Texas.
“ICE is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” the agency said in a statement, after Nunez’s death.
“Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”
Where are the arrests and the seizures of massive amounts of street drugs?
Gang members
Drug rings
Sex traffickers
Coyotes
If it ever was about "illegal immigrants" or the "worst of the worst" that's long been over.
They're going after any and all brown people.
And we fuckin' told you - assholes.
A Reuters photographer captured the image of a man named Saly being taken from his house and marched into the cold by ICE agents, who didn’t bother finding out who they were arresting.
Saly’s brother-in-law shared the story on the Hmong American Experience page on Facebook.
“ICE came to my brother-in-law Saly’s apartment, broke down the door, trashed the place, handcuffed him, and put a gun to his daughter-in-law’s head. They did not allow him to put on proper clothing and forced him outside in freezing weather.”
“Saly is a naturalized US citizen. He has NO criminal record.”
“ICE drove him around for nearly an hour, questioned him, and fingerprinted him. Only after all of that did they realize he had no criminal history and no reason to be detained. They then dropped him back off at his apartment like nothing happened.”
“We believe they were looking for someone who previously lived there, but instead of asking for identification, they chose violence, intimidation, and humiliation.”
Every few hours, we get a new story of some outrageous act of violence and intimidation from these lawless thugs.
Just ONE of these stories should be enough to trigger major investigations into ICE and their withdrawal from the field — but it keeps happening over and over and over again as our rights get violated and our citizens get brutalized, terrorized, and thrown in prison for no reason.
They don't have the guys to cover their shit. Kristi Noem's commanders are having to strip other units to "surge" Minneapolis, and not many that want to go.
So two things:
Even a bloated Daddy State pustule like ICE doesn't have the resources to do what they have to do to subjugate America, so:
They have to get us to react with violence so they can send in the tanks and the helicopters and urban warfare units
But here's the kicker: They don't have the troops for that either. They can't "occupy" this country. Even an easy occupation of a place that's fairly calm takes minimum 10-20 guys per 1,000 citizens. There are more than 350 American cities over 500,000 population.
Do the arithmetic. 15 guys x 500 population x 350 cities = 2,625,000 guys. We currently have fewer than 2,900,000 people in uniform.
And we're proving to them that if they try to go hard-ass, they can't count on every uniform being down with the program when it comes to ordering troopers to kill their friends and neighbors.
Stay cool, America. Don't take the bait. As shitty as they can get, we have to meet them with a steely resolve to resist without violence - to become passively ungovernable.
There are unconfirmed reports of GenZers outing their dads as ICE agents, and some being doxxed on Tik Tok and Instagram.
I haven't found anything on that except a few random posts on FB and Reddit.
But I came across this in my search.
Report: Whistleblower leaks personal data of 4,500 DHS and ICE agents to doxxing website
WASHINGTON (TNND) — The founder of ICE List, a website which shares the first and last names of ICE and Border Patrol agents and Department of Homeland Security employees enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, said that a DHS whistleblower shared with him the personal information of close to 4,500 federal agents and employees.
Dominick Skinner, an Irishman living in the Netherlands, shared with the DailyBeast that following the fatal shooting of Renee Good last week, an employee of DHS handed him the personal information of roughly 2,000 agents working on the frontlines of immigration enforcement and another 2,500 employees who work in supporting roles.
“It is a sign that people aren’t happy within the U.S. government, clearly,” Skinner, who is not a United States citizen, shared with the Daily Beast.
“The shooting [of Good] was the last straw for many people.”
ICE List launched in June last year at the height of Trump’s mass immigration enforcement operations. Prior to the alleged data leak by the DHS whistleblower, ICE List possessed the information of 2,000 immigration enforcement agents and supporting staff, with 8,000 of those being frontline enforcement agents. However, Skinner shared with DailyBeast that not all of the information collected is published to the website.
“We will make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, the best examples of which will be those who work in childcare within the agency, and nurses. There will be more exceptions, but we will have a discussion once the team flags a position as something we need to think twice about.”
In an interview with El Pais from last October, Skinner shared that ICE List is managed by three people and that they use artificial intelligence to verify the identifications of the federal agents and employees listed on the website. Back in October, the website received a million views.
Lawmakers have fought against websites doxxing the identities of federal law enforcement agents with Rep. Masha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act last year.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin have also warned against anti-ICE protesters seeking to share the personal information of ICE agents, who have experienced an 8,000% increase in death threats and a 1,347% increase in assaults.
The National News Desk reached out to DHS and ICE for comment, and had not heard back as of the time this post was published.
There are still good people out there, and some of them are in positions to bust these assholes.
