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Deadly Encounters with Immigration Agents
00:15:24
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unidentified
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Congress. | |
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| C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are now joined by Nicole Foy, who is an immigration and labor reporter at ProPublica, to keep going with the conversation about ICE enforcement under the Trump administration. | ||
| Nicole, welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| You and your colleagues at ProPublica did an investigation and found more than 40 cases over the past year of immigration agents using life-threatening tactics. | ||
| Can you describe what those tactics are, what you found in your investigation? | ||
| Yeah, my coworker Mackenzie Funk and I were specifically looking at how often immigration agents over the course of the past year across the country were using these tactics that, in addition to being banned or highly discouraged by their own policies, are also things that many police departments across the country have banned since 2020 and the murder of George Floyd. | ||
| These are chokeholds and karate restraints, which are specifically banned by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice's use of force policy, unless there is a call for using deadly force. | ||
| And then we also found a number of cases where people were, where immigration agents were leaning on kneeling on people's necks, kneeling on their backs in ways that can seriously restrict blood flow or airflow in ways that have proven to be very dangerous for people. | ||
| And again, it is something that police departments in particular across the country have also taken out of their training and something that they're allowed to do ever since 2020 and some before that. | ||
| And there was a particular example that you found in Massachusetts. | ||
| What happened there? | ||
| I think the case in Massachusetts is very useful to kind of analyze from this point of whether this was a time when our experts who we showed all these videos to would consider that this type of deadly Force was required. | ||
| It involved immigration agents who had stopped a car that contained a man and a woman and their one-year-old daughter. | ||
| They had come for the woman. | ||
| She had some pending assault charges, but the man Carlos didn't have any charges. | ||
| He had a pending asylum case. | ||
| But the problem was the mother did not want to leave without her one-year-old child and be detained. | ||
| And Carlos didn't want to let go of either of them. | ||
| And so immigration officers repeatedly, as we saw on police body cam from the police that responded to the scene because there were so many protesters and bystanders, they, you know, you could hear them talking with immigration agents and immigration agents explaining that, you know, they really don't want to do something to very forcefully separate this family. | ||
| However, then you can see in the videos that something changes. | ||
| And an immigration officer can be seen on bystander footage reaching in front, reaching into the car and putting his thumb and his finger, his fingers onto the neck of Carlos, who appears on camera to violently seize. | ||
| He appears to be having convulsions so hard that his one-year-old daughter is shaking with him. | ||
| He's filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts alleging excessive force out of this encounter. | ||
| And he's also alleged that immigration officers, after he was eventually allowed to leave with his daughter, he alleged that he still had some serious medical, he needed some medical attention and that it was not provided to him. | ||
| We were able to back this up in body cam footage that we watched as well that there's, you can hear on screen when an immigration officer says he's fine to paramedics and he alleges that he was not able to get the medical attention that he needed even after experiencing this really deadly restraint. | ||
| Now, what does DHS policy specifically say about tactics like these? | ||
| DHS policy says that these are forms of deadly force, using a carotid restraint, using a chokehold around someone's neck. | ||
| It's a form of deadly force. | ||
| So it's the kind of thing that you're not supposed to just use when a subject is not complying, when a subject is fleeing, when a subject is, you know, maybe not resisting. | ||
| It's supposed to be something that you use only if there's a serious threat to the officer, a serious, dangerous, life-threatening threat, and not, and only if there is no other option. | ||
| And so that's why we showed so many of these videos to former law enforcement professionals, but also former officials in the Department of Homeland Security and asked them, you know, is this a situation in which you would believe that you have no other option but to use this type of restraint? | ||
| By and large, they did not believe that that was a, you know, that these deadly restraints were called for in many of these situations. | ||
| You reached out to DHS. | ||
| Did they ever cite a real physical threat to agents in their response to these incidents? | ||
| No, they didn't. | ||
| We sent them all of the videos that we used in our story and asked them, you know, can you please share anything that we should know, anything extra context? | ||
| Let's get on the phone. | ||
| Like, please walk us through why officers made the decision to use these things that are banned in your policy unless there's a deadly threat. | ||
| We can't see necessarily. | ||
| And from what we know from our other reporting, we can't see a deadly threat. | ||
| Walk us through this. | ||
| And while they did respond and give, you know, some answers, usually allegations that many of the people involved had assaulted officers, They roundly stood behind these immigration agents and said that they acted with the utmost professionalism and that they used a reasonable amount of force. | ||
| However, each time we asked, and I asked a couple follow-up times, you know, can you point to us? | ||
| Why was it necessary to use a very dangerous carotid restraint on a young father who was physically holding his child in a car simply because he appears to not be complying? | ||
| Was there something we're missing? | ||
| Why did you use a chokehold on a 16-year-old U.S. citizen being detained with his father in Houston? | ||
| Walk us through what was so dangerous about this situation. | ||
| Really, the only answers they had were that this is, they believe that their officers used reasonable force. | ||
| And in many cases, they alleged that off-screen before camera, before the camera started rolling, that these different subjects that they were pursuing had assaulted officers. | ||
| You mentioned a U.S. citizen in that example. | ||
| You and others at ProPublica have also been tracking ICE arrests of U.S. citizens in the past year, finding that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been held by immigration agents. | ||
| Your reporting found that they've been kicked, dragged, and detained for days. | ||
| Homeland Security Secretary Christine Noam was outside the White House on Thursday, asked by reporters about the rise in ICE arrests of U.S. citizens over the past year. | ||
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unidentified
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Here's what she had to say: Secretary Noam, are you okay with federal agents and officers violating people's Fourth Amendment rights by asking for papers with how reasonable suspicion is? | |
| Every single action that our ICE officers take is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years, that this administration has used, that the previous administration used. | ||
| They are doing everything correctly. | ||
| And over and over again, in litigation in the courts, we've proven that they've done the right thing. | ||
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unidentified
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Sadam Secretary, perhaps to follow up, why are we seeing Americans being asked on the street to provide proof of citizenship in Minnesota? | |
| Is that targeted enforcement? | ||
| And are you advising Americans to carry proof of citizenship? | ||
| In every situation, we're doing targeted enforcement. | ||
| If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they're there and having them validate their identity. | ||
| That's what we've always done in asking people who they are so that we know who's in those surroundings. | ||
| And if they are breaking our federal laws, we will detain them as well until we run that process. | ||
| Nicole, based on your reporting, what's your reaction to the Secretary's statements there? | ||
| I think my immediate reaction is that that is largely in line with what the Department of Homeland Security has told me the entire year when I've sent them numerous cases of immigration agents detaining U.S. citizens and asked them, you know, can you explain this? | ||
| And that they've said that in response to almost every case. | ||
| Sometimes they have said, well, this person was detained for not to question their citizenship, but in order to, but in order to detain them because they, you know, they committed a crime, they assaulted an officer. | ||
| But I have to say that while certainly that may be the case for some of the people who were detained by immigration agents, there are some people who have cases pending still, charges pending. | ||
| So many people we found who had been arrested either they had been arrested and asked questions about their citizenship. | ||
| And we have full video footage of the encounter and we can personally see no assault, but also that they were released on the spot. | ||
| I think of the case of a young man in Alabama who has since now been detained twice on his construction site. | ||
| And the first time as he was taken to the ground, he was, you know, he was yelling that he was a U.S. citizen, even as officers didn't listen and he wanted to show that his ID. | ||
| And later, even though he filmed the entire encounter, the response of Department of Homeland Security was to say, well, he assaulted officers, but he was never charged with that. | ||
| And many of the people who have been accused of assaulting officers after they were detained, whether because often because of questioning their citizenship, they were released without charges. | ||
| Their cases have been dropped, or they were never even charged with that at all. | ||
| All right, we're going to be taking calls for ProPublica's Nicole Foy. | ||
| If you are a Democrat, you can call in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you have had experience with ICE that you would like to share, you can call us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Let's hear now from Hank in South Carolina on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Hank. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Did you actually see all these atrocities going on? | ||
| Yes, so I don't know which exactly you're referring to, but when it comes to our footage and our investigation into chokeholds, yes, we found in the case of these more than 40 incidents, the vast majority of them are caught on camera in footage, and we then showed that footage to police officers and to law enforcement to former law enforcement officials. | ||
| Some of these incidents were filmed from multiple angles. | ||
| Some of them, I'm thinking of one particular case in Minneapolis that I added to the list right before we published. | ||
| I kind of watched play out on a live stream. | ||
| So, yes, we were physically able to see many of these on footage. | ||
| But yeah, I hope that answers your question. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
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unidentified
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Any of this stuff going on when Obama was removing people? | |
| That's a great question. | ||
| We asked many of the, especially the former Department of Homeland Security officials. | ||
| These are people who, in one case, one man had spent 20 years in both Border Patrol, HSI, working for both the Obama administration and for the first Trump administration in various high-level roles. | ||
| They said that, especially the use of chokeholds, this was something that was really like, it was not even controversial when it was formally banned in 2023 in this updated use of force because it was understood that you weren't supposed to use these type of tactics anymore, that they were dangerous. | ||
| They were even dangerous for officers sometimes. | ||
| So we did try to look and find previous cases like pre-2025 and found very little. | ||
| Now, of course, there's a lot of attention on immigration enforcement right now, and everybody is filming everything. | ||
| So we're never going to know exactly the exact exact numbers, especially if the government is not going to track this. | ||
| But as far as U.S. citizens being detained, one of the things that I wrote about in my story is that this is actually like something that we have a very long history of in this country, especially in the past few administrations. | ||
| There has been a long history of U.S. citizens being improperly identified, often because of, you know, they have a similar name as someone. | ||
| They have on their record that they've had an encounter with an ICE official, but the database that whichever official is referring to doesn't update that this encounter proved that they were a U.S. citizen. | ||
| This is something that DHS ICE in particular was found by a government watchdog report has a serious issue with this. | ||
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Detaining U.S. Citizens
00:01:38
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| They mostly use data from the last year of the Obama administration and the first four years of the Trump administration, the first Trump administration as an example. | ||
| But it's been a long history. | ||
| However, all of our experts that we spoke to and certainly in past coverage of this issue says that what we're seeing right now with the detention of U.S. citizens, both because of, during these protests and also because of assumptions about their U.S. citizenship, they have yet to see this level. | ||
| We would like to know more about the exact numbers, but the government is not tracking this or at least has not provided that information when we've asked for it. | ||
| Celeste is in Pennsylvania on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Celeste. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, thank you. | |
| I just want to say the way they're doing this with all this force and everything, it just shows you that Trump told us what he was going to do. | ||
| The only thing he did wrong on January 6th was not have an army to back him up. | ||
| So now he learned through hiring the worst of the worst, but they're very smart, that you can't have a coup if you don't have an army behind you. | ||
| Now, $55,000 sign-on bonus, cutting the time in half that they get training, six and seven men on one person. | ||
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Understanding ICE Enforcement
00:09:44
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unidentified
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Well, when Trump says that, you know, he's going to become an autocrat, he needs an army. | |
| And I think this is what ICE is. | ||
| It's just crazy to me. | ||
| And people, I mean, they're talking about it on every station, every channel. | ||
| They're just not saying out loud that he is preparing his army to take over. | ||
| And like he said, there'll be no votes. | ||
| He's in, he's in, till he dies, and then his kids will take over. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Nicole, before you follow up, I want to share some polling about how Americans view the effect of ICE enforcement actions in cities. | ||
| 51% say that these enforcement actions make cities less safe. | ||
| 31% say they make the cities safer. | ||
| And 18% say that they're not having much effect. | ||
| Obviously, our previous caller was in that 51%. | ||
| But what's some of the other reaction you've seen? | ||
| I think I've been really struck by the responses when we showed, like particularly like our chokehold videos that we had collected to these law enforcement professionals. | ||
| And they've pointed out many times in many cases that not only is this something that, you know, in one case, a trainer of federal officials, including ICE officials, said that, you know, this is something that they're trained not to do. | ||
| And especially DHS asked that they're not supposed to be trained to do this. | ||
| But also that this is, you know, one of the things they said, that this is bad policing. | ||
| These are examples of situations that have quickly spiraled out of control. | ||
| Many of our experts said that this appears to be because of the fact that immigration officials are more and more relying on these kind of roving patrols and kind of unplanned immigration enforcement activity. | ||
| One photographer that we interviewed kind of described it as like they would draw as he was following them around the Charlotte area and taking photos of the immigration operations that it really seemed like they were just stopping in random neighborhoods and going and stopping and going to pursue someone if they thought they might be undocumented. | ||
| And our experts said that that particular operation, in contrast to what previously immigration officials mostly used, which was much more targeted operations, knowing exactly who they're going after, that they believe that this lack of targeting and more spontaneous pursuits is really what kind of sets up these situations to spiral out of control. | ||
| You don't know necessarily much about the person that you're pursuing. | ||
| You don't know who's around them, what type of bystanders may show up. | ||
| And that's one of the things that they've pointed out is that many of these officers are acting in ways, at least according to the footage that we asked them to review, that would get many police officers disciplined in some way. | ||
| Billy is in Claremont, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Billy. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, good morning, America. | |
| This is Billy live from Claremont, California. | ||
| Yes, everybody's, excuse me, everybody is bashing ICE. | ||
| I'm in favor of ICE, ma'am, and I give them credit because that's the federal government. | ||
| Listen, when this whole campaign first started, nobody gives ICE credit for being polite and for being professional in the way that they went about doing their job. | ||
| We had all of these illegal immigrants spitting on them, beating them up, cursing at them, throwing things at their cars, and just slashing their tires and everything that they're doing now. | ||
| Nobody pointed the finger at those bad people. | ||
| But ICE, they're only trying to protect themselves. | ||
| They're only trying to protect the United States from being invaded by illegal aliens. | ||
| You know, and you know what? | ||
| ICE is not violent. | ||
| They're just out there, you know, protecting the nation, trying to protect themselves. | ||
| Remember this, America. | ||
| ICE members have families too. | ||
| So all of this bad press coming from the liberal media, this is why I'm an independent, okay? | ||
| Look, maybe I should be your next president in 2028 to fuck through my hat in the ring. | ||
| But other than that, I support ICE. | ||
| You know, Trump, he's only out of line when it comes to tariffs and the way that he's running the rest of the country. | ||
| But immigration, he's spot on. | ||
| If we don't have ICE, who do we have? | ||
| And look, Billy, we're just about out of time, and I want to give Nicole a chance to respond to your point. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know if you have a specific question, Billy, if I can answer for you. | ||
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unidentified
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Please. | |
| Yes, why don't you answer this question for me, Nicole? | ||
| Why don't you give ICE some credit? | ||
| Why don't you criticize the thugs and the illegals out there that are cursing them out, throwing rocks at them? | ||
| Okay, I think we've got the sense of your question. | ||
| Yeah, no, I understand. | ||
| So I would say, first of all, you're talking about, I think, about a lot of protest footage coverage that we've seen around the country. | ||
| And I want to tell you that, you know, certainly based on the number of, you know, a number of people have been arrested out of incidents that you've described. | ||
| The vast majority, certainly not everyone, have been U.S. citizens or legal residents. | ||
| So I don't know what you're seeing in particular that would make you think that those folks are not here legally. | ||
| But many of the protesters who have been arrested, and that's honestly how we've seen so many U.S. citizens get arrested, is in these protests or kind of, you know, they've been accused of obstructing or assaulting ICE officers. | ||
| And I would just say that all year I've been asking for immigration officials, particularly top officials, to make available anyone in ICE or Border Patrol or DHS. | ||
| I've reached out individually to many leaders, asking them, like, we want to understand the context. | ||
| Understand that you have a job to do, and we want to know more about the way you've done it. | ||
| We at ProPublica have yet to get an interview in response to these questions, but we are certainly eager to understand and include the, you know, the perspective of the administration because that is our job is to pursue the truth and give everyone a chance to respond. | ||
| But it's also our job at ProPublica, we believe, to pursue the truth, even if it involves holding the government accountable. | ||
| That's kind of how we view our role. | ||
| Marvin is in Iowa on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Marvin. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, Nicole, I was kind of in agreement with the gentleman from California. | |
| And I wish that people would just look at what where the money goes. | ||
| Who's supporting these people that are out of work, protesting, and doing what? | ||
| What are these people? | ||
| Are they educated? | ||
| Are they laid off? | ||
| Are they just have nothing better to do? | ||
| Who's paying these people? | ||
| And they always hear about the in the past tense, follow the money, follow the money. | ||
| They really need to report on following the money in all cases, not just this, but elections and/or discriminations. | ||
| Because it seems to me you have nobody that wants to work, number one, in this country. | ||
| And number two, those that do work just want to keep their jobs. | ||
| So I don't understand who's the one that's feeding these people like Ad Tifa. | ||
| Could you comment on that? | ||
| And I really think that people put the cart before the horse. | ||
| Are the laws the laws? | ||
| Okay, Marvin, I'm going to let Nicole respond. | ||
| Yeah, I have not, I'll tell you the truth. | ||
| I have not personally done an investigation into, I guess, the funding for what you're referring to as some of these protests. | ||
| I do know that there has been coverage on that. | ||
| And, you know, I've been mostly focused on looking at how immigration enforcement has played out around the country this year. | ||
| But I will tell you that when it comes to the number of U.S. citizens that I've interviewed who have been caught either, you know, many of them were not even protesting. | ||
| There are so many people who were detained by immigration officials while they were on their way to work or when they were stepping out in their neighborhood or when they saw something happening to a loved one or a friend or a stranger in front of them on the street and stepped in to, you know, in this case, immigration officials allege they interfered with the operation. | ||
| Certainly many people who have showed up to protest, there are many protests across this country every day for any variety of reason, but not everybody who has been detained or that you see on TV, you know, getting involved or and sometimes experiencing extreme force were even really intending to be at a protest at all. | ||
| So many of them, they have one woman in LA who had just gotten dropped off at work when suddenly there was, you know, a pursuit of different street vendors in LA, and she ended up getting detained even though she was a U.S. citizen. | ||
|
Inauguration Live Coverage
00:00:50
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| That is the hard truth, as many of these people weren't there to protest. | ||
| Well, Nicole, thank you so much. | ||
| Nicole Foy is an immigration and labor reporter at ProPublica. | ||
| Really appreciate your time this morning. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
|
unidentified
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At noon, we'll have live coverage of the inauguration of Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, along with Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi and Attorney General Elek J. Jones from Richmond, Virginia. | |
| Watch live at 12 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
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