Caught in the Crossfire: Americans Unlawfully Detained by the Trump Administration

 

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history. To accomplish that goal, the Trump Administration has adopted aggressive and often legally dubious tactics that are spurring a backlash from voters. 

Among the most alarming consequences is the toll his expanded immigration enforcement is taking on American citizens. These are teachers, veterans, children, health care workers, and grandparents – law-abiding Americans – being swept up in chaotic raids by masked men in unmarked cars, locked in makeshift detention centers, or left living in fear of mistaken arrest, family separation, or worse. 

What follows are examples of incidents from just the past few months that have caused voters to question Trump’s immigration cruelty:

Alabama:

  • May 23, 2025: “A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake, the man's cousin said Friday. Video of the arrest, aired by Noticias Telemundo, showed authorities grabbing Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, while at a job site in Foley, Alabama, on Wednesday and bending his arms behind him.” [NBC News, 5/23/25]

Arizona:

  • June 8, 2025: “A US marshal was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in Arizona, after being mistakenly identified as a man that agents were looking for, according to a statement from the US Marshals Service.” [The Guardian, 6/8/25] 

  • April 8, 2025: “On April 8, Jose Hermosillo, 19, was arrested by Border Patrol agents near Nogales, Arizona, and jailed for nine days. According to court records, agents accused him of entering the country illegally after he reportedly told officers he was a Mexican citizen — a claim his family says he did not understand due to his learning disabilities and illiteracy.” [The Washington Post, 5/3/25] 

  • January 27, 2025: “At least 15 Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico have reported being stopped at their homes and workplaces, questioned or detained by federal law enforcement and asked to produce proof of citizenship during immigration raids since Wednesday, according to Navajo Nation officials.” [CNN, 1/27/25]

California:

  • June 24, 2025: “The family members of a U.S. citizen who was taken into custody by federal agents in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday are demanding answers as she was detained while on her way to work. Andrea Velez, a Cal Poly Pomona grad working in merchandising at a shoe company, had just been dropped off by her mother and sister for the workday when they saw her being taken into custody, adding they had barely even driven a block before the arrest began. "They didn't have vests that said ICE or anything," said Velez's sister Estrella Rosas. "Their cars didn't have license plates."” [CBS News, 6/26/25]

  • June 18, 2025: “A US citizen, who said he was among 30 people who were detained by federal agents during a raid in Hollywood, is speaking out. 37-year-old Job Garcia told FOX 11's Susan Hirasunsa that he was making a delivery to The Home Depot when he saw vehicles pull in and block the exits to prevent people from driving away. That's when he started recording on his phone as he witnessed the tactics agents used to detain day laborers.” [FOX11, 6/20/25] 

  • June 17, 2025: “Hundreds in a Los Angeles County neighborhood took to the streets to protest after immigration agents detained a 20-year-old outside a Pico Rivera Walmart on Tuesday. The young man who was wrestled to the ground, Adrian Andrew Martinez, is a U.S. citizen, according to his family.” [CBS News, 6/18/25] 

  • June 16, 2025: “A U.S. citizen was detained in Oxnard after recording video of federal immigration agents arresting his father during a recent ICE operation. Juan Ramirez Diaz, who lives in Oxnard with his wife and two children, was taken into custody around noon Monday in an industrial area near Pacific Avenue. According to his family, Ramirez Diaz was filming as ICE agents detained his father, who is not a U.S. citizen, when he was tased and taken as well.” [Telemundo Costa Central, 6/16/25]

  • June 12, 2025: “Brian Gavidia was at work on West Olympic Boulevard in Montebello at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday when he was told immigration agents were outside of his workplace. Gavidia, 29, was born and raised in East Los Angeles and fixes and sells cars for a living. He said he stepped outside. And saw four to six agents. Within seconds, he said, one of them — wearing a vest with “Border Patrol Federal Agent” written on the back — approached him. “Stop right there,” he said the agent told him. Then the agent questioned whether Gavidia was American. “I’m an American citizen,” Gavidia said he told the agent at least three times. Despite his responses, the agent pushed him into a metal gate, put his hands behind his back and asked him what hospital he was born in, Gavidia said.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/13/25] 

  • June 12, 2025: “A family is outraged after a man - who they say is a U.S. citizen - was taken into custody Thursday during an ICE raid at his workplace in Montebello. The incident happened around 4:30 p.m. Video shared with Eyewitness News shows Javier Ramirez in handcuffs sitting on the ground outside his towing yard business. Agents also arrested an employee at the business. "He has diabetes. He screamed, 'I have my passport! I have my ID! I'm a U.S. citizen!' They did not care,'" said a close friend of Ramirez who was there during the incident…. Ramirez was born in San Bernardino and is a single father of two, according to his family. His family members are worried and don't know where agents took him without allowing Ramirez to take his insulin medication with him.” [ABC Eyewitness News, 6/13/15] 

  • June 8, 2025: “A woman who is nine months pregnant was detained by federal immigration authorities, despite being a U.S. citizen. Cary López Alvarado was apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on June 8, one week before her due date, in Hawthorne, Los Angeles County, California.” [Newsweek, 6/12/25]

Florida:

  • April 18, 2025: “Florida authorities detained a U.S.-born citizen on the charge of entering the state as an “unauthorized alien,” forcing him to spend more than 24 hours in a county jail on an immigration hold, despite the man having proof of his citizenship through his birth certificate and Social Security card, his attorney and an advocacy group said Friday. [The Washington Post, 4/18/25]

Illinois:

  • May 11, 2025: “On May 11, Hasan Piker, the most popular progressive online video streamer, was stopped for additional questioning as he traveled through a Chicago airport. There, Piker, a U.S. citizen who has nearly 3 million followers on Twitch, said agents subjected him to lengthy questioning about his views on Trump and the war in Gaza.”  [The Independent, 5/27/25] 

  • January 31, 2025: “On Jan. 31, Julio Noriega, a 54-year-old man born and raised in Chicago, was detained by ICE officers after finishing a job search. According to court filings, officers grabbed him from behind, handcuffed him and placed him in a van with other detainees. Noriega, who carried his identification documents, said he spent more than 10 hours in ICE custody without food, water or access to a bathroom. After midnight, officers checked his wallet, confirmed his citizenship and released him.” [The Washington Post, 5/3/25]

Louisiana:

  • May 3, 2025: “Last week, three children who are U.S. citizens — aged 2, 4 and 7 — were removed to Honduras along with their undocumented mothers, according to attorneys and court records. One child, a 4-year-old boy with Stage 4 cancer, was sent without medication or access to his doctors.” [The Washington Post, 5/3/25] 

  • April 23, 2025: “The toddler, a U.S. citizen, and her undocumented sister and mother were detained on April 22, then deported on April 25, following disputed circumstances… According to court filings, the girls’ father was only able to speak to their mother for around a minute over the phone before an ICE officer allegedly hung up the call as the father was giving her their attorneys’ phone number.” [New York Magazine, 5/3/25]

Massachusetts:

  • May 16, 2025: “Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers briefly detained an American citizen outside of the Cambridge District Court in Medford on Friday after allegedly confusing him with an undocumented immigrant, the latest in a string of immigration-related arrests across the state. Four plainclothes officers approached 31-year-old Hugo Monteiro, a naturalized American citizen originally from Brazil, around 9:15 a.m. as he was leaving the courthouse.” [Harvard Crimson, 5/16/25] 

Michigan:

  • April 1, 2025: “Dexter Township residents Ramiro Martinez and Laura Sanders, both U.S. citizens and longtime immigrant rights advocates, said they were at the 35th District Court near Plymouth on Tuesday, April 1, to support an immigrant living in the country without legal permission… At one point on Tuesday, he went outside the courthouse to check on his dog in the car and was surrounded by several ICE agents, he said. He told agents they had the wrong guy, but they aggressively ordered him to get on the ground, he said. They didn’t allow him to show ID to prove he’s a citizen and instead they grabbed him, put him face down on the pavement, handcuffed him and took out his wallet, he said.” [U.S. Representative Debbie Dingell press release, 4/7/25]

New Jersey:

  • May 9, 2025: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested after attempting to join three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, in entering an immigration detention facility in Newark on May 9. He was charged with trespassing, which was later dropped. [CNN, 6/18/25] 

  • January 23, 2025: “On January 23, 2025, ICE agents raided a small business in Newark, New Jersey. Reports indicate that agents detained community members including a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, a military veteran, without producing a warrant.” [U.S. Representative Adriano Espaillat letter, 1/27/25]

New York:

  • June 24, 2025: “A mother and her four children, three of them born in the U.S., complied with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement order to report for detainment, reporting to the Syracuse ICE office early Tuesday morning. The woman and her kids, ages 13, 10, 9 and 6, are being sent to Texas, according to their La Vid Verdadera pastor, Paul Reynoso. He says ICE arrested her husband at their Syracuse home last Friday.” [Spectrum News, 6/24/25]

  • June 17, 2025: “New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested at Manhattan’s immigration court Tuesday… The videos showed Lander holding onto the man as officers struggled and ultimately moved in to arrest him. At one point, an officer puts his arm up to Lander’s neck, shoving him against a wall and placing him in handcuffs. As he was placed in handcuffs, Lander could be heard telling federal officers: ‘You don’t have the authority to arrest US citizens, I’m not obstructing. I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.’” [CNN, 6/19/25] 

  • June 17, 2025: “A mother and daughter visiting the area from Georgia witnessed a tense traffic stop Tuesday morning involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents on Brown Street. The incident resulted in the arrest and subsequent release of a U.S. citizen. U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed it assisted ICE, but both agencies did not provide additional information. The agents reportedly removed people from the vehicle, including a man named Jose Castro. While recording the incident, Kayden asked for Castro's name. "My name is Jose Castro, I am a citizen here," Castro stated in the video. Jose's sister, Dina Castro, told 13WHAM that her brother is originally from Ecuador and is now a U.S. citizen.” [ABC 13 WHAM, 6/18/25]

  • June 12, 2025: “A New Yorker who was stopped and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents says he was treated like a criminal for simply existing as a Hispanic person in the U.S… Lemus, an electrician, was riding in the passenger seat of a car on his way to work when ICE agents stopped the vehicle in Westbury, New York. The ICE agents reportedly said that Lemus "looks like somebody we are looking for."… The ICE agents allegedly left Lemus in cuffs for 20-25 minutes, and confiscated his phone to prevent him from filming them. They eventually found his ID in his pockets.” [The Independent, 6/13/25]

Oklahoma:

  • April 30, 2025: “Federal immigration agents searched the home of a family in Oklahoma and seized their belongings when conducting a search warrant issued for someone else. The U.S. citizen mother of three daughters said the family has been "traumatized" since they were wrongly subjected to a search and seizure warrant that had the names of the residents who previously lived in her Oklahoma City home.” [NBC News, 4/30/25]

Pennsylvania:

  • January 30, 2025: “In late January, ICE agents barged into Puerto Rican restaurant Boricua Restaurant 2 in Philadelphia, looking to take away one of the two owners. The two Puerto Rican men are well regarded in the community. One of them, Hector Serrano, had created a salsa dance troupe. His business partner, Robert Acevedo, who was harassed by ICE, is a retired Philadelphia police officer.” [The Bulwark, 2/7/25]

  • January 27, 2025: “About a week after President Donald Trump took office, Jonathan Guerrero was sitting at the Philadelphia car wash where he works when immigration agents burst in. The agents didn’t say why they were there and didn’t show their badges, Guerrero recalled. So the 21-year-old didn’t get a chance to explain that although his parents were from Mexico, he had been born right there in Philadelphia…An agent pointed his gun at Guerrero and handcuffed him… When agents began checking IDs, they finally noticed that Guerrero was a citizen and quickly let him go,” [ProPublica, 3/18/25]

Texas:

  • February 3, 2025: “On the morning of February 3, 2025, the family was traveling from the Rio Grande Valley to Houston, Texas, to get emergency treatment for Sara at Texas Children’s Hospital, where she has been treated in the past. Rather than ensure that a child with a serious medical condition obtained appropriate medical care, CBP officers detained the family for over twenty-four hours and eventually forced the entire family, including U.S. citizens, to Mexico, where Sara cannot receive appropriate treatment.” [Texas Civil Rights Project, 3/17/25]

Virginia:

  • March 7, 2025: “A naturalized Virginia resident said he's questioning his vote for President Donald Trump after agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him this week when they were looking for another person on a deportation order. Jensy Machado said he's a U.S. citizen and provided NBC 4 Washington documentation of his legal status.” [NBC4 Washington, 3/2/25]

Wisconsin:

  • January 27, 2025: “A toddler, his mother, and his grandmother—all American citizens—were detained and taken to an immigration detention center by U.S. officials in Milwaukee after they were overheard speaking Spanish, according to a Monday report.” [Daily Beast, 1/29/25]

Published: July 2025