As immigration raids have swept the nation, it’s not simply immigrants who’ve been kidnapped and detained. Americans have additionally been caught up within the Trump administration’s draconian policies.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a US citizen dwelling in Alabama, was forcibly detained in Might by immigration authorities whereas at a building worksite. When confronted, Garcia Venegas advised authorities that he was a citizen and confirmed them his Alabama REAL ID, his legal professionals declare. However that didn’t cease the authorities from tackling Garcia Venegas to the bottom and placing him in handcuffs, they allege. In a court docket submitting, Garcia Venegas says that he was saved handcuffed at the back of a automobile “within the sizzling Alabama solar” for over an hour.
Lower than a month later, Garcia Venegas says, he was detained once more at a worksite. Whereas he wasn’t handcuffed this time, immigration authorities ignored the truth that Garcia Venegas advised them he was a citizen and once more introduced them with a REAL ID, his legal professionals declare.
Garcia Venegas is now suing the federal government. In his court docket declaration, Garcia Venegas says that an officer advised him his ID was “faux.”
“I believe that when you match the demographic profile that they are focusing on and you’re a citizen, [authorities] view the half-hour or three hours or three days that you simply spend in custody as only a essential value of the present enforcement system and the quotas and the bonuses and every part that goes together with that,” says Jared McClain, senior lawyer on the Institute for Justice, which is representing Garcia Venegas.
“Allegations that DHS legislation enforcement officers interact in “racial profiling” are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE. What makes somebody a goal for immigration enforcement is that if they’re illegally within the U.S.—NOT their pores and skin colour, race, or ethnicity. Beneath the fourth modification of the U.S. Structure, DHS legislation enforcement makes use of “affordable suspicion” to make arrests. There are not any “indiscriminate stops” being made. The Supreme Courtroom lately vindicated us on this query. DHS enforces federal immigration legislation with out concern, favor, or prejudice,” assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS Tricia McLaughlin tells WIRED.
Circumstances like this one are sadly not distinctive. In keeping with reporting from ProPublica, no less than 170 US residents have been detained by immigration authorities by the primary 9 months of 2025. And this might all get a lot worse: The US authorities is quickly combining knowledge throughout federal businesses that might put much more folks, together with US residents, within the crosshairs of its harsh immigration insurance policies.
WIRED first reported in April that the Trump administration had been pooling knowledge from throughout the federal government in its push to surveil and observe immigrants, and it’s solely continued from there.
