It didn’t take that long for federal immigration agencies to show why their presence at police violence protests only adds to the dangers already facing Black and brown demonstrators. Late last week, advocacy group Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) tweeted a video of special agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New York City tackling a protester they claimed to NBC News “had a weapon and could be a threat to public safety.” But the demonstrator, who reportedly turned out to be a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent and a U.S. military veteran, was unarmed.
IDP attorney Terry Lawson told NBC News that the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents had three guns pointed at the man as they were “looking for something to justify their attack on him.” Their harassment only revealed his military service to the nation. "The pattern that we see in this case is similar to patterns we've seen in ICE arrests outside of courthouses,” Lawson said. “They didn't identify themselves, they terrified him, they were pushing their guns at him and they never said why they targeted him.”
In a Twitter thread, IDP described how the man was ambushed by five agents who “jumped out of a van with guns drawn” as he was walking with protesters. “Agents held him on the ground with 3 guns pointed at him, cuffed him, illegally searched him, tried to search his phone, accused him of having a gun,” the group said. “All they found was his military/veteran id. They held him for 10 minutes looking for something to justify their attack on him.”
Human rights advocates have been among the voices condemning the deployment of untrained ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers to protests against police violence, with Human Rights Watch’s Nicole Austin-Hillery saying: “Border Patrol agents have a disturbing record of killing people, including US citizens, with impunity, and ICE has a history of violating detainees’ rights. As people protest police brutality and encounter new police abuses, these agents risk infusing more danger into volatile situations.”
This is also the opinion of former agents themselves. Jenn Budd, a former Senior Border Patrol Agent, wrote in a recent blog post that the agency “has spent decades waiting quietly in the wings, stocking up on weapons and nearly tripling in size since 2001. Waiting for that moment when a president would see them for the heroes they believe themselves to be. Waiting for that moment when a president would fully activate these extraordinary powers to do his/her bidding. That moment is here.”
The administration will continue claiming, even after the harassment of this U.S. military veteran in New York, that the presence of ICE and CBP agents at protests is necessary to maintain “law and order” (and we all know how much the administration that pardoned the racist and lawless Joe Arpaio really cares about law and order). In reality, as Yesenia Padilla of Southern Border Communities Coalition noted in her blog post: “The presence of border patrol agents places everybody’s safety at risk.”
"It's just really concerning to see ICE out on the street, grabbing somebody who's peacefully protesting before the curfew, who was doing absolutely nothing wrong," Lawson said. "The use of force also seems very troubling and the fact that he's a man of Puerto Rican descent is really concerning because it raises questions about racial profiling."