More Than 500 U.S. Citizens Have Been Detained By ICE, Including About a Dozen Deported: Report

AP Photo/John Locher

President Donald Trump campaigned heavily on the issue of immigration but the actual reality of his administration’s crackdown has been highly controversial, including detaining more than 500 people who are U.S. citizens, according to a new report by ProPublica.

The Trump administration has strongly denied many of the accusations launched by its critics, including accusations about abusive practices, detention of citizens, and racial profiling.

“But that is precisely what is happening, and at a far larger scale than previously reported,” reported ProPublica in a lengthy report Tuesday that was authored by by Nicole Foy, Ruth Talbot, Cengiz Yar, Liliana Michelena, Bianca Fortis, Mariam Elba, and Kahlie Wray.

ProPublica’s report defined “detained” as “all incidents we could find of citizens reportedly being held against their will by immigration officers for any amount of time,” including when American citizens were “handcuffed, held at gunpoint or otherwise prevented from leaving an area,” noting the legal definition of being detained as not being free to leave. The analysis covered the time period from Jan. 2025 through Sept. 2026.

ProPublica noted that they had “restricted our count to warrantless arrests that took place outside of airports and away from the borders, where immigration agents have long had more authority,” and “excluded cases of Americans who were arrested after a judicial warrant,” “incidents where an agent shot, tackled or pepper-sprayed a citizen but didn’t detain them,” and “immigration protesters arrested by police who were only enforcing local laws.”

“Collectively, these cases show that as the administration has relentlessly pursued immigrants, federal agents have run roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens too,” the report said. “We’re showing you every case — the reality that the administration denies — along with the receipts.”

All together, ProPublica’s research found more than 500 cases where a government immigration agent detained a citizen, including:

More than a hundred Americans held after agents questioned their citizenship. Nearly all were people of color.

At least 70 American children and teens detained, some of whom were handcuffed.

Of the more than 300 Americans we tracked as detained for allegedly assaulting or obstructing agents, we found fewer than half were actually charged in federal court, and many of those cases were dropped or dismissed.

At least 63 Americans detained while recording.

36 Americans held for at least a day without being able to contact a lawyer or their family.

Roughly a dozen citizens deported, mostly children.

ProPublica’s numbers are an “undercount,” the report said, noting that they only included those people who they could identify.

These incidents included a 20-year-old man who “held in a Florida jail for more than 24 hours, despite having proof of his citizenship,” a dual U.S.-Mexico citizen who was detained in California “for four days without access to a lawyer or his family,” and “more than 120 citizens in Illinois” who were detained during the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” — despite the Department of Homeland Security’s claims that there were “no administrative arrests of U.S. citizens.”

DHS has insisted that “ICE has significant protections in place to ensure U.S. citizens are not arrested, detained, or mistakenly removed,” and provided a statement to ProPublica defending its agents’ conduct, claiming, “DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted” and the agency “do[es] our due diligence,” adding a warning that people who obstruct agents “will of course face consequences which include arrest.”

Among the personal stories shared in ProPublica’s report was that of Willy Wender Aceituno, a naturalized citizen and resident of North Carolina who told ProPublica he “voted for Trump twice…[and] said he never imagined that the immigration crackdown he supported would entangle him”:

Then, last November, Border Patrol agents broke his truck window, yanked Aceituno out and threw him onto the pavement of a parking lot, where one agent knelt on his back. (DHS says he “refused to comply” with agents’ commands.)

“ICE isn’t looking for criminals,” Aceituno said. “They’re looking for Latinos. Having papers in this country does not protect you.”

…Ever since his arrest in November, Aceituno said his U.S.-born daughter carries her passport at college. “She has a Latino face,” he said, adding, “My daughter’s white friends aren’t carrying their passports.”

The American Civil Liberties Union is representing Aceituno in a lawsuit against the federal government for the “unlawful arrest.” A post on the ACLU’s website about the case states that during the arrest, Aceituno “was thrown onto the pavement, which was covered in broken glass, and he suffered bleeding cuts all over his body,” that he “kept repeating that he was a citizen while the agents continued to tell him to ‘shut up,’ until finally, an agent looked in Aceituno’s wallet and “confirmed that he was a citizen with no criminal record.” Aceituno was released “on the side of the road, still bleeding and 2 miles away from his truck.”

ProPublica’s report contains multiple other incidents involving First Amendment and Fourth Amendment violations, including numerous photos and video clips. Read the full report here.

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