It was captured on the Ring camera. In the footage, Martin Díaz, 35, runs across the front lawn of his house, indistinguishable from the officers in plainclothes who follow, pepper spraying Díaz as he attempts to make his escape through the garden gate, dragging him back toward the sidewalk, and tackling him to the ground next to a potted plant. “I got you, fucker,” one of the agents says. The struggle lasts for several seconds, but Díaz’s hands are pinned.
From another camera angle on the back patio, Díaz’s roommate tells the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who have not identified themselves or presented a warrant, that they are not allowed on the property, but they brush him off. He also attempts in vain to advocate for his friend, saying, “He’s a good guy!”
“No, he’s not,” an agent says. The whole altercation is two minutes long.
Though Díaz was initially processed for deportation on April 29, he wouldn’t stay long in ICE detention. Instead, he’s now in the county jail in Spokane, Washington, because one of the ICE agents filed a criminal charge in federal court several days later, claiming Díaz elbowed him in the face. For assaulting a federal officer, Díaz is facing a possible sentence of 20 years in prison as well as a $250,000 fine.
But Martin Díaz’s wife, Kendall Díaz, said in an interview that the Ring camera footage is proof he did not elbow the ICE agents. She believes the agents made up the extra charges. “Of course, I believe he didn’t do that… I think it’s a retaliation,” she said. Three days before the extra charges were filed, Kendall posted a photo to Facebook of one of the faces of the officers involved in the arrest.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, violent ICE arrests have been caught on camera across the country. In the clips, many of which have gone viral, agents are seen smashing the window of a car with a pregnant woman inside, vigorously beating a man who is curled up on the asphalt, and tossing tear gas canisters near a toddler and a baby.
The Department of Homeland Security has presented ICE agents themselves as the real victims here. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin says assaults against ICE agents have risen 500 percent since the beginning of the year.
DHS refused to respond to Rolling Stone’s request for the total number of assaults against ICE agents. DHS has never made this information public, so it is unknown whether the 500 percent increase is between 10 and 60 assaults or 200 and 1,200. Rolling Stone also asked for clarification as to whether the figure refers to accusations or legal charges, as well as the definition of assault used in the statistic. Assault on a federal officer can be a felony or a misdemeanor, with possible sentences varying in severity. Other publications have met similar resistance in communication with DHS about this topic. The press release DHS sent to Rolling Stone on June 20 just links to a Breitbart article that claims to have “exclusive data,” but does not reveal anything other than the 500 percent number.
Recent data on immigrants booked into ICE custody acquired by Rolling Stone lists 35 pending assault charges since October 2024, but it is not clear whether those potential assaults were against ICE officers. From DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s public statements, though, it appears any physical contact with an ICE officer could now be classified as assault, and the agency is prepared to file charges against anyone and everyone as they see fit. “You will not stop us or slow us down. ICE and our federal law enforcement partners will continue to enforce the law. And if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Noem said in a recent statement.
Even Democratic politicians have been arrested in recent weeks during altercations with ICE officers, including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.). Lander was arrested while escorting an immigrant out of a courtroom and DHS made a public statement saying he would be charged with assault, but the charges were dropped, while McIver was arrested at a protest in front of an ICE detention center and was indicted with three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding, and interfering with federal officials.
In a statement, McIver called the charges against her “a brazen attempt at political intimidation,” part of “an effort by Trump’s administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused and scare me out of doing the work I was elected to do.”
Lander and McIver’s altercations with ICE officers were filmed and took place amid a forest of bystanders, but many of these assault cases will rest only on the testimony of the people involved. In May, ICE charged Francisco DeJesus Morales, an undocumented man from Nicaragua with no criminal history (crossing the border without authorization is not a crime) with assault for grabbing and twisting an ICE officer’s testicles. At a workplace raid in Omaha, Nebraska on June 10, a Honduran man, Marvin Aleman Zepeda, was arrested and charged with the use of a deadly or dangerous weapon to assault, resist, or impede a federal officer — ICE agents say he brandished a box cutter while hiding in the crawl space of a warehouse after the agents had tasered his leg. Cases like these balance on the integrity of the agents involved, and any evidence they can provide of physical injuries.
Sometimes, the claims unravel. On June 18, ICE agents arrested a U.S. citizen, Adrian Andrew Martinez, 20, at a Walmart in Pico Rivera, California. Martinez approached the agents in an attempt to defend one of the store’s janitors against deportation. A Border Patrol Assistant Chief told a local Fox station that Martinez was arrested because he punched two officers. Later, the Walmart store compiled security camera footage of the whole interaction, which includes no punches, only the officers throwing Martinez to the ground three times as he argues with them. When the footage was released, instead of assault, Martinez was charged with felony conspiracy to impede or injure an officer (a possible six-year sentence), charges that his lawyers claim were “trumped up” and “filed to justify the federal agents’ violent treatment of Adrian.”
José Manuel Mojica, also a U.S. citizen, participated in the anti-ICE protests in Paramount, California, on June 7, and was charged with impeding a federal officer, with a possible prison sentence of 8 years, after he attempted to halt a violent altercation between another protester and an agent. Instead of pushing an officer, as the charges allege, Mojica says he was slammed to the ground, blacked out, and thought he “was going to die.” Mojica has the video evidence of the incident, and the bruises, to prove it.
In any of these cases, if the ICE agents had been local police officers, the possible sentences for these crimes would be lighter, a reality that criminal defense attorneys are now urging the public to understand as civilians interact with federal agents for the first time in their workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. An officer can file charges any time someone doesn’t comply with a verbal order and has any physical reaction that does not follow the order.
The situation is complicated by the fact that ICE officers often refuse to identify themselves, as well as their new costume: plainclothes, unmarked cars, and face coverings. Even if the officers are armed, nearly anyone can own a firearm in America. To many who encounter them, the ICE officers appear far more like criminals than the people they arrest.
Kendall Díaz said a group of Customs and Border Patrol officers showed up at her house several weeks before her husband’s arrest, but he wasn’t home. They bumped into her car in the driveway in a false attempt to get her attention and start a conversation, pretending to be civilians. When Díaz asked one of the agents why another one was staring inside the window of her home, the agent replied that he was “off his meds.” It was only later that the agents revealed that they were from CBP and had been watching the couple for weeks.
“It was super weird behavior,” Díaz said. “We asked for proof of ID and a warrant and they refused to give us any information.”
Complicating matters further, ICE impersonators have been arrested in at least six states over the past few months, including two men who used their false identities as ICE agents to sexually assault immigrant women. If it is impossible to tell who is a real federal officer, California state Senator Scott Weiner says, the public will lose trust in law enforcement. “The recent federal operations in California have created an environment of profound terror. If we want the public to trust law enforcement, we cannot allow them to behave like secret police in an authoritarian state,” he said in a press release.
In El Monte, California on June 20, ICE agents tackled a U.S. citizen, and after realizing their mistake, asked, “Why were you running?” — as if there could be no explanation why one would run from masked, armed men, if not undocumented.
Former ICE Chief of Staff Jason Houser, who worked at the agency during the Biden administration, says the new directives from the Trump team are putting ICE agents in positions at odds with their former role in society, triggering “combustible” situations with civilians, as the agency lurches towards valuing optics over public safety. While the majority of ICE’s previous work involved tracking and arresting undocumented people with criminal convictions, the Trump administration has now set a quota of 3,000 arrests per day. This has led ICE to turn to the easiest people to find, rather than the arrests deemed most necessary. Since January, ICE has picked up double the average number of people, and less than 10 percent have serious criminal convictions.
In other words, ICE agents are unaccustomed to picking up everyday people from Home Depot parking lots, city sidewalks, or courthouses, areas where there could be crowds of citizens dissenting. In Los Angeles on June 24, an ICE agent pointed a taser at the head of a U.S. citizen who was filming an arrest. He attempted to swat away her phone and shouted, “You’re resisting!” — even though filming a federal officer was her legal right.
José Manuel Mojica, the protester charged with assaulting an ICE officer in Paramount said, on the way to the police station, one of the ICE agents told him,, “Don’t act like you’re not used to this,” but Mojica had never been arrested before in his life.
David Bier, a research fellow on immigration at the Cato Institute who has been tracking ICE detentions, said there has also been a 500 percent increase in ICE arrests on the street in public places. Bier said given the tense environment, and the threat of being sent to a prison in a foreign country like El Salvador with no hope for release, the idea that people would fight back against arrests, leading to a 500 percent increase in perceived assaults, is “not surprising.”
Bier also believes the vast majority of DHS’ assault claims could be accusations that never translate into criminal charges. “If I spit at ICE officers and it hits five of them, that’s assault on five officers,” he said.
And sometimes, DHS just makes things up. On June 13, DHS responded to a viral video on X of ICE agents arresting a U.S. citizen and stealing his ID. They claimed the man in the video, Brian Gavidia, assaulted an ICE officer, but he was never charged.
Regardless of whether civilians are assaulting ICE officers in large numbers, Houser says threats of criminal charges can be used to coerce people already in custody. Since October, 2024, over 44,000 people have been listed with “pending” charges when they were booked into detention. These pending charges may never be filed. With the goal of maximum political impact, Houser says many statistics released by ICE under the Trump administration are misleading. “They’re going to the check-out at the grocery store and double-scanning their bananas,” he said.
When an immigrant is placed in a detention center under deportation proceedings, they are not guaranteed legal representation. Often, federal agents will attempt to convince the immigrant to sign papers authorizing their own deportation, so their removal is expedited, without any input from a judge. Otherwise, the immigrant would take up a bed in a detention center for months waiting for a court hearing. The threat of prison time could get an immigrant to give up hope on their release, Houser says. “They’re using it as a tactic because they’re trying to get voluntary removal.”
Amanda Schuft, a lawyer with Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles, says ICE officers and other DHS personnel have also taken action to impede immigrants’ knowledge of their rights and legal representation in recent weeks. “It’s very concerning that it’s been so hard for us to get in touch with people who are getting arrested,” she said. “They don’t have access to information that they don’t have to sign a deportation order.”
While she waits for her husband’s trial, Kendall Díaz says she is confident the camera footage will prove Martin’s innocence. But he still could be deported to Mexico if acquitted, even though he is married to a U.S. citizen and has submitted an application for a green card. Díaz’s lawyers have told her Martin will probably be re-arrested by ICE in the courthouse, immediately after the trial concludes.
Martin Díaz came to the United States as a toddler, and neither member of the couple speaks Spanish. Still, Kendall says, they are forced to plan for a new life in a foreign country.
“Physically, it’s painful,” Díaz said. “Watching things unfold in your own yard, in your own house… I have no control.”
