When ICE arrests US citizens, there’s little clear path for what happens next

SAN DIEGO — Barbara Stone went to a San Diego courthouse to watch ICE agents arresting immigrants. She ended up in handcuffs. 

Stone, a 71-year-old grandmother, was volunteering with a group called Detention Resistance, observing ICE agents in the hallways outside immigration courtrooms. On July 2, as officers surrounded an immigrant leaving a hearing, she raised her phone into the air to video the arrest. 

As Stone remembers it, she and the agents exchanged words. A female agent said Stone pushed her. “Actually, she pushed me,” Stone replied.

Assaulting a federal officer is a crime that can result in thousands of dollars of fines or years in prison. 

Stone says when she tried to walk away from the scene, the ICE agents chased her down the hallway, cornered her in a stairwell and placed her in handcuffs. 

“I just kept thinking this is so absurd,” Stone says. 

Stone’s arrest is just one version of a pattern now playing out across California, where ICE agents, in pursuit of undocumented immigrants, also detain U.S. citizens who they say get in their way. 

Agents have accused Americans of obstruction, interfering with law enforcement or even assaulting an officer — allegations that advocacy groups and individual arrestees dispute. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a law-enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security, traditionally is intended to target only immigrants. The agency does not publish regular statistics for arrests of U.S. citizens, and ICE does not always publicly acknowledge why people were arrested or released. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to multiple requests for comment about their efforts or about Barbara Stone’s case.

But interviews, media reports and recent legal filings make clear that more such arrests are happening. Once detained, there’s no clear path for how Americans are treated. 

Some in California have been accused of crimes and held for hours, then released. Others have been put in local jail pending charges. Some have been processed to be deported, until officers later determine their citizenship.

Many of these detentions have involved significant violations of civil rights, according to attorneys such as Mark Rosenbaum with the advocacy group Public Counsel. 

“The pattern or practice that ICE has been following is arrest first, ask questions later,” Rosenbaum says. 

In Barbara Stone’s case, she was taken to a detention room for questioning while officers reviewed security footage of the alleged assault. She says one agent’s hand was so tight around her arm that it left her bruised. 

Stone said the officers at the courthouse who questioned her admitted that they believed the ICE agents had made up the assault claim, while also saying they were waiting for a cell to open up at the county jail in order to bring charges against her.  

“They were playing with me,” Stone says. “It’s all a farce. … I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Activists video ICE; detentions follow 

On the day Stone was detained, 17 ICE agents were present at the courthouse, to surround and arrest immigrants one by one as they finished their mandated court hearings.

The agents covered their faces; one wore a gun strapped at the thigh. Stone and other members of Detention Resistance said the ICE agents referred to themselves as “the Gestapo.” 

Stone’s group fanned out around the agents, to film them from every angle.

Though she says her memory of the event is hazy, Stone remembers a jostle among the agents, bystanders and the immigrant in the tight hallway.

After she was handcuffed and led away, Stone was detained in a room with a one-way mirror — her purse and phone were confiscated, and held on the other side. Law enforcement officers from different agencies cycled through to speak with her, most of them presenting “a veneer of politeness.” Men arrived to question her, telling her they were from the Federal Protective Service, the agency tasked with ensuring the safety of ICE agents. “Who’s here to protect me?” Stone asked, to no response. 

“It was clear they didn’t have any evidence,” Stone says. 

In earlier statements to broadcast media, ICE said Stone “assaulted an ICE officer as they were conducting immigration enforcement,” adding that anyone who assaults or obstructs law enforcement “will face consequences which could include arrest.” 

ICE did not respond to an inquiry about whether agents at the courthouse referred to themselves as “the Gestapo.” 

After Trump took office in January, raids began taking place in community centers, in parking lots, at workplaces and outside courtrooms where immigrants have shown up for legally mandated appearances to regularize their status with the government.

Immigrant advocacy groups responded by positioning volunteers in these locations to observe and film.

Over half of the immigrants arrested by ICE in that time have had no prior criminal record. 

As ICE — facing a quota administration officials have put at 3,000 arrests per day — is carrying out raids in more public places, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a series of statements describing what it says are escalating levels of risk its officers now face. ICE said assaults on officers increased 500% in June, then in July said the increase was 700%. Earlier this month, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem claimed ICE now faces a 1,000% increase in assaults. To date, the agency has not shared data to back up these claims. 

Individual news reports document various cases of people accused of interfering with ICE officers. 

On June 19, Arturo Hermosillo was detained after filming an ICE raid in a parking lot. He said agents told him that he obstructed their path by not moving his car correctly. He was held for several hours in the Department of Homeland Security building in Los Angeles and released without charges. 

Job Garcia, a grad student, was detained while filming a raid at a Home Depot after he shouted at an undocumented truck driver not to open the door when agents approached. He was held in a federal jail in Los Angeles for over 24 hours before he was released with no explanation or charges, according to a federal civil claim he later filed. 

Adrian Martínez, an employee at a Walmart in Pico Rivera, was jailed for three days after he attempted to intervene to keep ICE from arresting an elderly janitor. A U.S. attorney originally claimed that Martínez punched an ICE agent in the face, but security footage from the Walmart showed the agents throwing Martínez to the ground instead. Martínez is facing a felony charge of impeding or interfering with a federal agent and is working to get the case dismissed in court. 

Rosenbaum says that ICE agents are not always following the law, but bystanders’ rights to observe them couldn’t be more clear, regardless of their immigration status. 

“Even if you’re a citizen of Mars, you’re allowed to film the government,” he says. 

Thornier, though, is the question of what constitutes interference. 

Any physical contact with an officer could be considered assault, and any loud noise or disturbance, like shouting or blocking an ICE vehicle, is similarly classified as obstruction, Rosenbaum says.

Any U.S. citizen who is detained has the right to swift processing and access to a lawyer, even if they are not under arrest. This detention should last only a “reasonable” amount of time, with the sole purpose of determining whether a crime occurred.

And unless your phone holds potential evidence related to a crime, it would be against the Fourth Amendment for ICE agents to seize it. “It’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which it would be reasonable to take the phone,” Rosenbaum says. 

These rights apply to everyone, in any place where a raid occurs, Rosenbaum says. 

Whether authorities follow the law is another question altogether. 

ICE arrests others too — and starts deportation efforts

ICE has arrested U.S. citizens who say they were not bystanders filming a raid — they just happened to be in the area — and processed them as if they were undocumented immigrants. 

On June 24, agents tackled Andrea Velez, a marketing designer, to the ground as she walked to work in Los Angeles. “They were just telling me that I was being arrested for interfering or resisting arrest,” Velez told reporters. “I don’t think I was. I was just resisting because I didn’t know where I was going to end up or who was taking me,” she said.

She was held in immigration detention for over 24 hours before her citizenship was confirmed to authorities. She says she repeatedly told the ICE agents that she was a citizen, but they doubted her claims. ICE originally charged Velez with assault, but the Department of Justice dropped the charges.

On July 10, ICE agents dragged a U.S. army veteran, George Retes, out of his car at gunpoint and held him for three days in immigration detention, without the opportunity to change clothes, call his family or meet with a lawyer. Retes worked as a security guard at a farm in Camarillo, where ICE agents arrested dozens of undocumented workers. “What happened to me wasn’t just a mistake — it was a violation of my civil rights,” Retes wrote in a statement.

In July, Rosenbaum was part of a group that successfully argued for a temporary restraining order to stop raids in seven Southern California counties due to racial profiling on the part of ICE agents. In a news conference, Secretary Noem called the judge in the case “an idiot” and said: “None of our operations are going to change.”

Even before the current Trump administration’s deportation push, federal auditors found that immigration systems make it possible to deport citizens erroneously. The climate of aggressive enforcement may be enough to make some citizens unsure how they’ll prove their legal status if they encounter ICE.

“You’re better protected by understanding your legal rights than you are by avoiding it for fear of reprisals.”

Mark Rosenbaum, attorney with advocacy group Public Counsel

Rosenbaum says that while people shouldn’t have to carry a passport, anyone concerned about being profiled could consider carrying a photocopy to ease their worries. 

More importantly, he says, people whose rights have been violated should file legal complaints in their cases. Arrests motivated by racial bias are not mistakes on the part of ICE, Rosenbaum says, but illegal acts. “The government isn’t supposed to accidentally do anything,” he says. 

Even though the government has now acknowledged that it is not heeding all court orders, Rosenbaum says anyone who is the victim of an illegal arrest or detention should seek relief through the legal system, in an attempt to hold law enforcement accountable. There are numerous pro bono civil rights law groups operating in Southern California to avoid legal fees. 

“When law enforcement is out of control, as it is right now, it’s not unreasonable to be worried, but you’re better protected by understanding your legal rights than you are by avoiding it for fear of reprisals,” Rosenbaum says.

Arrests have lingering effects

Barbara Stone was held in the same room for eight hours. Despite asking for a lawyer “about 15 times,” she says, she was not permitted to talk to one. She was not under arrest, but she was also not allowed to leave. 

Rosenbaum called these actions “unconstitutional” and “egregious.” 

Then, without issuing charges, the officers released her. 

Stone says while she was in custody, she imagined what that same situation would feel like for one of the immigrants she saw arrested outside the courtroom. 

“I’m not a victim,” she says, noting how she knew even in the worst case scenario, she would be shielded by systems that would not protect deportees. “I just cannot believe seeing these defenseless people being dragged away in the elevator,” she says. “How can we ever get used to this?”

At first, she thought she would return to immigration court to observe ICE. Now, she has decided to express her support in other ways. She is not afraid of ICE, she says, but does not want to be the center of attention. 

Arrests of bystanders have changed the way other activists interact with agents too. The group Stone was with still observes in court, but gives the agents a wider berth when they arrest immigrants. 

“I see them with their masks on and I want to say something, but I know that I can’t do that, so I stay silent and I just try to look them in the eye,” says Gretchen Bitterlin, an observer at the San Diego immigration court who volunteers with a different interfaith coalition. 

She says she “won’t take the chance” to film the ICE raids she witnesses.

Since returning home, Stone says, the bruises from the agents grabbing her and the scrapes from the handcuffs have faded, but that did not signal the end of the ordeal. After her case was broadcast on national news, Stone’s husband received an anonymous phone call with an AI-modified voice, threatening the couple. They have since decided to add extra security lights to their home. Stone says she is plagued by recurring nightmares, in which people break into her home and she cannot escape. 

When agents released Stone at the courthouse after her eight-hour detention, they returned her purse, but not the phone she had used to record video that day. The phone was “a weapon,” they told her. Nearly two months later, she still has not gotten it back.

Lillian Perlmutter covers immigration for the Santa Barbara News-Press and NEWSWELL.