Because of the tremendous public reaction last January to the high-profile ICE raids in Minnesota, which ended with agents killing U.S. citizens Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino was transferred (demoted), and Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem was removed. Such ICE violence resulted in a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that lasted for 76 days (from February 14 to April 30, 2026). After the killings of Good and Pretti, Democrats and Republicans met to come up with new ICE policies to prevent such lawlessness.
For a while, ICE activity had not been reported while Border Czar Tom Homan maneuvered to deescalate the tense situation. But once the shutdown was over in May, and the $70 billion in funds released, ICE revamped its campaign of mass deportations with a vengeance. ICE agents desperately began prowling the streets, parks, and homes in search of their prey to fulfill its quota of 3000 per day. This involved stopping suspected undocumented persons on the streets, often during traffic stops that are fraught with danger, particularly when unmarked ICE vehicles are involved.
ICE agents carried out a policy of “shoot first and ask questions later” when stopping presumed undocumented immigrants. They are doing it with full impunity. To date, no ICE agent has been prosecuted for any of the killings. ICE is being used as an extralegal police force that strikes terror into the population. It is unaccountable to local or state authorities and even the Constitution. ICE could probably be used to go after anyone – citizen or not – whom Homan, Steven Miller or Donald Trump targets.
In two weeks, three men who were chased by ICE have ended up dead. Despite taxpayers’ dollars allotted to ICE for body cameras and other equipment to document encounters, no body cameras were used to substantiate claims made that ICE agents’ lives were in danger to justify the killings. On the contrary, there was plenty of bystander and fixed street camera footage to contradict the allegations and, as in the Minnesota killings, ICE and DHS did all the investigations.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was 52 years old. He was a construction worker, a husband and a father of three. He had been living for over 35 years in Houston, Texas as an undocumented immigrant. On July 7, he left his home in the early hours of the morning to go to work. An ICE agent shot him in cold blood through the driver’s window of his vehicle.
“Me están matando.” These were the last words. “Nos tratan como perros,” cries a neighbor in front of a makeshift altar honoring Lorenzo. His death highlighted the failure of immigration reform as his attorney attests. But it also highlights that people are being murdered by federal agents, contradicting that we are a country of laws and due process if the government can murder you on the spot.
On July 13, Sebastián Duran Guerrero, a 25-year-old worker, father, and husband in Biddeford, Maine, was shot and killed by ICE agents with his 3-year-old daughter nearby. Guerrero had a work permit and a Social Security card.
On July 14, Juan Jairo Coronilla, a worker, a father, a husband, and a tourist from Mexico, was run over by a tractor-trailer truck and killed in St. Augustine, Florida. He was a Mexican tourist and with his return plane ticket back to Mexico. Why did he flee? We will never know. It could have been fear of being shot and killed like Araujo and Guerrero.
The enforcement crackdown in Trump’s second term since January 2025 has resulted in nearly two dozen people being fired on by federal immigration agents. Six people, including three U.S. citizens, have been killed because of those shootings, nearly all of which involved officers firing into vehicles.
The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing ICE to stop or detain people based on “suspicion” of being undocumented, which smacks of racial profiling and was what the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s opposed. This has resulted in 10,000 people being arrested in five days as of the end of June. That is an average of about 2,000 arrests per day. Some 39,000 people a day are held in detention centers.
And those ICE detention centers are where deaths also happen.
On July 12, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan, died while being transferred between detention facilities in Georgia. His was among the latest in the skyrocketing number of deaths in detention since Trump and his entourage took office compared to prior years.
According to ICE, Arenas-Silva supposedly died of a cardiac arrest, something his sister says could have been prevented. According to her, Arenas-Silva had been provided with his medication.
Fear grips our communities. It forces families to keep their school children at home, to skip doctors’ appointments, and skip going to their jobs. But there is hope in these dark days, and that hope is our neighbors who are stepping up, taking action, and organizing marches and rallies in protest. They are walking children to school and even going grocery shopping for those who need it.
From Houston to Chicago to Maine to Georgia, the multiracial response from the community has been massive, despite the reprisals.
People don’t agree with the tactics and violence by ICE agents. Half (50%) of Americans now somewhat or strongly support abolishing ICE. While majorities of Democrats have supported abolishing ICE in many YouGov polls this year, this marks the first time that at least half of Independents support abolishing ICE (52%). Most Republicans (68%) continue to oppose abolishing ICE, although about one-quarter (23%) now support it, which also marks a high point in support among Republicans.
Congressional Democrats and all elected officials should listen to the demands of the people. If not, they should be voted out in the November 2026 midterms. This time, we will not be scared by the boogeyman of Trump and the likes of him into voting for the lesser of two evils. We stand by our neighbors and we will not let ICE shoot them down on the streets or let them be taken away by masked men in unmarked vehicles.
We must elect the right people to protect and uphold our rights and not the billionaires; even if we run for office ourselves. An authoritarian or oligarchic government doesn’t fit our morality and humanity.
We stand up because we see our democracy in peril. We know that if one of us is in danger, all of us are. Autocrats and kings don’t belong here. Although our democracy is not perfect, we must strive every day to perfect it. We demand due process and respect for human dignity. Immigration reform is long overdue.
Our government’s violent anti-immigration campaign is escalating, but we have the power to stop it. It’s time to get ICE off our streets. Abolish ICE!
Return the money to health care and food programs instead of wasting it on ICE in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
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