Human Impact Project

Federal ICE agents were present outside the Ventura County Sheriff's Office on Monday, February 2, 2026, where protesters and observers had gathered. During the encounter, an ICE agent threw a woman to the ground and subsequently used pepper spray on the crowd. Witnesses stated they were documenting the ICE operation and posed no physical threat to officers. At least one person was detained during the incident. The woman who was thrown to the ground declined to speak about what happened.

Maria Santay, a U.S. citizen and community observer, livestreamed her detainment by federal immigration agents at an El Monte gas station on February 1, 2026. Agents surrounded her vehicle and broke her car window with a hammer while she recorded on Instagram. She was detained and released Friday evening with charges including resisting arrest.

CNN correspondent Veronica Miracle was struck with pepper spray while reporting live on a protest at an ICE facility in Los Angeles. Protesters overtook the property and pushed Department of Homeland Security officers back inside the building. Miracle choked and coughed on camera due to the chemical irritant but continued reporting on the incident.

Olga Perez, a 47-year-old translator of a rare Mayan dialect who arrived in the U.S. in 1997 after Guatemala's civil war, self-deported in July 2026 after her asylum case was dismissed and efforts to stay were rejected by immigration courts. She had been detained since November 2025 at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona following a traffic stop, and her husband had been taken into ICE custody two months earlier while working a landscaping job. Perez said goodbye to her children—Eliza, 21, Jessica, 18, Romeo, 15, and Cynthia, 13—at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, with the eldest daughter continuing to run the family's landscaping business to support her siblings. Perez had no criminal record and had worked with police departments, courts and nonprofits across Florida, including helping clear a Guatemalan immigrant of criminal charges in a 2024 case.

The police chief of St. Peter intervened with federal agents to prevent the detention of a local resident who was observing ICE enforcement actions. This intervention by local police in Minnesota occurred during ICE and border patrol operations in the state.

Bob Peck, a U.S. citizen, filed a notice of claim seeking $7.5 million in damages against ICE after agents threatened to arrest him for observing and filming their enforcement activities. The filing documents an incident on January 22 where masked agents confronted Peck while he was following their vehicle and told him he would be arrested if he continued. The case is among multiple reports of ICE agents intimidating observers, including threats to add them to watchlists and agents driving to observers' homes.

Two Azerbaijani men, Fazal and Alikhan, who immigrated legally to the U.S. and were married in Charlotte, were detained by ICE after a routine immigration appointment in January. Alikhan was moved to Stewart Detention Center in Georgia where he became ill and received inadequate medical care until a U.S. Senator intervened. Unable to face prolonged detention, Alikhan announced in February he would self-deport rather than continue fighting his case, with Fazal planning to follow.

ICE officers conducted an immigration enforcement operation in the Eastside neighborhood of Santa Barbara on January 28, 2026. A masked ICE officer pepper-sprayed a community member who was documenting the activity, an incident captured on video. One person was detained by ICE, though the detention was reportedly unrelated to the pepper-spray incident.

On January 28, 2026, ICE agents conducted an early morning enforcement operation at the intersection of Salinas and Carpinteria Streets in Santa Barbara's Eastside neighborhood, near Franklin Elementary School. During the operation, ICE agents pepper-sprayed and physically pushed multiple residents who had gathered to document the activity. Community members, including Beth Goodman who was distributing ICE resource information, witnessed and recorded the incident. At least one woman was sprayed while documenting the operation, and a man in a yellow sweatshirt escaped arrest. Santa Barbara Police Department and firefighters responded to provide medical assistance and help de-escalate the confrontation. An unknown number of individuals were detained by ICE, and no arrests were made by local police.

Anthony Paredes, an 18-year-old deaf high school senior at Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts in Los Angeles, was chased and tackled to the ground by Department of Homeland Security immigration officers on January 24, 2026, during a peaceful protest outside a federal building in downtown Los Angeles. Multiple bystanders shouted that Paredes was deaf and could not hear the officers' verbal commands, but he was taken into custody without a sign language interpreter provided. While in custody, Paredes' requests to use a restroom were denied. His mother, Guadalupe Diaz, expressed concern about the lack of interpreter access during the encounter. Educators and organizers plan to file a claim and lawsuit against the government and seek to have charges dropped, with a court date scheduled for April 1.

Georgia Savageford, a Minneapolis woman, was arrested by federal immigration officers on January 24, 2026, after being pushed to the ground by an agent. She was then tackled and dragged face-down by three agents, who knelt on her back, twisted her arms and legs, and handcuffed her so tightly she suffered temporary nerve damage and lost feeling in her hands. Savageford was a legal observer monitoring ICE enforcement activities when the incident occurred. She was placed in an ICE holding facility where she was held for 12 hours in a cold cell without adequate access to food, water, or bathroom facilities, then released without being charged. Civil rights attorneys have filed complaints on her behalf as part of an effort to pursue class-action lawsuits over alleged excessive force.

On January 22, 2026, ICE agents fired paintball-like projectiles at vehicles driven by citizen observers monitoring immigration enforcement in a Home Depot parking lot in South Portland, Maine, part of a broader surge in ICE operations in the state that week. Robert Peck, one of the observers, filed a notice of claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act on February 1, 2026 seeking $7.5 million after deportation officers Nicholas Lapointe and Christopher Semler threatened to arrest him for following and filming them on Route 1. In June 2026 Peck filed a civil complaint under Maine's civil rights act, and he has since formally sued the two agents for violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights, with Lapointe and Semler required to respond by October 16. His attorney, David Webbert, says it is the first time a Maine legal observer has sued ICE officers under the state's civil rights law.

William Vermie, a 39-year-old Army combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient, was tackled and detained by ICE agents while standing on a public sidewalk in Minneapolis observing agents detain two young men during an operation the government called Operation Metro Surge. He was taken to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building and held for eight hours without being allowed to contact an attorney or his family, despite repeatedly requesting legal representation and his wife having already secured a lawyer on his behalf. DHS said Vermie was arrested for allegedly assaulting a law enforcement officer. Four attorneys told ABC News they were denied access to clients held at the same facility, with multiple attorneys reporting similar complaints from others arrested in recent Minneapolis ICE operations and alleging violations of Fifth and Sixth Amendment due process and right-to-counsel protections.

Elinor Hilton, a 23-year-old Portland resident, was recording federal agents during a Department of Homeland Security operation called "Catch of the Day" at a Home Depot when agents told her she was being placed on a watchlist and threatened to come to her house that night. The incident occurred two weeks after Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, and Hilton has said she has since struggled to sleep and remains fearful of idling cars near her home. Hilton and fellow observer Colleen Fagan, who said agents told her she was being placed in "a nice little database," appeared in court as plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit Hilton v. Noem et al., in which attorneys from Protect Democracy and the law firms Dunn Isaacson Rhee and Drummond Woodsum argue that the surveillance violated observers' First Amendment rights.

Thierno Diallo, a Guinean national previously granted withholding of removal to Guinea, was detained by ICE during a routine check-in at 26 Federal Plaza in New York after the agency moved to deport him to Ghana as a third-country national. He was then transferred to the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, New Jersey. Diallo filed a federal habeas corpus petition challenging his detention, and a district judge granted the petition in part, ordering relief while denying other requested relief.

A family of eight returning from a basketball game in Minneapolis on January 17, 2026, became trapped between ICE agents and protesters. After being surrounded by federal agents and unable to leave, tear gas canisters were deployed into their vehicle, forcing the mother to administer CPR to their 6-month-old infant who stopped breathing. The family was ultimately rescued by bystanders who helped evacuate the children from the tear gas-filled car.

ICE agents conducted an enforcement action in Minneapolis that resulted in the detention of a man and caused injuries to multiple children present at the scene. During the incident, ICE agents smashed a car window containing six children, including a 6-month-old who lost consciousness and was hospitalized after exposure to tear gas and a flash bang device. A 16-year-old U.S. citizen was allegedly placed in a chokehold during the encounter, and his phone was reportedly confiscated and sold to a used electronics vending machine. The family was returning home from a basketball game when they became trapped in the area where the enforcement action was occurring.

Juan Daniel Mendoza, a 17-year-old Morristown High School senior, was arrested by ICE on Jan. 12 while on his way to a Speedwell Avenue laundromat, one of 11 people detained in the area that day. He had entered the U.S. in 2024 as an unaccompanied minor under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. U.S. District Judge Evelyn Padin ordered his release from Delaney Hall Detention Facility on Jan. 15, ruling his detention violated due process and that he cannot be deported while his case is pending. Two days later, hundreds of residents, students and lawmakers rallied outside Morristown Town Hall to protest the arrest and broader immigration enforcement in the community.

Photographer John Abernathy was detained by federal ICE agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on January 15 while documenting protests. During the confrontation, Abernathy threw his camera to a fellow photojournalist. He sustained injuries including chemical burns, pepper bullet wounds, and abrasions, and received a citation but no court date.

ICE agents deployed tear gas at a family vehicle containing eight people, including six children aged 6 months to 11 years old, during Minneapolis protests after the family became trapped between ICE agents and protesters. All six children were hospitalized with breathing problems, and the mother performed CPR on her 6-month-old infant. The incident occurred during protests following an ICE shooting in the city.