A man was just arrested outside of the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago. When legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild asked why, an agent threatened to arrest them too. pic.twitter.com/uvs7p5t3sX

— amanda moore 🐢 (@noturtlesoup17) September 27, 2025

The New York Times reports:

U.S. citizens, many of them Latino men, have been stopped and in some cases taken into custody by law enforcement officers who are carrying out President Trump’s immigration crackdown and who suspect the men are living in the country illegally.

While many of those detained have immediately declared their U.S. citizenship to officers, they have routinely been ignored, according to interviews with the men, their lawyers and court documents. In some cases they have been handcuffed, kept in holding cells and immigration facilities overnight, and in at least two cases held without access to a lawyer or even a phone call.

How many U.S. citizens have been swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps is difficult to say. No comprehensive log of such encounters is available from the federal government, and immigration agents are not required to document stops of citizens.

A review by The New York Times of publicly reported cases and court records found that since January, at least 15 U.S. citizens have been arrested or detained and questioned about their citizenship by immigration agents or local law enforcement officers enlisted to work with the federal authorities.

In late January, Julio Noriega, 54, of Chicago, had been handing out copies of his résumé to local businesses in Berwyn, Ill., when ICE officers approached him as he walked out of a Jiffy Lube auto service shop.

They handcuffed him and loaded him into a van, without allowing him to explain he was a citizen, according to a motion filed in the Federal District Court for Northern Illinois. He was released about 10 hours later, the court filing states.

Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, was born and raised in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he lives with his mother and two brothers.

He was on his way to work with his mother and two friends in May when troopers from the Florida Highway Patrol stopped them in their employer’s pickup truck for what the agency said was a “commercial motor vehicle inspection.” Initially, Mr. Laynez-Ambrosio was calm, he recalled in an interview. But the situation escalated as troopers learned that others in the car were undocumented and ordered everyone out.

When no one got out of the vehicle, the troopers began to pull the three men out. At one point a trooper fired a Taser at one of them.

Mr. Laynez-Ambrosio, recording on his phone, repeatedly told the officers, “I’m from here!”

“You’ve got no rights here. You’re illegal, brother,” a trooper is heard saying. In Florida, a new state law requires all local and state law enforcement agencies, including the Highway Patrol, to participate in immigration enforcement.

All three men were taken to a nearby Border Patrol facility, and though Mr. Laynez-Ambrosio continued to say he was a citizen, he was held there for about six hours.

Asked about the U.S. citizens identified by The Times, the Department of Homeland Security defended its actions as “highly targeted.”

“If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement are trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability,” Tricia McLaughlin, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Federal officers’ tactics remain a source of contention in the courts. This summer, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that the roving patrols are targeting Latinos and violating the Fourth Amendment, which protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” A federal judge in Los Angeles ordered a halt to stops based on a person’s apparent race or ethnicity, or other factors that suggest they are Latino, such as speaking Spanish or accented English.

But this month, the Supreme Court put the order on hold. The lawsuit will still make its way though the lower courts and may end up back at the Supreme Court. In the meantime, federal agents in and around Los Angeles will not be constrained by the lower court’s finding that such stops were unconstitutional. [Continue reading…]