New Report Highlights Concerns Over Law Enforcement’s Use of Force During Immigration Protests
A recent study sheds light on the controversial tactics employed by Homeland Security officers and other police entities in managing immigration enforcement and protests throughout the United States. This comprehensive analysis, conducted by human rights and medical organizations, collates data from bystander videos and news accounts to create a record of events where law enforcement utilized pepper spray, rubber bullets, and other crowd control methods.
Co-author Payal Shah, who serves as the director of research, legal, and advocacy at Physicians for Human Rights, explained that while individual incidents were already under review, there was a pressing need to understand the broader national landscape. “What we were hearing time and again from courts and from the litigators that were seeking to end the use of crowd control weapons improperly by law enforcement officials was that there needed to be more information, more evidence around the patterns of use of these weapons,” Shah stated.
The report outlines over 400 incidents of force between June 2025 and May of the current year, including an instance where an ICE agent deployed pepper spray on a bystander in South Tucson. The majority of those affected were demonstrators and journalists.
Emphasizing procedural misuse, Shah pointed out that the report highlights the inappropriate application of force against vulnerable populations, such as children and journalists, and violations of safety protocols. “Including fire of projectiles not meant to be used in this manner, close range fire, shots targeted at the head or groin, or used in enclosed places or without exit,” she elaborated. The data indicates troubling patterns of potential international and constitutional rights violations in response to immigration protests, with limited transparency regarding these actions.
Injuries documented in the report exceed 190 cases, ranging from minor cuts to severe traumatic brain injuries. Sasha Schell, supervising reporter at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, which collaborated on the report, noted that identifying weapon use patterns and responsible agencies was a complex task. “We had just a soup of sub-agencies at DHS, each with their own use-of-force manual, each with their own weapons, from different parts of the country, and it just makes accountability and understanding who’s doing what, why, how, that much more difficult,” Schell observed.
Shah advocates for Congressional oversight to enforce accountability measures, such as mandatory body cameras and the prohibition of masks. The report also calls for a legislative ban on federal law enforcement’s use of specific weapons, especially those with metallic components.
Under the Biden administration, a pilot program required Border Patrol agents to use body cameras, and the agency released footage of significant use-of-force incidents. However, this initiative has stalled under the Trump administration.
