Editorial: Don't Turn Away From Immigration Injustices

It's hard to be shocked anymore by the headlines. The news stories of masked immigration authorities in unmarked cars shooting and harming people who appear not to pose any imminent threat — and in some cases who are right next to children — seem all too frequent. So do the deaths of people in immigration detention. So, too, is the detention of ... U.S. citizens.

Let’s look at some of the latest examples. On Oct. 17 Richard Gonzalez of Long Beach, California, allegedly was injured by agents who held down Gonzalez after their unmarked SUV was seen driving toward him going the wrong way down a one-way street, according to press reports in The Guardian and CNN. Video shows him on the ground, handcuffed, and surrounded by agents whose faces are covered. His family reportedly accused agents of tasing and injuring Gonzalez's arm. Was he a “worst of the worst” violent offender who entered the country “illegally”? No. He is a U.S. citizen, who agents would later claim, as they often do, was an "agitator" and was suspected of damaging their vehicle.

Earlier a similar story unfolded in a Chicago suburb. Immigration agents mistakenly detained another U.S. citizen, “leaving him on the ground with various injuries,” reported CNN.

“Several bystanders were helping the man, police said, and an ambulance was called after he reported injuries to his head, neck and teeth,” reported CNN.

In another recent case, an immigration officer is accused of hitting a man with a vehicle, breaking the man’s leg.

These incidents, we believe, cannot be brushed off as outliers. Instead, they appear increasingly more like the normal course of business. Consider the following:

• Between Jan. 20, 2025 and Oct. 21, at least 59 people have died while detained by immigration authorities, according to detentionmortality.com, which shows 2026 has so far had the highest number of detention deaths in over 20 years. Most recently a green card holder in his 50s died while in detention.

• Immigration authorities have arrested more than twice as many children this year through July than it did in the previous year, according to The Marshall Project, which puts the total number of immigrant kids arrested from the start of Pres. Trump’s current term to July at 8,500.

• Immigration authorities have reportedly already sent hundreds of people to “third” countries, mainly in Africa, where they have no previous connection.

• Immigration forces have been used to crack down on independent journalism produced by noncitizens, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, noting the arrests of journalists Mario Guevara and Estefany Maria Rodriguez Florez.

All of this is happening, while available numbers have shown a “quiet” spike in immigration arrests that have largely, we believe, gone under the radar of the mainstream press.

At the start of the year, the nation was rightly appalled by the spectacle that ended with the tragic shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration agents. Now, we worry that the nation is becoming numb to the violence carried out by men and women in masks and increasingly equipped with weapons that are deadly and — literally — shocking. We must not turn away from these injustices.