Thread by @nicoleMfoy

🧵Hi, I'm the @propublica reporter who's been tracking an unusual stat: U.S. citizens grabbed by immigration agents.

I did it because the government isn’t.

This is what I found.

First, a bit of backstory. This spring, I started tracking the times immigration agents detained American citizens

I spoke to experts who warned that the scattered cases I initially found would only grow as Trump's aggressive deportation plans took shape
propublica.org/article/more-a…

So I started scouring the internet. Social media, court docs & local news, in Spanish & English

It was hardly scientific. But I found senior citizens tackled. Pregnant women handcuffed. Kids detained. A veteran pulled out of his car on the way to work

The videos were everywhere

The cases were piling up so quickly that I started using a detailed spreadsheet

I noticed: Agents weren’t just stopping people to question citizenship. They were being taken at protests or after accusations of assaulting/obstructing officers during raids

Why include protesters or assault charges in this? It can be unclear why agents detained a citizen, especially if they later accused them of crimes

Immigration agents are also sweeping cities in ways feds often don't

And the "protesters" arrested sometimes disappeared for days

Some assault charges are serious. Throwing rocks at cars. Arson. Threatening officers with a knife

But many are… less so

Here’s a video of Andrea Velez, an LA woman accused of an assault that wasn’t caught on video. A judge eventually dismissed her case.

Americans have appeared in court for offenses like injuring an officer’s thumb, using a trash can to block CBP cars, resisting arrest

We found 50+ cases that fell apart in court, or were never charged at all

Leo Garcia Venegas was even accused of obstructing agents – after the video of his first detainment at an Alabama construction site went viral

A DHS spokesperson later said he “physically got in between agents” and his brother, whose arrest he was filming.

Watch for yourself:

We asked the government about all of this, of course.

Their recent response to our story largely matches what they told me for months.

In a Sept. concurrence Justice Kavanaugh said citizens stopped in sweeps could “promptly” prove their citizenship

That idealized interaction w/ immigration simply isn't what many citizens experienced. More stories in Chicago broke as we prepped to publish

https://x.com/USATODAY/status/1977034003040305320

You can read our full story here, as well as a note about how we decided to include and categorize cases propublica.org/article/immigr…

Do you have information or videos to share about the administration’s immigration crackdown?

Contact me via email at [e-mail] or on Signal at nicolefoy.27