ICE Crackdown Sparks Clashes across US Cities

A US immigration officer shoved a woman to the floor in a New York courthouse.

Protesters were dispersed with tear gas outside a Chicago detention center.

A woman was injured during an arrest near Boston.

The incidents on Thursday and Friday underscored mounting unrest over US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, days after a shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Dallas left one detainee dead and two others seriously wounded.

Trump, a Republican, is pushing to deport record numbers of immigrants living illegally in the United States.

He frames the effort as targeting criminals but many arrests involve people with no criminal record.

Residents of New York, Chicago, Washington and other Democratic-leaning cities have intensified resistance as ICE escalates enforcement.

Some Hispanic residents say they are stopped solely for their appearance, accusations rejected by the Trump administration.

Earlier this month the Supreme Court lifted a lower court injunction that had barred ICE from stopping someone based only on ethnicity, language or similar factors in the Los Angeles area.

Milagros Barreto, a worker advocate with La Colaborativa in Chelsea, Massachusetts, said she saw ICE agents throw a Guatemalan woman to the ground on Friday even though the woman is a permanent resident.

Reuters photos showed the woman, identified only as Hilda, with her hands pinned behind her back as her young son cried.

Barreto said ICE officers smashed two windows of the family’s pickup truck before detaining a relative the woman was accompanying to court.

Hilda aggravated an existing back injury and was hospitalized.

“It doesn’t matter where you come from.

If you look like a Latino, you’re a target,” said Barreto, a US citizen from Puerto Rico.

Reuters could not independently confirm Barreto’s account or the woman’s immigration status.

DHS and ICE did not immediately comment.

California Governor Gavin Newsom last week signed a law barring ICE officers from wearing masks to conceal their identities, a measure aimed at accountability.

Trump officials say masks protect officers from being targeted.

US authorities said Thursday the suspect in the Dallas shooting intended to kill and “terrorize” ICE agents.

In New York on Thursday, an ICE officer charged a woman who pleaded with agents not to take her husband, according to ProPublica, which posted video of the encounter.

The woman, Monica Moreta-Galarza of Ecuador, is seeking US asylum.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Friday the officer was “relieved of current duties” during an investigation.

“The officer’s conduct in this video is unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE,” she said.

DHS gutted many oversight offices early in the Trump administration, including the unit that investigates civil-rights violations.

In Broadview, Illinois, on Friday, ICE fired tear gas, less-lethal rounds, flash-bang grenades and pepper balls to break up protests outside a detention center.

Heavily armed agents patrolled the roof and shot pepper balls at demonstrators chanting behind a fence.

“People were peacefully standing behind the fence and for absolutely no reason, pepper balls were fired,” said Reverend Beth Brown of Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church.

DHS said “over 200 rioters” blocked a facility gate and 30 others tried to enter.

Meanwhile in Michoacan, Mexico, a funeral was held Friday for Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, killed earlier this month when an ICE agent shot him during a traffic stop near Chicago.

DHS said the agent feared for his life, though body-camera footage captured the agent saying his injuries were “nothing major.”