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us immigration and customs enforcement
'What It Looks Like When ICE Violates' First Amendment: Candidate Kat Abughazaleh Thrown to Ground
"What ICE just did to me was a violent abuse of power—and it’s still nothing compared to what they’re doing to immigrant communities," said the Illinois congressional candidate.
Sep 19, 2025
Protests at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Chicago continued on Friday, with ICE and Border Patrol agents tear-gassing, pepper-spraying, and detaining demonstrators—and even throwing congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh to the ground.
"This is what it looks like when ICE violates our First Amendment rights," Abughazaleh wrote on social media alongside two videos of the incident at the facility in Broadview, Illinois—which is key to ICE's deadly "Operation Midway Blitz," launched earlier this month as part of US President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda.
"What ICE just did to me was a violent abuse of power—and it's still nothing compared to what they're doing to immigrant communities. I've been fighting the right as a journalist and now I'm running for Congress to do the same in DC," said Abughazaleh, a former producer at Media Matters for America and one of several Democrats in the 2026 race to represent Illinois' 9th Congressional District.
"They weren’t showing their faces and almost none had visible badge numbers. There will likely never be any real accountability for the agent who grabbed me and threw me to the ground but we can have accountability for Trump and Tom Homan," she added, referring to the president's border czar. "And that’s why I’m running for office."
In a phone interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, the 26-year-old said ICE agents threw her to the ground twice:
“I wasn’t surprised, and that’s part of why we’re here,” Abughazaleh said. “Everyone here is at least a little bit scared, but mostly I’m angry and we need to get the facility shut down.”
ICE agents used tear gas and shot pepper balls, she said—some of which hit her legs—around 6:00 am, while shouting “your First Amendment rights are on the sidewalk.”
She anticipates a “nasty” bruise on her right side.
“It’s more important than ever to stand with our neighbors, if not just for their basic human dignity,” Abughazaleh said. “I’m not here as a candidate, I’m here as an individual.”
The newspaper noted that "ICE did not respond immediately to specific questions about Abughazaleh, the use of nonlethal chemical agents, and the status of the protesters allegedly arrested during the clash."
The US Department of Homeland Security later shared Fox 32's video of an agent shoving Abughazaleh to the ground on social media and said: "Individuals and groups impeding ICE operations are siding with vicious cartels, human traffickers, and violent criminals. You will not stop ICE and DHS law enforcement from enforcing our immigration laws."
The National Lawyers Guild of Chicago, which had legal observers at the protest, said that it "was aware of three arrests as of 1:00 pm, but the situation was changing rapidly. Local police were observed nearby and failed to protect civilians from the federal agents’ attacks, but did not appear to participate in the violent acts or any arrests directly."
The federal agents used tear gas and pepper balls, and "repeatedly and aggressively grabbed and dragged seated protesters, throwing several of them into the street," the guild said. The legal observers also saw "an agent unholstering his handgun, and a van driven by agents almost running over a protester who had fallen in its path."
Abughazaleh used her experience to create a contrast between herself and some other candidates also hoping to replace Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, an 81-year-old who announced in May that she would not seek reelection.
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, another candidate in Democrats' crowded primary race for the 9th District, also joined the protest in Broadview on Friday. He told Block Club Chicago that “I’ve seen shocking violence.”
“I mean, throwing people to the ground, pepper balls, tear gas... It seems gratuitous, right? They’re trying to intimidate. They’ve got guys up there on the roof with cameras," he added. “They’re trying to remind people that this is an administration that names and then targets its political enemies for physical and economic violence.”
Chicago Ald. Andre Vasquez (D-40) and Illinois Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton—a Democrat running to replace retiring US Sen. Dick Durbin—were also at the ICE facility on Friday.
Asked about agents' violence toward protesters, Stratton told reporters that "people are here to peacefully protest. Look what we've been seeing over the last several weeks right here in Chicago: people being snatched off the streets, stuffed into unmarked vans, and with no due process."
"We are seeing the Constitution being stomped upon, and just this week, again, attacks on First Amendment rights—and all of us need to be speaking with moral clarity and saying this is not right," she added. "So I'm here to stand with Illinoisans who are protesting peacefully and make sure that I let them know that I stand with them."
Organizers intend to continue demonstrating as long as the ICE operation continues in Chicago and its suburbs. In a statement ahead of Friday's action, protester Britt Hodgdon stressed that “ICE doesn’t make me or my community safer.”
“If exercising my right to free speech gets me tear-gassed, then I’m not safe," Hodgdon continued. "If my neighbors go missing into a deportation system where their families can’t find out where they’ve been taken, then my neighborhood is not safe. If there are ICE agents all over my city and they’re willing to shoot and kill someone who tries to get away from them—as they did in murdering Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez—then none of us are safe.”
In a statement Friday afternoon Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates similarly said that "under Donald Trump, federal agents make us less safe no matter what letters they have on their uniform."
"If the federal government wanted to help our city, it would restore Medicaid, rebuild the Department of Education, and stop threatening our schools, not send its agents to arrest workers, separate families, and harass area residents," she added. "How do you teach a civics class on the US Constitution when students are watching the president tear it apart in real time?"
This article has been updated with comment from the Chicago Teachers Union, the city's arm of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US Department of Homeland Security.
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'A Test Case to See How Far They Can Go': Federal Indictment of Anti-ICE Protesters Raises Alarm
Afghanistan War veteran Bajun Mavalwalla is among nine people facing conspiracy charges for protesting the Trump administration's anti-immigrant crackdown.
Sep 02, 2025
Free speech and veterans' rights advocates are among those this week condemning federal conspiracy charges against a former US service member who was among nine people indicted after attending a Washington state protest against President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant blitz.
On June 11, 35-year-old Spokane, Washington resident Bajun Mavalwalla—a former Army sergeant who according to The Guardian survived a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan—heeded a Facebook call to action from former City Council President Ben Stuckart to intervene after a pair of legal asylum-seekers were apprehended by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operatives at the local Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office.
Mavalwalla, Stuckart, and others allegedly blocked a bus being used by ICE to transport the two asylum-seekers and deflated its tires. Several people were arrested; Mavalwalla was not among them.
According to The Spokane Spokesman-Review, Mavalwalla was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents a month later as he and his girlfriend were moving out of their shared home.
"This is not how I planned to spend my moving day," Mavalwalla says in a video of the arrest recorded by his father, Bajun Mavalwalla Sr. "I'm a military veteran. I'm an American citizen."
Army veteran Bajun Mavalwalla II arrested on conspiracy charges from exercising his 1st Amendment rights at an ICE protest the day he’s moving his family into a new house. pic.twitter.com/B3JePSkC4P
— Ted Cruz Called The FBI on me (@weareronin47) September 2, 2025
Mavalwalla Sr.—who is also an Army vet who was deployed to Afghanistan at the same time as his son—told the Spokesman-Review: "I demanded a warrant, they refused and wouldn't show it until everyone left the home. My son was protesting on June 11, they said he assaulted officers."
"My son worked in cybersecurity and was deployed to Afghanistan," Mavalwalla Sr. added. "He has no problems with the law."
On July 15, federal prosecutors charged Mavalwalla, Stuckart, and seven other protesters with conspiracy to impede or injure law enforcement. If convicted, they could face up to six years behind bars, a $250,000 fine, and three years' supervised release. Mavalwalla pleaded not guilty.
Following the protesters' arrest, Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown, a Democrat, said: "This politically motivated action is a perversion of our justice system. The Trump administration's weaponization of ICE and the [Department of Justice] is trampling on the US Constitution and creating widespread fear across our community."
Some observers noted that the case prosecutor, acting US Attorney Pete Serrano is a Trump nominee with no prosecutorial experience who called the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrectionists "political prisoners." Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who vows to block Serrano's US attorney appointment, has slammed his "extreme right-wing views" and argues that he is unfit for office.
As news of Mavalwalla's arrest subsequently spread, so did outrage and alarm.
"Here's a guy who held a top secret clearance and was privy to some of the most sensitive information we have, who served in a combat zone," retired Army Col. Kenneth Koop, an Afghan War veteran, told The Guardian Tuesday. "To see him treated like this really sticks in my craw."
Luis Miranda, DHS' chief spokesperson during the Biden administration, said of Mavawalla and the Trump administration, "He's a test case to see how far they can go."
Shawn VanDiver—a veteran who founded and leads #AfghanEvac, which helps relocate and resettle Afghans who aided the US invaders—wrote on the social media site X Tuesday that "the FBI didn't arrest Bajun Mavalwalla II at the protest. They waited. Then showed up at his home—on moving day."
"No violence. No property damage. Just a veteran using his voice. And they shackled him in front of his family," he said. "Let that sink in."
VanDiver noted that Mavalwalla "served honorably" and that he "stood up for Afghan allies."
"Now the government is trying to silence him and scare us," he added. "We're watching."
Mavalwalla Sr. told The Press Democrat in a July interview that his son's prosecution is an "unbelievable overreach."
"Sending out all those agents, under the pretext that my son is somehow a threat," he added. "The craziest thing is they’re charging him with conspiracy. He was at the protest, but he'd never met any of these other people. You want to know the first time he met Stuckart? It was in the jail cell."
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On Day of His Release, Trump Administration Threatens to Deport Ábrego García to Uganda
"Just spiteful evil for the sake of it," fumed one observer.
Aug 23, 2025
On the same day he was released from federal custody, the Trump administration on Friday informed Kilmar Ábrego García—a Maryland man wrongfully deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison rife with abuse—that it may deport him to the East African nation of Uganda.
Ábrego García, a Salvadoran national who entered the US without authorization when he was a teenager, was released Friday from a jail near Nashville, Tennessee, where he had been held since June following his errant deportation to El Salvador and imprisonment in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) super-maximum security prison.
According to a notice sent by a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official to Ábrego García's attorneys on Friday, "DHS may remove your client... to Uganda no earlier than 72 hours from now."
US District Judge Paula Xinis last month issued a ruling barring the Trump administration from immediately arresting Ábrego García upon his release and requiring the government to provide three business days' notice if US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intended to initiate deportation proceedings against him.
ICE directed Ábrego García to report to the agency's Baltimore field office on Monday morning.
The Associated Press reported Saturday that the Trump administration decide to pursue deportation of Ábrego García to Uganda after he declined an offer to be sent to Costa Rica if he pleaded guilty to human smuggling charges related to his alleged transportation of undocumented immigrants in Tennessee in 2022.
Uganda is one of four African nations—the others are Eswatini, Rwanda, and South Sudan—that have agreed to take third-country nationals deported from the US.
Noting that Ábrego García "has no connections to Uganda," Washington Monthly contributor David Atkins accused the Trump administration of "just spiteful evil for the sake of it."
Ábrego García was deported to CECOT in March after the Trump administration claimed without credible evidence that he was a gang member. He was one of more than 200 people deported to CECOT without due process. The father of three said he was subjected to beatings and "psychological torture" at the prison.
Although acknowledging wrongfully deporting Ábrego García, the Trump administration argued in court that it lacked jurisdiction to order his return to the United States. However, Xinis—who called Ábrego García's deportation "wholly lawless"—on April 4 ordered the administration to facilitate his stateside return.
As the administration balked, the US Supreme Court intervened, affirming Xinis' order in an April 10 ruling. Ábrego García was finally returned to the US in June, only to be arrested for alleged human smuggling. He pleaded not guilty and asked the court to dismiss the charges against him, contending they are retaliation for challenging his deportation to El Salvador.
In a court filing, Ábrego García's lawyers said their client is being subjected to "vindictive and selective prosecution" by the Trump administration.
"There can be only one interpretation of these events: the [Department of Justice], DHS, and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Ábrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat," the attorneys wrote.
"It is difficult to imagine a path the government could have taken that would have better emphasized its vindictiveness," they added. "This case should be dismissed."
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