What does it take for an ordinary person – a nurse, journalist, construction laborer or cemetery worker – to seek justice after being harmed by a federal agent?
The question is becoming increasingly urgent as ICE arrests have surged since the summer. A recent ACLU report in eight states found that over 400 of more than 1,200 incidents involved misconduct by agents, including use of force with batons or grabbing people by their necks.
But taking legal action against a federal officer – especially when ICE agents operate from unmarked vehicles, often masked and without visible names or badges – is harder and more convoluted than suing local police.
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A bunch of individual lawsuits or even a class action lawsuit is woefully inadequate for the task of holding ICE agents accountable for their crimes. It's going to take revolutionary tribunals administered by councils of civilians. Even a "reformed" state will let them get away with it if we don't take matters into our own hands.
Nurse is about to get a payday.
No, she probably isn’t. ICE has intentionally operated in a way that makes filing lawsuits against agents nearly impossible. In order to bring a lawsuit against an agent, step 1 is finding out which agent harmed you. And ICE has intentionally made that as difficult as possible, with unmarked vehicles that don’t even have plates, masked agents without any kind of identifying marks, constantly shuffling agents around so the agent who hurt you yesterday probably isn’t even in town today, burying any kind of discovery behind mountains of red tape and then systematically refusing to fill valid requests for info, etc…
Basically, unless your agent is unmasked via independent detective work, the chances of being able to file a lawsuit are near 0.
Why can't you just sue ICE directly? Are they seriously not liable for things their agents do while on the clock?
I wouldn't bank on it. They're specifically operating with almost zero accountability.
They're also trying hard to be completely unidentifiable.
Yes, that's part of how they remain unaccountable.
I keep forgetting how these are not normal times. 😔
Even in normal times they were virtually unaccountable for anything. Law enforcement is above the law in America because we lick boots for fun.
ICE still has qualified immunity so she may not get anything.
First you have to prove that masked thugs with no ID are ICE.