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ICE ‘CROWD CONTROL’ LED TO BLINDINGS AND TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIES
 
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José Olivares
July 14, 2026
The Guardian
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_ Doctors and human rights experts documented hundreds of incidents
from June 2025 through May 2026 and estimate true number is ‘far
greater’ _

ICE tear gasses protesters in Chicago, October 15, 2025, screen grab

 

It’s been a brutal tactic deployed by local and federal law
enforcement officials time and time again over the past year: using
teargas, rubber bullets and pepper spray to control protests outside
ICE detention centers or during enforcement operations.

Now, a new report lays bare the scale of the use of these
crowd-control weapons during anti-immigration demonstrations across
the US, including hundreds of incidents that resulted in lasting and
traumatic injuries.

The report and an interactive map
[[link removed]] was created by Physicians
for Human Rights (PHR) and the Human Rights Center at the University
of California, Berkeley (HRC) and released this week. Doctors and
human rights experts with PHR and HRC documented 412 verified
incidents of the “misuse” of these crowd-control weapons, also
known as “less-lethal weapons”, from June 2025 through May 2026.

“This is a concerning story,” said Dr Rohini Haar, the lead author
of the report and a PHR medical expert, in an interview.

The report documented 203 injuries stemming from the alleged misuse of
the crowd-control weapons. Some of the injuries included blindings
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traumatic brain injuries, lacerations, fractures and contusions.

The researchers struggled to confirm the full scale of the injuries,
because “visual investigative techniques cannot adequately assess
invisible injuries, such as chemical injury or chronic pain or hearing
loss”.

“The true number of injuries is likely far greater,” the report
adds.

Such tactics were on display earlier this summer, when dozens of
protesters gathered outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention
center in Newark, New Jersey, in solidarity with detained immigrants
on hunger strike
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As protests became more and more heated, a line of masked Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials stood outside to guard the
detention center.

During a scuffle, ICE officials pepper sprayed
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Andy Kim, a New Jersey senator, making national news and helping set
off one of the country’s flashpoints in demonstrations against the
Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations.

In the days and weeks that followed, local and state officers also
moved in on protesters
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using batons and shields, deploying teargas canisters and arresting
dozens. Many were injured during the demonstrations outside Delaney
Hall by the crowd-control weapons that the local, state and federal
officers used.

The use of crowd-control weapons in New Jersey was not new – local,
state and federal law enforcement officers have used them nationwide
on protesters opposing the aggressive anti-immigrant arrests,
detentions and deportations.

But their use has become widespread as the backlash against Trump’s
immigration crackdown has grown – prompting researchers to track
down incidents and the types of weapons used nationwide, and to
establish a map where readers can see how those weapons have been used
in their communities.

Haar began working on the report after she saw news
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of a pastor being blasted in the face with a chemical weapon by a
federal official in Oakland. Haar and PHR have been researching the
impacts of crowd-control weapons for years.

“Those weapons can cause harm,” Haar added. “It’s just when
they’re used, how they’re used and if they’re used.”

DHS did not respond to inquiries about the report’s findings before
publication.

The crowd-control weapons include chemical irritants, including
teargas, pepper spray and Mace, along with “kinetic impact
projectiles”, which include rubber bullets and bean bag rounds.
Researchers with PHR and HRC also documented the use of stun grenades,
water cannons and other “improvised” weapons, like horses and riot
police shields.

Haar explained that they qualified “misuse” by a number of
methods. First, they tracked whether people in “protected
categories”, including journalists and health workers, were targeted
by officials. Next, they documented whether vulnerable populations,
including older people and children, were affected. And lastly, they
tracked whether the weapons were used improperly, like using the
weapons in close range, targeting people’s heads or going against
the weapons’ manufacturing guidelines.

A report
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from earlier this year by ProPublica identified 70 children across the
US who had been harmed by teargas or pepper spray – not just at
protests, but during immigration enforcement operations as well.

On a national level, officials with the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), like ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
officials, were responsible for over half of all misuse incidents –
64%. But local law enforcement officers also played a role in many
incidents.

“The involvement of state and local [authorities] is also
concerning,” Haar added. “Because in many places, they’re coming
on top of what is already happening with DHS. But in places like Los
Angeles, there is a lot more involvement [of local law enforcement
officials].”

The researchers found that there was an increase in the use of these
weapons during immigration enforcement surge operations under the
command of former border patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino, who
took a hardline approach to his enforcement tactics. After the
shooting deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis by federal
immigration officials, Bovino was pulled from his position. He became
critical of the Trump administration, accusing them of not taking a
tough-enough approach, and retired
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in March of this year.

“In each city where there were federal directions to escalate
enforcement, incident counts rose sharply within days,” PHR said in
a statement announcing the report and the map. “Much of this was
coincident with the arrival of Greg Bovino.”

“Many of the enforcement operations that coincided with spikes in
documented misuse were also promoted through public social media
accounts, including Bovino’s,” PHR continued.

For researchers, the scale of the use of the crowd-control weapons
harkened back to law enforcement’s response to the 2020 racial
justice protests. That year, protesters throughout the country took to
the streets to protest police killings of Black people throughout the
US. And in some cities, the border patrol’s elite unit participated
in arrests and crowd-control operations.

Since June 2025, mass protests have erupted in Los Angeles, Chicago,
Minneapolis, Newark and Portland. The report documented that over 90%
of the documented “misuse” incidents happened in those regions.

DHS and local law enforcement officials have fallen under repeated
criticism for their response to the protests and their aggressive use
of force. Since January of 2025, federal immigration officials with
DHS have been responsible for at least 11 shooting deaths. The two
most recent fatal shootings by immigration authorities took place this
month, less than one week apart, in Texas and in Maine.

On 7 July, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a
52-year-old construction worker, during an arrest operation in Houston
as he drove his work van. And on Monday, a 26-year-old Colombian man
was shot and killed by a federal official in Biddeford, Maine, DHS
confirmed.

_José Olivares_ [[link removed]]_
is a journalist based in New York, covering immigration, Latin America
and human rights._

_The Guardian_ [[link removed]]_ is globally renowned
for its coverage of politics, the environment, science, social
justice, sport and culture. Scroll less and understand more about the
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