Israeli police have released a soldier from custody after he was filmed running his vehicle over a Palestinian man who was praying outside the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
A silent video of the incident, which both Israeli and Palestinian outlets reported on Thursday, shows an Israeli settler with a rifle slung over his back driving his all-terrain vehicle (ATV) toward a 23-year-old Palestinian man as he knelt in prayer on the roadside.
After barrelling over the man, the settler shouted something in his direction and backed up, then gestured for him to move.
The settler then turned his ATV around, got off, and shouted something at a Palestinian taxi driver. The injured Palestinian man then stood up, approaching the cab. The settler again shooed him off before hopping back on the ATV and speeding away.
Majdi Abu Mokho, the father of the Palestinian man, said his son now has pain in both legs after he was struck.
Mokho toldAgence France-Presse: “The assailant is a known settler. He set up an outpost near the village, and with other settlers he comes to graze his livestock, blocks the road, and provokes the residents.”
He also said the settler blinded him with pepper spray after hitting his son, though this is not shown in the video.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) identified the driver as an Israeli reserve soldier with one of its regional defense units. These battalions have dramatically expanded in recent years with backing from Israel’s right-wing government, which contains many officials at the center of the settler movement.
Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli military veterans critical of the occupation of Palestine, has referred to the regional defense units—which have been responsible for many other attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank—as “no more than settler militias in uniform.”
The IDF said the soldier’s weapon has been confiscated and that he’s been suspended due to the “severity of the incident,” which the IDF said it was investigating. The IDF has not released the soldier’s name.
An initial probe found that the same settler had opened fire in the village of Deir Jarir, north of Ramallah, earlier that same day, in an incident that resulted in a young Palestinian man being injured by gunfire.
During that altercation, which was also caught on film, a group of masked settlers was seen hurling rocks at the village’s entrance. According to Palestinian sources who spoke with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,the targets of the attack were villagers who were grazing their cattle near their homes.
In another video, a masked man—who the IDF identified as the same reservist responsible for the ATV attack—is seen firing his weapon in the direction of the camera. The IDF said that by opening fire inside the village while in civilian clothes, the soldier had committed a “serious breach of his authority.”
According to the Times of Israel, Israeli police released the settler reservist from custody on Friday. He has been placed under house arrest for five days and is banned from approaching Deir Jarir, where the incident occurred, or from contacting anyone else connected with the case.
The violent incident is the latest in a year that has seen a record number of attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinian villagers.
According to official figures, Israeli forces and illegal settlers have killed at least 1,130 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, injured nearly 11,000, and detained around 21,000, since October 2023, when Israel launched its two-year genocide in Gaza following Hamas’ attack.
On the same day as the ATV attack, Israeli police announced that they had arrested five Israeli settlers over their alleged involvement in an ambush against a Palestinian home, which resulted in “moderate injuries to the face and head” of an eight-month-old Palestinian girl, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
While the IDF says it is investigating the ATV attack along with local police, attacks by Israeli settlers are often treated with leniency.
In January 2025, the Israeli watchdog group Yesh Din reported that across more than 1,700 reports of religious or politically motivated hate crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank over the past two decades, nearly 94% of them were closed without any indictment being filed, and only 3% resulted in a conviction.
Although there has been a documented rise in killings by Israeli settlers since October 2023, not a single one of those cases has resulted in an indictment, and only about a quarter have resulted in investigations by Israeli authorities.
Critics found the punishment of the reservist to be similarly lackluster and the latest example of settlers’ immunity from justice.
“Israeli reserve soldier intentionally runs over Palestinian praying on the side of the road,” said Rabbi David Mivasair, an activist with the Canadian group Independent Jewish Voices. “His punishment: his weapon was taken away, and he was suspended from the reserves… nothing more.”
Breaking the Silence called the punishment “just a slap on the wrist” and “state-backed impunity for state-backed terror.”
Others noted that nearly 8,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons indefinitely without trial, including in Israel’s “administrative detention” system, which allows them to be confined based on secret evidence that they and their lawyers cannot see.
Israel has justified it as a measure to prevent terrorism. However, in January, the government banned Israeli settlers from being held under those same administrative detention orders, with Defense Minister Israel Katz saying the goal was “to convey a clear message of strengthening and encouraging the settlements.”
Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian human rights activist, said of the ATV attack: “Had the victim been Israeli and the attacker Palestinian, the sentence would be life in prison. That is why it is called apartheid.”
Following the attack, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reiterated its calls for the US Congress to stop sending military aid to the Israeli government.
“This shocking and dehumanizing act is yet another example of the unchecked violence and abuse Palestinians face daily under Israel’s illegal occupation,” the group said. “Brazenly running over a man while he prays is enabled by a system that grants near-total impunity to illegal settlers. The Trump administration must end its silence and take concrete steps to hold the Israeli government accountable for these ongoing human rights abuses.”
Trump has retaliated against Colorado Gov. Jared Polis by denying FEMA reliefs for floods and wildfires and by ordering the dismantling of the nation’s premiere climate research facility.
tRump bribes / Fascism / Right wing media take over /
Mr. Trump has privately said Larry Ellison assured him that he would turn CBS News, which the Ellisons took over when they bought Paramount, into a more conservative outlet, two people with knowledge of the president’s comments said.
What Trump means is that he has to confer with his master in Moscow first.
Hate / DEI / Bigotry / Christians trying to take over the US / Christians forcing their church doctrines on all / Using the US might to enforce the Christian view / ICE / DHS
Earlier this month it was reported that Mahmoud, who remains jailed without bond, may present a “gay panic” defense, which is legal in Florida but banned in 20 states and Washington DC.
Government officials have traditionally steered clear of such overtly religious language, as the Constitution bans an official state religion. The First Amendment’s establishment clause prohibits the government from establishing a religion or favoring one religion over another, while the free exercise clause protects the religious expression of all faiths.
Earlier this month, members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee — whom Kennedy selected after firing the previous group — suggested digging into concerns about aluminum salts, though large studies have found them to be safe.
tRump’s illegal military war crime actions / tRump’s gift to the oil companies that paid him prior / This is a war crime and illegal / tRump trying to get other countries resources for his own profits / tRump grifts and seeking bribes
It has nothing to do with US national security and all the minerals / traffic rights to make ships pay / and the “rare earth” metals that tRump wants a piece of. It is about profit. Hugs
The paying tribute and bribes to tRump and his slush funds is so anti what the US should and used to stand for. It is the very thing the founding fathers were most against. The courts have gutted the holding of tRump to account but the emoluments cause is what this was designed to stop. Ask yourself if Biden / Obama / Clinton had been so blatant in demanding bribes would you tRump cult supporters be OK with it still? Hugs
The appeals court told her to have it completely wrapped up by the first week of January and this is not doing that. I expect more to happen fast with this. She ignored the appeals court order to please tRump.
“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” the college student from Venezuela who sought U.S. asylum, said. “Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled until the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth.”
Mr. Miller’s belief that seven decades of immigration has produced millions of people who take more than they give — an assertion that has been refuted by years of economic data — is at the heart of the Trump administration’s campaign to restrict immigration and deport immigrants already in the country.
tRump trying to hold on to power illegally / Jan 6th insurrectionists / trying to change the history everyone seen live / Scamming / Using the US treasury & taxpayer funds to pay off tRump cult members.
The U.S. Air Force will provide Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt with military funeral honors, reversing a Biden-era decision that denied her family’s request, according to a legal group that has represented her family.
In June 2025, the Pentagon agreed to pay the Babbitt family a $5 million “wrongful death” settlement. Below, see the latest from Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who is himself reportedly suing the DOJ for $100 million.
Dr Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Mehmet Oz, better-known as Dr Oz, has raged about “$150k penis surgery” for trans youth, but he failed to cite any facts.
Dr Oz, who leads Medicaid and Medicare, announced on Thursday (18 December), alongside health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, measures that will ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.
The ban, part of Dr Oz’s bid to end “taxpayer funding of sex rejecting procedures for children in Medicaid and CHIP [children’s health insurance program], full stop”, takes the form of two new proposed rules from Medicaid and Medicare.
The first prevents doctors and hospitals from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care provided to trans youth under the age of 18, while the second blocks all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.
Medicaid, which is the health care program that covers low-income Americans, alongside older and disabled citizens, is taken at most hospitals, meaning the proposals could have a wide-ranging effect, as per New Hampshire Public Radio.
During announcing the proposals, Kennedy referred to gender-affirming care as “malpractice”, while Dr Oz went completely off topic.
The 65-year-old began ranting about the prices of bottom surgery, which is very rarely performed on individuals under 18.
“A vaginoplasty – a procedure a child does not need – costs $60,000,” he claimed, adding: “Shockingly, a phalloplasty, the creation of a penis, costs, on average, in America, $150,000 per child.
“I do believe, with doing some work, that these prices have continued to increase due to increased manufactured demand,” he continued. “A scrotalplasty, where you add testicles? That’s extra.”
Dr Oz didn’t clarify where he pulled his quoted figures from, but according to the Gender Confirmation Center, the price of a vaginoplasty is between $23,000 and $24,500, while phalloplasty ranges between $35,000 and $50,000.
According to 2025 data from the Williams Institute, about one per cent of people aged 13 and older identify as trans in the US, and despite the proposals attacking gender-affirming care for trans youth, multiple studies show that surgeries are rarely performed on minors.
A 2024 study by researchers at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found that no gender-affirming surgeries were performed on trans or gender diverse youth (TGD) aged 12 and younger in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available.
For teens ages 15 to 17 and adults ages 18 and older, the rate of undergoing gender-affirming surgery was 2.1 per 100,000 and 5.3 per 100,000, respectively. The majority of surgeries were chest surgeries.
Co-author Elizabeth Boskey, instructor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, said: “We found that gender-affirming surgeries are rarely performed for transgender minors, suggesting that US surgeons are appropriately following international guidelines around assessment and care.”
Lead author Dannie Dai, research data analyst in the Department of Health Policy and Management, added: “Our findings suggest that legislation blocking gender-affirming care among TGD youth is not about protecting children, but is rooted in bias and stigma against TGD identities and seeks to address a perceived problem that does not actually exist.”
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
This is just hate and bigotry. It is a group of people who hate trans people for some unknown reason and have made their life / career the harassment of trans minors who play sports. I can not see how this harms this reporter and his group in any way. To make your life about harming others is a real petty way to exist. Many conservatives use their religion to justify such hate but the Jesus of the bible never said a word against the entire LGBTQ+ community. So their hate is internally driven and they must be such miserable people. So Sad. The drive to regress the world’s most progressive countries back to an uneducated straight cis white male controlled society is really causing a lot of damage to people and freedom to express your life as you wish. It seems driven by two groups, the older people who are uncomfortable with the progression of society and younger religious people driven by wealthy religious hate groups. Hugs
Since Sept. 5, right-wing sports publication OutKick has published 19 articles about a 12th grade girls’ volleyball player at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The player caught the attention of reporter Dan Zaksheske after he obtained public documents that appear to show her requesting a legal name change from a traditionally masculine first name to a traditionally feminine one.
Over the next three months, Zaksheske would write 18 of the 19 articles OutKick would publish about this student. He and other OutKick reporters attended multiple high school girls’ volleyball games where they recorded and reported on Skyline High’s volleyball season. At the heart of each article was a focus on the girl, who Zaksheske refers to as a “trans-identifying biological male.”
Zaksheske’s reporting stoked a controversy that drew the attention of multiple right-wing publications, politicians and influencers. This coverage led Sean Lechner, whose cisgender daughter played against Skyline and allegedly shared a locker room with their team, to file a Title IX complaint.
Lechner’s daughter at a press conference about the complaint. Screenshot via Fox Business.
While the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) does require trans athletes to get a waiver approved to compete in official state tournaments, the Democrat-majority state Senate outright rejected the idea of a trans athlete sports ban earlier this year. In addition, LGBTQ Michiganders have strong anti-discrimination protections under the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
In the complaint, Lechner calls for a ban on “biological males from competing in female sports” and for a “full investigation into actions and communications of Ann Arbor Public Schools/Monroe High/Chet Hesson,” citing a Trump executive order that declares that trans-inclusive policies are in violation of Title IX.
Shortly after the complaint was filed, Uncloseted Media published an interview clip with Hesson, the athletic director of Monroe Public Schools, in which he simply said his “heart goes out” to the player for being under such scrutiny. Less than 24 hours later, he was put on administrative leave.
As this story spreads like wildfire, experts in journalistic ethics are raising concerns about Zaksheske’s reporting.
“OutKick’s inflammatory reporting on a Michigan high school volleyball player who may or may not be trans disregards several core principles of the Society of Professional Journalists’ [SPJ] Code of Ethics,” Dan Axelrod, chairman of the SPJ’s ethics committee, told Uncloseted Media. SPJ’s Code of Ethics, originally drafted in 1973, has been embraced and used by thousands of journalists from numerous newsrooms and schools.
“The Code cautions reporters to ‘show compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage,’ and to ‘use heightened sensitivity when dealing with juveniles,’ while ‘weigh[ing] the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information,’” Axelrod says. “[OutKick] has essentially ignored all those ethical principles, given [Zaksheske’s] relentless coverage of the player, which has led the public to easily infer who she is, and its negative framing of her story.”
The player, whose mother did not respond to an interview request, does not appear to have publicly come out as trans prior to the publication of Zaksheske’s first article.
Chad Painter, associate professor and chair of the communications department at the University of Dayton, says this “brings up a whole host of issues.” While Zaksheske wrote that he did not name the girl “because the student athlete is under 18,” Painter says that doesn’t do enough to conceal her identity.
In his reporting, Zaksheske references the existence of publicly accessible name change documents, the girl’s county of residence and the name of a local volleyball club she’d been a part of. “Someone who is reasonably well-versed in being able to Google someone can figure this out pretty easily,” Painter, who has co-authored multiple media ethics textbooks, told Uncloseted Media.
“There’s longstanding norms in newsrooms that we don’t out people, that that is a very personal decision that an individual gets to make, and unless there is a massively compelling reason to do that, it’s not our role,” he says. “The idea that he is in the clear because he didn’t specifically write this person’s name in a story, it wouldn’t hold up to journalistic scrutiny.”
And Zaksheske’s reporting appears to have outed the girl. The same day that he published his first article on the matter, an X account whose mission is “to call out these male athletes and expose the damage that they have each caused to women and girls in sports” published the girl’s full name and deadname along with multiple photos and videos of her. (Uncloseted Media has chosen not to link to these posts directly in the interest of her privacy.)
In addition to the 18 articles Zaksheske wrote, he also tweeted about the situation at least 41 times and attendedatleastfourhigh school girls’ volleyball games. While watching, he recorded videos of the girls playing and then posted them to X and OutKick’s website.
“Having 19 stories about one athlete … to me, that seems like this coverage is out of line with how we’d normally talk about, especially high school sports, which, frankly, no one outside of this little area in Michigan are going to really care about,” says Painter.
“Outside of the culture war stuff, I don’t see where this is a story.”
When Zaksheske was confronted by multiple people at the school about attending and recording one of the games, he published another article accusing them of harassment. “I was shadowed by the school principal and harassed and stalked by Skyline supporters,” he wrote.
Painter notes that while Zaksheske was within his rights as a journalist and citizen to be attending and recording such events, he understands why the school would approach him with skepticism.
“I have a feeling that if I just started showing up randomly to high school volleyball games and taking photos and videos, there would probably be questions,” Painter says. “Because, again, we are talking about minors.”
“The reporter has a right to pursue news … and that right especially exists at a public school,” says Axelrod. “However, one has to wonder at what point is the coverage just pandering to curiosity as opposed to serving a valid societal purpose in informing and facilitating larger discussions about real and valid questions regarding the participation of trans athletes in sports.”
Misinformation and Animus
Zaksheske has pushed back against similar criticism on X, accusing those who question the ethics of his reporting of being “in favor of sterilizing, mutilating and castrating children” and characterizing his reporting as “exposing their heinous acts.”
“I don’t see that as an ethical problem because it doesn’t even enter into the world of ethics,” Painter says of Zaksheske’s rhetoric. “It is wrong factually and it doesn’t really have a place in what we do in terms of the journalism field.”
Misleading rhetoric about trans health care is common throughout OutKick’s reporting. Zaksheske has written several articles about gender-affirming care, where he has claimed that puberty blockers “take healthy children and sterilize them for life.”
Puberty blockers have been FDA-approved for treating precocious puberty in cisgender children since 1993. Multiplestudies have found no evidence of them causing permanent infertility, and gynecologists and endocrinologists have said that they do not cause sterilization.
Much of Zaksheske’s coverage of trans people has been negative. Of adult trans women, he wrote that “that person might see himself as a woman, but we are under no obligation to ‘affirm’ that.” He also wrote that doctors who provide gender-affirming care “have to answer to their consciences.”
OutKick also generally misgenders trans women and girls, referring to them as “males,” “biological males” or “trans-identifying males,” additionally using masculine pronouns to refer to them.
Painter notes that this goes against the “Associated Press Stylebook,” which he says “any newsroom worth its salt is going to follow.”
“The journalist and the news outlet squander their credibility covering these types of societal questions when they use language … that fails to recognize and respect the underlying humanity of an entire group of people,” he says.
In an email, Brian Karpas, OutKick’s director of media relations, told Uncloseted Media that the publication “stands by the thorough and responsible reporting of Dan Zaksheske and will continue to protect women from competing against biological males.”
Beyond Michigan
OutKick’s extensive reporting of the Michigan volleyball player is reflective of the publication’s increasingly conservative bent since it launched in 2011. In 2021, it was acquired by Fox Corporation. Since then, it has partnered with Fox News and has become home to numerous right-wing personalities known for anti-trans rhetoric. These include founder Clay Travis, who has said World Aquatics is “encouraging …super young kids to be transitioned”; Tomi Lahren, who said that liberals “don’t know what a woman is”; and Riley Gaines, who referred to an eighth-grade trans girl as a “mediocre man.”
This story in Michigan is not the first time OutKick and Zaksheske have hyperfocused on one trans girl. They were one of the first national publications to report on California-based track and field athlete AB Hernandez, who later became the center of a feud between the Trump administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Since March, OutKick has published at least 24 articles about Hernandez, 10 of which were written by Zaksheske. They sent reporters to at least twogames to photograph Hernandez and other teenage players. Additionally, OutKick published 15 articles and attended at least four games covering the story of a trans softball player in Minnesota, whose presence on the team became a key point of a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom.
This massive amount of coverage is common for U.S. conservative media: A report published this year from Media Matters for America found that Fox News ran over 400 weekday segments mentioning trans athletes from Feb. 5 to June 6.
All of this has had an impact. While the Title IX investigation is still pending, Hesson, who was named in the complaint, told Uncloseted Media that he had been targeted with harassment and vitriol online.
Uncloseted Media on Instagram: “Last Friday, Uncloseted Media p…
In the comments of the Instagram post, Hesson was attacked by numerous users: squaredbeach9 wrote, “Stop normalizing these freaks. You don’t give a bulimic chick a bucket and some gum.”
And others chimed in, saying:
“Guaranteed he has child pron on an electronic device.”
“Fuck off, poor tranny hates attention, give me a fn break.”
“So a male playing in women’s sports. And this cuck is defending it.”
All of this has come even though Hesson is not directly affiliated with Skyline High School, which is part of a different district. As such, he was not involved in the decision to allow the girl to play, and he was also not privy to whether she had a waiver.
In addition, numerous right-wing lawmakers and candidates have endorsed Lechner’s complaint. Republican state Rep. James DeSana posted a statement to Facebook “calling for Chet Hesson to be removed immediately.”
“The public cannot have good discourse, debate, or dialogue without good information,” Painter says. “Supplying that information is the fundamental duty of the news media. When journalists are distracted by inconsequential stories, then we’re not spending the time to cover interesting and important news that our readers really need.”
Both Painter and Axelrod took note of the small number of known trans athletes in the U.S. Last year, the NCAA’s president told a Senate panel that fewer than 10 of the 510,000 college athletes affiliated with the organization were transgender.
“This controversy is part of a much larger national narrative about transgender athletes and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole,” Painter says. “The entire national conversation is based on virtually nothing, so this particular set of stories are based on an inconsequential premise.”
Going Forward
If the Department of Education does find that Title IX was violated, the school district could risk losing federal funding if it continues to allow trans athletes to compete.
Zaksheske has been pressuring the MHSAA to confirm whether a waiver was approved for the volleyball player to compete, citing a statement from early September in which the association said it had not yet approved any waivers for the semester. On Dec. 9, MHSAA confirmed that one waiver was granted in the fall season, though no details were given in the interest of the student’s privacy.
While research into the relative athletic capabilities of trans and cis women is ongoing, numerous experts and athletes say that politicized vitriol, misleading information and outsized media attention about trans athletes makes girls’ sports less safe for all athletes.
“There are real, valid, and necessary societal discussions to be had about trans athletes participating against competitors who don’t match their birth gender, and ethical journalism can have a place in informing those discussions,” Axelrod says. “At the end of the day, this woman is still a human, and a child at that, not a canvas for OutKick to paint a distorted picture of one individual who’s a tiny part of a much bigger societal dialogue about trans athletes.”
If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:
Leonardo Garcia Venegas was detained by immigration agents while filming a raid on his worksite, despite having a REAL ID on him and telling the officers he was a citizen.
Reporting Highlights
Americans Detained: The government doesn’t track how many citizens are held by immigration agents. We found more than 170 cases this year where citizens were detained at raids and protests.
Held Incommunicado: More than 20 citizens have reported being held for over a day without being able to call their loved ones or a lawyer. In some cases their families couldn’t find them.
Cases Wilted: Agents have arrested about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, for allegedly interfering with or assaulting officers, yet those cases were often dropped.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned.
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.”
About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
Videos of U.S. citizens being mistreated by immigration agents have filled social media feeds, but there is little clarity on the overall picture. The government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans.
So ProPublica created its own count.
We compiled and reviewed every case we could find of agents holding citizens against their will, whether during immigration raids or protests. While the tally is almost certainly incomplete, we found more than 170 such incidents during the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer. That includes four who were held for weeks with their undocumented mother and without access to the family’s attorney until a congresswoman intervened.
Immigration agents do have authority to detain Americans in limited circumstances. Agents can hold people whom they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. We found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship. They were almost all Latino.
Immigration agents also can arrest citizens who allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. We compiled cases of about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, accused of assaulting or impeding officers.
These cases have often wilted under scrutiny. In nearly 50 instances that we have identified so far, charges have never been filed or the cases were dismissed. Our count found a handful of citizens have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.
Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agents pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed and punched a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative. In another, agents knocked over and then tackled a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. His lawyer said he was held for 12 hours and wasn’t given medical attention despite having broken ribs in the incident and having recently had heart surgery. In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described being held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time. (The Supreme Court has ruled that two days is generally the longest federal officials can hold Americans without charges.)
George Retes, an American combat veteran, at the site of his arrest by immigration agents on California’s Central Coast. Retes was detained for three days without access to a lawyer and missed his daughter’s third birthday.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the Department of Homeland Security said agents do not racially profile or target Americans. “We don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,” wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
A top immigration official recently acknowledged agents do consider someone’s looks. “How do they look compared to, say, you?” Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino said to a white reporter in Chicago.
The White House told ProPublica that anyone who assaults federal immigration agents would be prosecuted. “Interfering with law enforcement and assaulting law enforcement is a crime and anyone, regardless of immigration status, will be held accountable,” said the Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson. “Officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens, and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism.”
A spokesperson for Kavanaugh did not return an emailed request for comment.
An immigration raid on 79-year-old Rafie Ollah Shouhed’s car wash left him with broken ribs.Courtesy of Rafie Ollah Shouhed. Compiled by ProPublica.
Tallying the number of Americans detained by immigration agents is inherently messy and incomplete. The government has long ignored recommendations for it to track such cases, even as the U.S. has a history of detaining and even deporting citizens, including during the Obama administration and Trump’s first term.
We compiled cases by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We did not include arrests of protesters by local police or the National Guard. Nor did we count cases in which arrests were made at a later date after a judicial process. That included cases of some people charged with serious crimes, like throwing rocks or tossing a flare to start a fire.
Experts say that Americans appear to be getting picked up more now as a result of the government doing something that it hasn’t for decades: large-scale immigration sweeps across the country, often in communities that do not want them.
In earlier administrations, deportation agents used intelligence to target specific individuals, said Scott Shuchart, a top immigration official in the Biden, Obama and first Trump administrations. “The new idea is to use those resources unintelligently” — with officers targeting communities or workplaces where undocumented immigrants may be.
When federal officers roll through communities in the way the Supreme Court permitted, the constitutional rights of both citizens and noncitizens are inevitably violated, argued David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He recently analyzed how sweeps in Los Angeles have led to racial profiling. “If the government can grab someone because he’s a certain demographic group that’s correlated with some offense category, then they can do that in any context.”
Cody Wofsy, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, put it even more starkly. “Any one of us could be next.”
The video Garcia Venegas made of an immigration raid on a construction site shows him walking away from the officer while trying to film and then stating that he’s a citizen before being detained.Courtesy of Garcia Venega
When Kavanaugh issued his opinion that immigration agents can consider race and other factors, the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices strongly dissented. They warned that citizens risked being “grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.”
Leonardo Garcia Venegas appears to have been just such a case. He was working at a construction site in coastal Alabama when he saw masked immigration agents from Homeland Security Investigations hop a fence and run by a “No trespassing” sign. Garcia Venegas recalled that they moved toward the Latino workers, ignoring the white and Black workers.
Garcia Venegas began filming after his undocumented brother asked agents for a warrant. In response, the footage shows, agents yanked his brother to the ground, shoving his face into wet concrete. Garcia Venegas kept filming until officers grabbed him too and knocked his phone to the ground.
Other co-workers filmed what happened next, as immigration agents twisted the 25-year-old’s arms. They repeatedly tried to take him to the ground while he yelled, “I’m a citizen!”
Officers pulled out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to those legally in the U.S. But the agents dismissed it as fake. Officers held Garcia Venegas handcuffed for more than an hour. His brother was later deported.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas told agents he was a citizen both times he was detained. His REAL ID was dismissed as a fake.
Garcia Venegas was so shaken that he took two weeks off of work. Soon after he returned, he was working alone inside a nearly built house listening to music on his headphones when he sensed someone watching him. A masked immigration agent was standing in the bedroom doorway.
This time, agents didn’t tackle him. But they again dismissed his REAL ID. And then they held him to check his citizenship. Garcia Venegas says agents also held two other workers who had legal status.
DHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Garcia Venegas’ detentions, or to a federal lawsuit he filed last month. The agency has previously defended the agents’ conduct, saying he “physically got in between agents and the subject” during the first incident. The footage does not show that, and Garcia Venegas was never charged with obstruction or any other crime.
Garcia Venegas’ lawyers at the nonprofit Institute for Justice hope others may join his suit. After all, the reverberations of the immigration sweeps are being felt widely. Garcia Venegas said he knows of 15 more raids on nearby construction sites, and the industry along his portion of the Gulf Coast is struggling for lack of workers.
Kavanaugh’s assurances hold little weight for Garcia Venegas. He’s a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, who speaks little English and works in construction. Even with his REAL ID and Social Security card in his wallet, Garcia Venegas worries that immigration agents will keep harassing him.
“If they decide they want to detain you,” he said. “You’re not going to get out of it.”
Men building a home in rural Baldwin County, Alabama. Garcia Venegas was detained by immigration agents twice while working on homes in the area.
George Retes was among the citizens arrested despite immigration agents appearing to know his legal status. He also disappeared into the system for days without being able to contact anyone on the outside.
The only clue Retes’ family had at first was a brief call he managed to make on his Apple Watch with his hands handcuffed behind his back. He quickly told his wife that “ICE” had arrested him during a massive raid and protest on the marijuana farm where he worked as a security guard.
Still, Retes’ family couldn’t find him. They called every law enforcement agency they could think of. No one gave them any answers.
Eventually, they spotted a TikTok video showing Retes driving to work and slowly trying to back up as he’s caught between agents and protestors. Through the tear gas and dust, his family recognized Retes’ car and the veteran decal on his window. The full video shows a man — Retes — splayed on the ground surrounded by agents.
George Retes’ family noticed his car in a compiled video posted to TikTok. This clip from that longer video shows his white vehicle surrounded by tear gas. Immigration agents later pinned him on the ground.nota.sra/TikTok
Retes’ family went to the farm, where local TV reporters were interviewing families who couldn’t find their loved ones.
“They broke his window, they pepper sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor,” his sister told a reporter between sobs. “We don’t know what to do. We’re just asking to let my brother go. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car.”
Retes was held for three days without being given an opportunity to make a call. His family only learned where he had been after his release. His leg had been cut from the broken glass, Retes told ProPublica, and lingering pepper spray burned his hands. He tried to soothe them by filling sandwich bags with water.
Retes recalled that agents knew he was a citizen. “They didn’t care.” He said one DHS official laughed at him, saying he shouldn’t have come to work that day. “They still sent me away to jail.” He added that cases like his show Kavanaugh was “wrong completely.”
DHS did not answer our questions about Retes. It did respond on X after Retes wrote an op-ed last month in the San Francisco Chronicle. An agency post asserted he was arrested for assault after he “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement.” Yet Retes had been released without any charges. Indeed, he says he was never told why he was arrested.
Retes said that agents knew he was a citizen. “They didn’t care.”
The Department of Justice has encouraged agents to arrest anyone interfering with immigration operations, twiceordering law enforcement to prioritize cases of those suspected of obstructing, interfering with or assaulting immigration officials.
But the government’s claims in those cases have often not been borne out.
Daniel Montenegro was filming a raid at a Van Nuys, California, Home Depot with other day-laborer advocates this summer when, he told ProPublica, he was tackled by several officers who injured his back.
Bovino, the Border Patrol chief who oversaw the LA raids and has since taken similar operations to cities like Sacramento and Chicago, tweeted out the names and photos of Montenegro and three others, accusing them of using homemade tire spikes to disable vehicles.
“I had no idea where that story came from,” Montenegro told ProPublica. “I didn’t find out until we were released. People were like, ‘We saw you on Twitter and the news and you guys are terrorists, you were planning to slash tires.’ I never saw those spike tire-popper things.”
Officials have not charged Montenegro or the others with any crimes. (Bovino did not respond to a request for comment, while DHS defended him in a statement to ProPublica: “Chief Bovino’s success in getting the worst of the worst out of the country speaks for itself.”)
The government’s cases are sometimes so muddied that it’s unclear why agents actually arrested a citizen.
Andrea Velez was charged with assaulting an officer after she was accidentally dropped off for work during a raid on street vendors in downtown Los Angeles. She said in a federal complaint that officers repeatedly assumed she did not speak English. Federal officers later requested access to her phone in an attempt to prove she was colluding with another citizen arrested that day, who was charged with assault. She was one of the Americans held for more than two days.
DHS did not respond to our questions about Velez, but it has previously accused her of assaulting an officer. A federal judge has dismissed the charges.
Other citizens also said officers accused them of crimes and suddenly questioned their citizenship — including a man arrested after filming Border Patrol agents break a truck window, and a pregnant woman who tried to stop officers from taking her boyfriend.
“The often-inadequate guardrails that we have for state and local government — even those guardrails are nonexistent when you’re talking about federal overreach,” said Joanna Schwartz, a professor at UCLA School of Law.
More than 50 members of Congress have also written to the administration, demanding details about Americans who’ve been detained. One is Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat. After trying to question Noem about detained citizens, federal agents grabbed Padilla, pulled him to the ground and handcuffed him. The department later defended the agents, saying they “acted appropriately.”
I can’t understand living just to hate and harm others who are not doing anything that harms you. To carry that bitterness and to work so hard to deny to others what you demand for yourself seems like poisoning one’s self. With so much to enjoy in diversity and inclusion why work so hard to create a homogeny of everyone being the same. Hugs
As the M4L annual summit kicks off this weekend, here’s how one of the group’s original chapters is sowing chaos and pushing anti-LGBTQ policies in Indian River County.
Mink Tyner says some people call her a “helicopter parent” because of how protective she is over her kids. Despite this, she wasn’t concerned about bringing her daughter, then 14, to the Indian River County, Florida, school board meeting in August 2023, where they were discussing changes to the state’s curriculum relating to race and slavery.
That’s why she was shocked when she saw community members at the podium reading excerpts of sexual content from books.
“I hate lights out now because my D has a mind of its own,” one woman read. Then a man came up and read, “When Doris had just turned 11, her current stepfather started having sex with her.” And a third person read, “He took a long long time peeling off my jeans and T-shirt, pink bra and panties, and a longer time stroking and kissing me.”
The meeting had turned into more of a stunt led by protestors affiliated with the local chapter of Moms for Liberty (M4L), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated far-right extremist group.
“I’m not gonna have my kid in here listening to these adults doing this shit,” Tyner remembers thinking.
She took her daughter out of the room and pleaded with security to intervene, but they refused. So she spoke up to disrupt the meeting herself, only for security from the Sheriff’s office—who told Uncloseted Media their deputies responded “appropriately and in accordance with established procedures”—to escort her out.
As she was leaving, conservative pastor John Amanchukwu, who had attended the meeting with M4L, confronted her while recording a video that he would later post to X calling her “demonic” and lashing out about her being pro-LGBTQ: “You’re okay with DEI. … You’re okay with Pride Month. You’re okay with the rainbow flag. You’re okay with all that junk,” he yelled. Tyner responded by calling him a “fucking weirdo” and walked out.
That video opened a floodgate of harassment that tormented Tyner and her family for years: She received insults, accusations of pedophilia, and persistent threats of violence from a Facebook account displaying the name CURTIS COUSINS who called her a “fent-using fat fucking dyke” and told her she deserved to have “a potato peeler peel her clit right off to the bone.”
“I never know if this week or 10 years from now somebody’s gonna show up [to my business] based on some kind of misinformation that Moms for Liberty started about me [or] want to harm me and my family,” Tyner, who owns a tattoo shop, told Uncloseted Media.
Indian River County is home to one of the first of M4L’s 320 chapters nationwide. The group’s annual summit is this weekend and will feature a variety of politicians with anti-LGBTQ track records, including Oklahoma’s former state superintendent Ryan Walters, who made headlines for making anti-trans comments after the death of 16-year-old trans teen Nex Benedict. Last year, conservative heavyweights spoke at the event, including President Trump, Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka.
Over the last four years, M4L have built a reputation for chaos and controversy. Members have made the news for quoting Hitler, stripping at a school board meeting and offering bounties to report teachers who teach about “critical race theory.”
At one point in Indian River County, close allies of M4L made up a majority of the school board where they pressured the district to ban scores of books, many of which contain LGBTQ themes, and reverse a racial equity policy—all while harassing, doxing and defaming their adversaries.
Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science from the University of Massachusetts, says what’s playing out in Indian River County is a microcosm for so many other chapters across the country.
“[The media are] falling like suckers for this story that they’re a grassroots moms organization. They are not, they are connected to … the far right establishment,” he says. “And that’s become … more and more apparent. So this whole grassroots thing is hogwash.”
Beginnings
Moms for Liberty was founded in Florida in 2021 by three current and former school board members: Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich and Bridget Ziegler, the latter of whom has since left the group after being involved in a sex scandal wherein her husband allegedly prowled local bars to solicit women for threesomes.
Shortly after M4L launched, Justice tapped Jennifer Pippin, who had made a name for herself for leading activism against COVID-19 restrictions, to lead the chapter for her home county, Indian River.
While the anti-mask circles that would later be folded into M4L always had a conservative lean, multiple county residents told Uncloseted Media that the group’s discriminatory views were not initially apparent.
Tyner, a lesbian who identifies as politically independent, actually felt welcomed by the group when she worked with them on their anti-mask mandate advocacy. However, that changed as M4L’s focus turned towards opposing LGBTQ inclusion measures in schools.
“Once they organized and got the appearance of a grassroots start … and many people in the community that were siding with them, it’s like they took the steering wheel and they just steered another direction,” she says.
When Tyner began speaking up against this rhetoric, she says she was blocked from the group’s Facebook pages. But as she continued to oppose them publicly, Justice offered to meet with her to address her concerns.
Over breakfast at a local cafe, Tyner says Justice gave her a “scripted” response in the hopes of winning back her support. She even invited Tyner to an M4L chapter meeting. However, Tyner declined as the meeting was allegedly to be hosted by a community member who had made an online post suggesting necrophilia and pedophilia are part of the LGBTQ umbrella.
“I was like, ‘Alright, this is not a good or a safe movement,” says Tyner.
Justice did not respond to a request for comment. In an email, Pippin told Uncloseted Media that M4L have “members and members children that are LGB in [their] chapter and across the country.”
Another local parent, who requested anonymity due to concerns about his job security, says while he’d initially been on board with M4L’s parental rights advocacy, he ran into conflict with the group when they started opposing the school district’s racial equity policies and tried to ban books with antiracist themes, including Ibram X. Kendi’s “Antiracist Baby”and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.” Like Tyner, he says he was approached by Justice and Pippin to win him over again but was ultimately unconvinced.
After he split from M4L, he began publicly criticizing the group’s book bans. In retaliation, some M4L members accused him of supporting pedophiles.
When he reached out to Pippin to ask for the people making such accusations against him to be held accountable, he says she waved him off—all while blocking him on social media and accusing him of “bullying.” He also says that she doxed him after another dispute—a major factor in his decision to remain anonymous.
“Her response to me basically was ‘free speech,’ ‘we don’t control what our members say.’ And I’m like, ‘But Jennifer, you know me, and you know I’m not a pedophile, and this is unacceptable,’” he told Uncloseted Media.
Building Political Power
The Indian River County School District’s J.A. Thompson Administrative Center. Photo by Kiran891.
Efforts to ban LGBTQ and racial justice-related books in schools are part of M4L’s national ammo that helped them quickly explode in popularity.
Cunningham says M4L were boosted by high-profile connections on the right. Ziegler and Descovich both served as presidents of the Florida Coalition of School Board Members, a group billed as a conservative alternative to the Florida School Board Association. Ziegler’s husband, Christian, was vice chairman of Florida’s Republican Party at the time and worked as a media surrogate for the Trump campaign in 2016.
Since their launch, M4L have had their conferences and events sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute; were directly advised by Leadership Institute founder Morton Blackwell; and were a part of Project 2025’s advisory board. And this summer, Justice was hired as executive vice president of Heritage Action.
In 2022, the Indian River County chapter leveraged this influence to carve out power in local government: They got two close allies, Jacqueline Rosario and Dr. Gene Posca, elected to the school board, and they developed closerelationships with the Ron DeSantis-backed county sheriff Eric Flowers. Pippin was even appointed by Florida’s Department of Education to a statewide workgroup to develop compliance training for Florida’s classroom censorship policies, including the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law.
As M4L became notorious for pushing exclusionary measures in schools, some officials—including school board member Peggy Jones—criticized the group. In retaliation, Jones reportedly received so many death threats that the district had to increase security detail at all school events where she was present.
In the midst of increasing chaos surrounding M4L, the group mounted a campaign of hundreds of requests to ban books containing “sexual content.”
While some librarians continued to hold the majority of books where bans were unsuccessful, M4L convinced Flowers to investigate one school library, alleging that keeping the books on the shelf could constitute a sex crime. While the investigation found that no crime had been committed, Flowers concluded that “we do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children,” putting even further pressure on local librarians.
Pippin at the school board meeting in August 2023. Photo via YouTube.
This kind of direct action proved very effective. Even the reading protest where Tyner was escorted out won them 34 additional book bans from a unanimous board vote.
“You can’t deny that the kind of tactics that they have have been useful,” Cunningham says. “Some of the places they’ve taken over, [including] Sarasota County, where Bridget Ziegler was on the board, became much more conservative over the past few years.”
Silencing Opposition
In addition to school board meetings, the group has a track record of trolling progressive events. Tyner and the anonymous parent remember an incident where a group of M4L members showed up to a local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meeting that had been organized to discuss plans for opposition against new state regulations that required classes to portray slavery in a more positive light.Tyner says white M4L members attempted to shout down NAACP speakers, with one member allegedly using the n-word. Thomas Kenny, a M4L member who was at the event, said this “did not happen” and that one of their members using the n-word is “an absolute lie.”
Cunningham says these disruptions are part of M4L’s playbook. He pointed to the example of Jennifer Jenkins, the liberal school board member who unseated Tina Descovich in neighboring Brevard County, who says protestors spurred by M4L have turned up outside her home calling her a pedophile and burning “FU” in her lawn.
“They [use the] same kind of tactics … over and over again,” says Cunningham.
Pippin
Chapter leader Jennifer Pippin has mastered those tactics, becoming widely known as one of the most influential book banners in the country. She’s also made headlines for filing a complaint against the Kilted Mermaid, a Vero Beach wine bar, alleging that they had hosted an all-ages drag event with sexual content, which the bar owner denies. M4L rallied against the bar online, spamming the posts of one of the bar’s drag performers, telling the queen to “stay away from children.” This stunt caught the attention of Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier, who launched an investigation and issued subpoenas for video recordings of the bar on the day of the event as well as identifying documents for employees and performers.
Pippin has also claimed to be a nurse, despite no public records showing that she has a license, and appeared on the antisemitic and homophobic far-right news website TruNews, where she claimed, without evidence, that anti-M4L activists have been killing pets and livestock owned by the group’s members.
Fear
Tyner and the other anonymous parent both say that they’ve had to take a step back from the school board and local activism because of the toxic environment M4L have created.
“It’s been turned into such a circus,” Tyner says.
In the meantime, things have gotten worse for the LGBTQ community in Indian River County, and in Florida overall, between the “Don’t Say Gay” law and anti-LGBTQ legislation that requires teachers to deadname trans students unless they have signed parental permission slips. The anonymous parent says he’s watched many of the LGBTQ people in his life, including one of his own children, who is a teacher, leave the state due to the hostile environment.
“It’s not safe for a lot of people,” he says.
Greener Pastures?
Despite all of this, a sea change may be on the horizon. A 2024 Brookings report found that the success rates of M4L-endorsed candidates were on the decline, and in Indian River County’s elections last year, both of M4L’s school board candidates lost. With the continued controversies of the Trump administration and the growing popularity of groups that oppose M4L’s ideology, Cunningham feels the tide may be turning for M4L’s influence in Indian River County and across America.
“In school board races, the Moms for Liberty label is toxic, so try to not get attached to that,” he says. “They’ve had quite an impact … I don’t wanna downplay that. But in terms of popular appeal and growth, I think it’s much more limited than it is portrayed.”
Editor’s Note: In an email, Jennifer Pippin responded to the allegations made about her in this story. You can read them here.
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