There is a video at the link below showing the restraint. Because of being restrained during abuse as a child I can not stand anything pinning my legs or arms down. When I had my left hip done the doctor required patients to be strapped into an immobilizing device. When I woke up in the hospital with it on I totally lost my shit and they had to remove it. But the doctor wouldn’t allow anyone to lay flat or sleep without it. So for weeks I slept upright in Ron’s recliner. There is no need for a torture device such as this used by ICE. It is designed to be punitive and cause people harm. Hugs
The Nigerian man described being roused with other detainees in September in the middle of the night. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers clasped shackles on their hands and feet, he said, and told them they were being sent to Ghana, even though none of them was from there.
When they asked to speak to their attorney, he said, the officers refused and straitjacketed the already-shackled men in full-body restraint suits called the WRAP, then loaded them onto a plane for the 16-hour-flight to West Africa.
Referred to as “the burrito” or “the bag,” the WRAP has become a harrowing part of deportations for some immigrants.
“It was just like a kidnapping,” the Nigerian man, who’s part of a federal lawsuit, told The Associated Press in an interview from the detainment camp in which he and other deportees were being held in Ghana. Like others placed in the restraints interviewed by the AP, he spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The AP identified multiple examples of ICE using the black-and-yellow full-body restraint device, the WRAP, in deportations. Its use was described to the AP by five people who said they were restrained in the device, sometimes for hours, on ICE deportation flights dating to 2020. And witnesses and family members in four countries told the AP about its use on at least seven other people this year.
The AP found ICE has used the device despite internal concerns voiced in a 2023 report by the civil rights division of its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in part due to reports of deaths involving use of the WRAP by local law enforcement. And the AP has identified a dozen fatal cases in the last decade where local police or jailers around the U.S. used the WRAP and autopsies determined “restraint” played a role in the death.
The WRAP is the subject of a growing number of federal lawsuits likening incorrect usage of the device to punishment and even torture, whether used in a jail or by immigration authorities during international flights. Among advocates’ concerns is that ICE is not tracking the WRAP’s use as required by federal law when officers use force.
DHS has paid Safe Restraints Inc., the WRAP’s California-based maker, $268,523 since it started purchasing the devices in late 2015 during the Obama administration. Government purchasing records show the two Trump administrations have been responsible for about 91% of that spending. ICE would not provide AP with records documenting its use of the WRAP despite multiple requests, and it’s not clear how frequently it has been used in the current and prior administrations.
The WRAP’s manufacturer says it intended the device to be a lifesaver for law enforcement confronting erratic people who were physically attacking officers or harming themselves.
But ICE officials have a much lower threshold for deploying the WRAP than the manufacturer advises, the AP found. Detainees interviewed by the AP said ICE officers used the restraints on them after they had been shackled. They said this was done to intimidate or punish them for asking to speak to their attorneys or expressing fear at being deported, often to places they fled due to violence and torture.
The West African deportee described a terrifying, hourslong experience that left his legs swollen to the point where he walked with a limp.
“They bundled me and my colleagues,” he said, “tied us up in a straitjacket.”
ICE and DHS would not answer detailed questions from the AP and refused a request for the government’s policy for when and how to use the WRAP.
“The use of restraints on detainees during deportation flights has been long standing, standard ICE protocol and an essential measure to ensure the safety and well-being of both detainees and the officers/agents accompanying them,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS’ spokesperson, said in an email to AP. “Our practices align with those followed by other relevant authorities and is fully in line with established legal standards.”
The agency would not specify those authorities or describe its practices.
“The use of these devices is inhumane and incompatible with our nation’s fundamental values,” said Noah Baron, an attorney for the West African deportees.
Charles Hammond, CEO of Safe Restraints Inc., said his company has made a modified version of the device for ICE, with changes meant to allow people to be kept in it during flights and long bus trips.
ICE’s version includes a ring on the front of the suit that allows a subject’s cuffed hands to be attached while still allowing for limited use to eat and drink, he said. In addition, the ICE version has “soft elbow cuffs,” Hammond said, which connect in the back so a person can move for proper circulation but can’t flip an elbow out to hit someone.
This photo provided by Safe Restraints Inc., in October 2025, shows a custom version of the WRAP restraining equipment made for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. (Safe Restraints via AP)
This photo provided by Safe Restraints Inc., in October 2025, shows a custom ICE version of the WRAP with soft elbow cuffs that keep the arms against the body but allow relatively free use of the hands. (Safe Restraints via AP)
An AP reporter recounted for Hammond some of the allegations made by people who had been placed in the WRAP for long flights. All of those interviewed by AP said their hands and feet were already restrained by chains. All denied fighting with officers, saying they were either crying or pleading against their deportation to countries they deemed dangerous.
Hammond said that, if true that some people were not being violent and simply protesting verbally, putting them in the WRAP could be improper use.
“That’s not the purpose of the WRAP. If (the deportee) is a current or potential risk to themselves, to officers, to staff, to the plane, restraints are justified. If it’s not, then restraints aren’t.”
‘Please help me’
Juan Antonio Pineda said he was put into “a bag” in late September and driven by immigration officers to the Mexico border. It was black with yellow stripes and had straps that immobilized his body and connected over his shoulders — the WRAP.
Pineda, who is from El Salvador, was in the U.S. legally, he said in a video from an ICE detention center in Arizona. On Sept. 3, he went to an appointment in Maryland to get permission for another year, his wife, Xiomara Ochoa, said in an interview from El Salvador. Instead, he was detained by ICE and told he’d be deported to Mexico, but the documents he was shown had someone else’s name, he said. Even so, he was sent to the Florence Service Processing Center detention facility in Arizona.
In this image from video provided by Xiomara Ochoa, Juan Antonio Pineda shows a cast for his arm as he speaks during an interview from the ICE detention center in Florence, Ariz., on Sept. 29, 2025 .(Xiomara Ochoa via AP)
Early morning on Wednesday, Sept. 24, he said officers tied his hands and legs, placed him into the “bag” and drove him four hours to the border. When he refused to sign the deportation papers, Pineda alleges officers broke his right arm and gave him a black eye before driving him back another four hours in the “bag.” The AP was unable to independently confirm how he was injured. Pineda’s video shows him with a cast on his arm and bruising on his face.
The next day, Thursday, Sept. 25, they tied him up again, put him in the bag and drove him to the border, where Mexican immigration officials turned him away, he said.
“Eight hours there and back and they don’t give me food or water or anything,” he said in the video, which his wife shared with the AP. “Please help me.”
He was ultimately deported to Mexico, Ochoa said.
ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the AP regarding Pineda’s case.
In addition to the Nigerian man flown to Ghana, four others interviewed by AP said they were placed in the WRAP and carried onto deportation flights since the first Trump administration.
As U.S. immigration officials move aggressively to meet the president’s deportation goals, advocates and attorneys for immigrants are echoing the concerns of the government’s own civil rights inquiry that ICE officers aren’t trained on how to use the restraints.
“This should be a last resort type of restraint after they’ve already tried other things,” said Fatma Marouf, a Texas A&M law professor who has sued ICE over its use of the device. “Just being bound up like that can inflict a lot of psychological harm.”
Some deportees said they were left in the WRAP for an entire fight. A lawsuit filed on behalf of the Nigerian man and four others currently detained in Dema Camp, Ghana, included the allegation from one that ICE left the restraint suit on him for 16 hours, only once undoing the lower part so he could use the bathroom.
“No one should be put into a WRAP. I don’t even think they strap animals like that,” recalled a man who said he suffered a concussion and dislocated jaw being placed into the device in 2023 before a deportation flight to Cape Verde, an African island nation. AP’s review of his medical records confirmed he suffered those injuries in 2023.
“It was the most painful thing I’ve been through,” said the man, adding he was restrained most of the 10-hour flight. “Forget the assault, forget the broken jaw. Just the WRAP itself was hurtful.”
Also, the man said, the metal ring his cuffed hands were attached to — one of the ICE modifications to the WRAP designed to increase comfort — injured him. “When they slammed me face forward on the floor, that metal ring dug into my chest causing me bruising and pain which was part of my injuries that I complained about.”
ICE’s current use of the WRAP comes amid an unprecedented wave of masked federal immigration officers grabbing suspected immigrants off the street, and mounting accusations that the Trump administration has dehumanized them, including by subjecting them to cruel and unusual detention conditions.
ICE’s use of the WRAP has continued despite a 2023 report by DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or CRCL, that raised serious concerns over the lack of policies governing its use.
ICE agreed with the internal findings on some points, a then-DHS official involved in the review said, but challenged the notion that the WRAP should be classified as a “four-point restraint,” a designation that would place more limitations on its use. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the inquiry.
DHS largely dismantled the office that produced the 2023 report earlier this year amid widespread government firings, calling it a roadblock to enforcement operations.
“Without changes to the current training, and the lack of policy, CRCL has serious concerns about ICE’s continued use of the WRAP,” wrote the report’s authors, who cited a news article mentioning lawsuits claiming the device had led to deaths.
Use by police and in jails
Last year police officers in Virginia Beach, Virginia, placed Rolin Hill in the WRAP, saying he was being combative during an arrest at a convenience store. The officers left Hill in the device when they dropped him at the jail. Video from the jail shows deputies punching the WRAP-immobilized Hill in the head and back. Hill died in a hospital, and while the WRAP’s exact role is unknown, Hill’s death was ruled a homicide by “positional and mechanical asphyxia due to restraint with neck and torso compression.” Three of the deputies are now charged with his murder, and five were removed from their jobs.
Also last year, in Missouri, prosecutors charged five jailers in the death of Othel Moore Jr., who according to an autopsy asphyxiated in the WRAP. Jailhouse footage showed Moore, who’d also been sprayed with tear gas and placed in a “spit mask” covering his face, repeatedly told officers he couldn’t breathe.
In this image from surveillance video provided by Jefferson City Correctional Center, jailers examine Othel Moore Jr., at the Jefferson City Correctional Center in Jefferson City, Mo., on Dec. 8, 2023, who according to an autopsy asphyxiated in the WRAP restraint. (Jefferson City Correctional Center via AP)
While Hammond insists the WRAP has never been determined as the cause of death when used properly, the AP identified 43 times in which the WRAP was used by police or correctional officers in a case in which someone died. In 12 of those cases the official autopsy determined that “restraint” played some role in the death.
It was often impossible to determine the exact role the WRAP may have played, as deaths often involved the use of other potentially dangerous force on people who in several cases were high on methamphetamine.
The WRAP first appeared in law enforcement in the late 1990s, presented as an alternative to tying a subject’s hands and feet together in a practice known as “hog-tying.” It first found widespread use in California jails and today is used by more than 1,800 departments and facilities around the country, according to the manufacturer, which says it has sold more than 10,000 devices.
Many of these cases have drawn little media attention, such as the 2020 case of Alberto Pena, who was jailed on a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge after getting drunk and damaging the walls and doors at his parents’ home outside Rio Grande City, Texas. The 30-year-old became erratic on the way to the Starr County Jail, beating his own head against the inside of the patrol unit and, later, the wall of his cell.
Deputies placed Pena in the WRAP for more than two hours, where he repeatedly cried out for help and complained he could not breathe. But he was left unattended in the device for significant periods of time, court records show, and no medical attention was provided for his self-inflicted head injuries.
An autopsy ruled Pena’s death “accidental,” but a forensic pathologist hired by the family attributed Pena’s death in part to the WRAP’s “prolonged restraint” and said it “could have been averted” with proper medical care.
“The WRAP should have never been used in this situation. It was a medical emergency and he should have been taken to the hospital,” said Natasha Powers-Marakis, a former police officer and use of force expert who reviewed the case on behalf of Pena’s family as part of their wrongful death lawsuit against the county and officers who placed him in the device. The arresting officers had been told Pena suffered from bipolar disorder.
The Starr County Sheriff’s Office has denied wrongdoing and maintained Pena did not require medical care. Robert Drinkard, an attorney for the county, told AP the use of the WRAP “was neither improper nor caused Mr. Pena’s tragic death.” He added that each deputy involved in placing Pena in the WRAP had been trained in its application.
A federal judge recently dismissed the Pena family’s lawsuit, ruling the deputies were shielded from liability.
‘Carrying me like a corpse’
In the context of an ICE deportation flight, the use of restraints like the WRAP can be justified, Hammond, the manufacturer’s CEO, argues.
ICE officers have to ensure that they secure anyone who could pose a fight risk on a long flight, he said. Given the high stakes of a violent confrontation on an airplane, Hammond believes cases like those described to the AP can warrant the WRAP’s use, even if the person is already in chains.
However, properly trained agents are supposed to loosen the straps and allow enough movement so the subject can eat and drink, as well as use the bathroom.
“With the WRAP, when it is used properly, it’s a shorter fight, which is good for everybody. It prioritizes breathing, which is good for everybody. And you have no more fight and can provide medical care or mental health care or de-escalation efforts,” Hammond said.
Those placed in one of Hammond’s restraint suits, however, recount the experience as traumatic.
One of these people was first put into five-point shackles when he became dizzy and tripped while ascending the stairs to board the ICE flight to Cameroon in November 2020. The officer mistook his stumbling as resistance, he said. Immediately, camouflage-clad ICE officers quickly pushed him to the tarmac and onto a WRAP device, he said.
Soon, he felt the straps cinching around his legs and upper body.
“They bundled me like a log of wood from all the sides and they were just carrying me like a corpse,” he said.
Another man interviewed by the AP said ICE officers put him in the WRAP after he initially resisted efforts to move him onto a deportation flight in Alexandria, Louisiana, in 2020. He’d fled political violence and persecution in his native Cameroon, and was afraid to go back. He said officers took him out of his cell in front of the other detainees and put him in the WRAP, leaving him for hours in view of the others as a warning to them not to speak up.
“I told him ‘I can’t breathe,’” the man said. “He responded, ’I don’t care, I’m doing my job.’”
___
Dearen and Pineda reported from Los Angeles and Mustian reported from New York. AP journalists Ope Adetayo in Abuja, Ghana, Obed Lamy in Indianapolis and Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report. Dan Lawton also contributed.
There is a brutal video at the link that shows her detainment / arrest. She was peacefully protesting. At one point ICE agents rushed out of the gates, jumped the woman who was just playing her clarinet. She was not doing anything wrong. She was in a public space exercising her 1st amendment rights. Then ICE took her across state lines and put her in a jail with no charges and no bail. She is being held incommunicado not allowed to talk to anyone which means no lawyer. The video reporter says that the peaceful protestors were hit with pepper balls. The US is being run by a mob boss wannabee racist white nationalist authoritarian who doesn’t want any rights for anyone not white and wealthy. The people of this country have lost all civil rights. One of the people arrested was white so it doesn’t matter race. Please watch the video. We are at a point where any protest against the government can get you disappeared Russia style. Hugs
A clarinet player is apparently being held without bail on no specific charges at the Clark County Jail in Vancouver after her husband said she was arrested Sunday during a protest across the street from the ICE facility in South Portland. The woman’s husband — who asked KOIN 6 News not to identify either of them for safety reasons — said his wife was tackled by federal agents while she was playing her clarinet around 5 p.m.
“It is a beautiful party atmosphere. Everybody’s really excited. Then the band hits into ‘Ghostbusters’, and then at ‘Ghostbusters’, that’s when ICE start storming in,” the husband said. “Why are they targeting a clarinet player? A clarinet player standing on the sidewalk far away from the street, following instructions.” Video of the arrest obtained by KOIN 6 News shows the woman face down in the mud with her clarinet on the ground next to her.
ICE is a totally out of control rogue government agency that is simply lawless thugs. This was a civilian in medical distress in the ambulance. In a worse medical emergency the person could have died. The person was not in custody and a citizen but ICE demanded to be allowed to control them. Wake up people we have crossed all the lines. We barely have a functioning democracy. We all need to do what we can to fight this. Incredibly scary. ICE did not have the authority to hold the ambulance up but they did so at the point of a gun. What does that say about where the US is as “a nation of laws” and the republicans who for 50 years called themselves the party of law and order? Hugs
Late on Oct. 5, a Portland ambulance crew informed dispatchers over the radio that it was attempting to transport a patient from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center but that ICE officers were impeding its departure. Six minutes later, at 9:40 pm, according to publicly archived radio records, the medic driving the vehicle delivered an update: “We are still not being allowed to leave by ICE officers.”
Two confidential incident reports obtained by WW offer insight into what was going on inside the South Portland ICE facility at the time. The written accounts were filed by the ambulance crew members shortly after the incident—one report to their employer, American Medical Response, and another to a union representative—as documentation, as one report puts it, of a “conflict with federal agents.”
The two reports, filed by different medical workers, mirror each other’s accounts, and are consistent with publicly available audio recordings of emergency medical services radio communications, as well as 911 calls and dispatch reports obtained under public records law.
Both reports say that federal agents, in an effort to block the ambulance’s departure, stood directly in front of the vehicle. As the delay dragged on, according to the reports, the ambulance operator put the vehicle into park, causing it to lurch forward slightly.
The reports indicate the federal agents did not like this—so much so that an agent threatened to shoot and arrest the driver. The driver, frightened, asked why. An agent, according to the reports, responded that the driver had attempted to hit him with the ambulance.
“I was still in such shock,” the driver later wrote, “that they were not only accusing me of such a thing, but crowding and cornering me in the seat, pointing and screaming at me, threatening to shoot and arrest me, and not allowing the ambulance to leave the scene. This was no longer a safe scene, and in that moment, I realized that the scene had not actually been safe the entire time that they were blocking us from exiting, and that we were essentially trapped.”
The incident occurred at a contentious spot in the city. The ICE facility on South Macadam Avenue has in recent months been the scene of frequent and persistent protests, typically small in scale, which President Donald Trump has lately used to justify his effort to deploy military troops to Portland to protect federal facilities and the personnel that work in them.
Meanwhile, many, including Portland city officials, have alleged that federal agents have in several cases needlessly intensified situations that might have easily remained far more calm.
The incident described in the crew members’ two reports suggests that such hostility has been directed not only at demonstrators, but at first responders who were asked by the feds to assist. The ambulance was eventually allowed to leave the building with the patient. But the crew’s written reports of the preceding minutes offer a small but revealing sign of how on edge some federal agents working in the ICE facility are feeling—and how quick they are to take an aggressive posture when they perceive a physical threat, even from a fellow emergency worker.
WW first contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the incident early last week. When WW followed up Friday, Oct. 10, with more details about what it planned to report, an ICE spokesperson wrote: “Please contact the Federal Protection Services for response.”
A subsequent email that day to the U.S. Federal Protective Service went unanswered. A media contact for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which contains FPS and ICE, did not respond to a request for comment either. None of the agencies responded to a follow-up email Oct. 11 asking for comment.
WW also sought comment from the ambulance crew members, the ambulance company, and the union representing the workers. None denied that the incident had occurred as described in the documents. The union added that when armed agents interfere with medical transport, they “cross a moral line.”
Public records provide greater context to the incident detailed in the crew members’ reports. The ambulance was called late in the evening on Oct. 5 to the ICE facility at 4310 S Macadam Ave. According to a publicly available dispatch document, the crew was responding to a medical call for a protester with a broken or dislocated collar bone.
By 9:13 pm, the ambulance was en route. According to a dispatch document, federal officials suggested at first that the ambulance enter the ICE facility through a side door, but then determined it should come in the main gate. The ambulance arrived on scene at 9:19. By 9:22, it had entered the building.
AMR ambulance on NE 82nd Avenue (Brian Burk)
A two-member crew was aboard. Both later documented the event in confidential reports. One record, reviewed by WW, appears on an event summary form produced for American Medical Response—the company that contracts to run ambulance services in Multnomah County. The document lists Oct. 5—the same day as the incident in question—as the “date submitted.” The other document is an email, sent by a crew member to a union representative. It is time-stamped the evening of Oct. 6.
The reports indicate that when the ambulance arrived, the patient was transferred into the vehicle without issue, and soon the crew was preparing to depart. This is consistent with other publicly available records. At 9:30 pm, the ambulance operator indicated plans over the radio to head to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. Around 9:33 pm, dispatch records say, the ambulance seemed to be getting ready to bring the patient out.
And yet it was not emerging. What was going on? One crew member worked largely in the rear of the ambulance, while the other was sitting in the driver’s seat. Their respective reports offer consistent accounts from different vantages.
An initial delay, the driver’s report indicated, stemmed from federal agents’ desire to ride in the ambulance to the hospital. The driver recalls responding that, in the absence of arrest paperwork, officers could not ride in the ambulance, and that an agent responded this was OK—that agents would follow the ambulance to the hospital instead.
But the point was evidently not resolved. Before long, a report says, an agent again said the ambulance needed to wait for an agent who would ride along.
“I repeated again,” the driver’s report recounts, “that no officer is permitted to ride in the ambulance and that they can meet us at the hospital and that we needed to be let out of the facility. Officers then began walking away from me whenever I spoke. At that point, a group of 5-8 civilian-dressed men walked into the garage and just stared at me. No identification on any of them. I walked back to the ambulance and got into the driver’s seat. I flipped the emergency lights on and put the car into drive. I inched forward slowly out of the garage.”
At this point, a report says, a man in civilian clothes with a neck wrap covering the lower part of his face stepped in front of the ambulance and told the driver to halt. The ambulance driver, in the report, recalls telling the man not to stand in front of the ambulance, and that the man then yelled at the driver to stop, citing the risk of hitting federal agents.
The driver recalled expressing skepticism about the risk of hitting the large group of officers in full riot gear, in plain view, about 15 feet in front and to the left of the ambulance. Sensing that departure was imminent, the driver inched forward further: “The group of about 30 officers in front of the ambulance were lining up in what I assumed to be preparation for the gate to open so they could escort the ambulance off of the property,” the report says.
Time went by. The crew was anxious to get the patient to the hospital. But they were still being impeded. Several federal agents, many in riot gear, moved to stand “incredibly close” to the front of the ambulance, the driver’s report recounts. An agent approached to inform the driver of the presence of “violent protesters” outside—a new reason the ambulance could not yet leave.
Around this time, dispatchers received one of the crew’s radio messages: The ambulance was still being held up.
Public records document this period as well: “50-60 fed agents completely blocking the road,” a dispatch report said at 9:39 pm, “but AMR still not driving out yet.”
The gate to the ICE facility had opened and dozens of officers in riot gear had marched out, revealing a clear exit path. Still, according to an incident report, the smaller group of officers continued to stand directly in front of the ambulance.
Around this time, the crew member in the rear, having determined, as a report says, that the “yelling and aggressive nature of the officers had created a scene safety issue,” exited the ambulance to have a word with them.
“My partner was still in the driver’s seat,” the crew member wrote, “and I left the ambulance to attempt to calm and deescalate the situation.”
In the other report, the driver recalled observing this and moving to secure the vehicle before also getting out: “I then placed the ambulance into park, took my foot off the brake, undid my seat belt and opened the driver’s side door. I looked up and suddenly the entire group of officers…were crowded around the open car door, some of them leaning forward towards me, inches from my face.”
An agent, the driver recalled, “pointed his finger at me in a threatening manner and began viciously yelling in my face, stating, ‘DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN, I WILL SHOOT YOU, I WILL ARREST YOU RIGHT NOW.’”
According to the driver’s report, the crew member who had been in the rear of the ambulance told the agent that the vehicle rolled forward when the driver put it in park, and that no one was trying to hit him.
To this, the report recounts, another agent replied that this was not the first time this had happened.
According to the medics, the agents continued to yell. There was also further chatter of riding in the ambulance, but in time an accord was reached: Feds would follow along in their own car.
By 9:42 pm, a crew member radioed in: They were finally en route to the hospital. The driver, in the report, recounts making this radio call, and that dispatch copied. The report says an unmarked vehicle with state license plates followed closely behind the ambulance, and upon arriving at the hospital, multiple men in civilian dress exited the vehicle and walked in.
Presented by email with details of this story, a spokesperson for Global Medical Response, the parent company of American Medical Response, did not answer WW’s questions, but said, “We are reviewing the specifics of the situation and committed to a thorough review.”
WW reached out to the two ambulance crew members. Both declined to comment.
Asked for incident reports tied to the medical call, Austin DePaolo, a spokesman for Teamsters Local 223, which represents the ambulance workers, said in an email that the union “doesn’t have any incident reports that members have given us permission to share.”
DePaolo added: “Our Teamster EMS workers answer every call with courage and compassion. When armed agents interfere with medical care, they cross a moral line that could put lives at risk. We stand firmly behind our members who work in EMS.”
Andrew Schwartz writes about health care. He’s spent years reporting on political and spiritual movements, most recently covering religion and immigration for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and before this as a freelancer covering labor and public policy for various magazines. He began his career at the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.
Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office.
ICE officers are facing backlash after a viral video showed them pepper-spraying a peaceful protester in the face without provocation during a chaotic street arrest.
Following the assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) co-founder Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, there’s been significant posthumous discussion about who he was and what he left behind. President Trump and the Republican Party have described him as a martyr, making his funeral into a 200,000-person event comparable to those of deceased presidents, while calling for retribution against the “radical left” and trans people, despite the fact that the man who killed him is cisgender and his political affiliation is unclear.
Some liberals have mourned Kirk, casting him as a champion of civil dialogue. Meanwhile, critics of his often hateful beliefs have faced repercussions, with retaliatory firings of educators, writers and reporters.
Given the volume of discussion about Kirk and his legacy surrounding LGBTQ issues, Uncloseted Media decided to assemble the receipts. Here’s a track record of Kirk and TPUSA’s actions and statements on the queer community.
Oct. 4, 2016
TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk publishes a manifesto that outlines the group’s vision and political strategy, where he complains that “personal and overall freedom” are being lost in “exchange for ‘micro’ freedoms like taxpayer-funded contraception and gay marriage.”
He writes that TPUSA’s strategy is inspired by what he describes as the LGBT movement:
“We are using the same message delivery methods and many of the same organizing tactics. They use social media, rallies, and pop-culture messaging, just like we do. Despite our very different agendas, there is no question we have adapted our movements into the times in which we live.”
Kirk also references Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University Stern School of Business, who has likened being a conservative graduate student on campus today to being a closeted gay student in the 1980s.
Nov. 21, 2016
Screenshot of Professor Watchlist.
TPUSA launches the Professor Watchlist, a database cataloging “anti-conservative” college professors. Many targeted professors later face harassment. A gay professor says that when they were placed on the watchlist, they began receiving anti-LGBTQ emails on their work account. And a tenured professor at the University of Florida who was placed on the watchlist and tagged with sharing a “racial ideology” says that all four professors at her university who are on the watchlist are either a person of color or someone who identifies as LGBTQ.
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Jan. 25, 2017
TPUSA co-hosts an event with College Republicans at CU Boulder called “Why Ugly People Hate Me.” The event features far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who was in the middle of his Dangerous Faggot Tour which challenged “political correctness” on college campuses. Yiannopoulos claims to be an “ex-gay,” born-again Christian who “demoted” his husband to “housemate.”
April 25, 2018
Kirk at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
A Huffington Post report finds that Shialee Grooman, then TPUSA’s national field director, had a long history of racist and homophobic posts, including one that read, “Okay. All of you are f*ggots.” In a statement to HuffPost, Kirk says Grooman is a “former employee,” and TPUSA issues a company-wide memo announcing social media background checks and offers to assist employees in making their social media posts less public.
Nov. 22, 2019
At a TPUSA event called “Culture War” in Florida, Kirk addresses a heckler who accuses him of betraying conservatism by tolerating gay and transgender individuals and warns of a slippery slope to normalizing pedophilia. Kirk tweets, “I believe marriage is one man one woman biblically” but goes on to say that he doesn’t think gay people should be excluded from the conservative movement.
Sept. 14, 2020
TPUSA launches TPUSA LIVE, a new media hub that they say provides “daily conservative content” that includes “hot takes, opinions, and reactions to breaking news.”
Other articles include transphobic headlines inspired by conspiracy theories that trans women are actually male creeps trying to invade women’s spaces. Some headlines include:
TPUSA launches the School Board Watchlist, modeled after their Professor Watchlist, to monitor high school officials they deem too progressive. The watchlist now seems to be defunct.
Oct. 14, 2021
Kirk publishes an op-ed titled “On Sexual Anarchy” that is rife with anti-LGBTQ animus. He writes:
“The facts that there are only two genders; that transgenderism and gender ‘fluidity’ are lies that hurt people and abuse kids; and that God’s good, loving, and joyful ideal for our lives is for a man and woman to be joined in a lifelong marriage covenant—these are all under official opprobrium in 2021.”
Feb. 18, 2022
A University of South Carolina student posts screenshots of racist and homophobic messages from two group chats affiliated with the school’s TPUSA chapter. The president of the chapter later releases a video apology, saying that “these remarks have no place being made in our organization,” though this video would later be taken down.
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April 8, 2022
On his podcast, Kirk says: “[Gay people] are not happy just having marriage. Instead, they now want to corrupt your children.”
In another episode the following week, Kirk falsely links trans people to inflation.
“There’s a direct connection to inflation and the trans issue. You say, ‘Charlie, come on. They couldn’t be further apart.’ No, they’re exactly the same. They’re the same in this aspect—when you believe that men can become women, why wouldn’t you also believe that you could print wealth?”
June 2022
Drew Hernandez, host of TPUSA FRONTLINE on YouTube, spends Pride Month calling LGBTQ people “mentally ill” and dubs it “groomer month.” Hernandez also says parents who bring their children to Pride events should be arrested. Months later, YouTube would remove the videos.
July 6, 2022
On his podcast, Kirk rejects a previous perspective he held: “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication. It’s a fiction. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
Oct. 12, 2022
The Student Government Association at Maryland’s Towson University formally condemns the university’s TPUSA chapter after leaked messages show the group’s members allegedly using racist, homophobic and ableist slurs. Some of the messages refer to Pride Month as “f*ggot month” and the monkeypox outbreak as the “f*ggot virus.”
Feb. 17, 2023
Discussing trans women in women’s bathrooms, Kirk says, “These people are sick. … I blame the decline of American men. … Someone should’ve just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s or 60s.” Journalist Erin Reed, whose reporting focuses on the trans community, responds to Kirk’s remarks by saying he is “openly calling for the lynching of transgender individuals.”
May 28, 2023
Kirk defends TPUSA’s partnership with Shawn Bergstrand, a registered sex offender who served time in federal prison for attempted “coercion and enticement” after trying to persuade “a minor female” to “engage in sexual activity.”
He defends Bergstrand on X and simultaneously attacks Target for selling Pride merchandise: “I’m told … that he’s a nice person who did something wrong over a decade ago, and unlike Target, he repented and the experience led him to his faith. Good for him. That’s the Gospel.”
Sept. 11, 2023
Screenshot of 2023 speech.
In a speech, Kirk describes transgender people as a “throbbing middle finger to God” and trans swimmer Lia Thomas as “an abomination to God.”
Oct. 11, 2023
David Boyles, an instructor at Arizona State University, posts a photo of his injuries on Instagram. Photo courtesy of David Boyles.
A TPUSA-affiliated crew assault David Boyles, a queer Arizona State University professor who teaches English and is a co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona. The crew shouts accusations about drag shows and sexuality, “accusing [him] personally of pedophilia and hating America,” and ultimately shove him to the ground after he tries to block their camera from recording. Campus police say they investigated the interaction as a “potential bias or prejudicially motivated incident.” Both suspects would plead guilty in court. The professor had been featured on TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist in part for teaching an LGBTQ-themed class on pop culture and politics.
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March 20, 2024
In a debate, Kirk says, “I believe marriage is between one man and one woman, but if you ask me do I have hate in my heart for somebody that doesn’t choose the [heteronormative] lifestyle … of course not.”
April 1, 2024
Kirk calls for gender-affirming clinics to be banned: “We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
June 6, 2024
Trump has spoken at multiple TPUSA events through the years. Trump appears here at the 2019 TPUSA Teen Student Action Summit. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Trump appears at a TPUSA event, signaling collaboration with Kirk’s organization for his second presidential campaign, which was centered around anti-trans ads. Trump delegates many campaign responsibilities to Turning Point Action, the political advocacy arm of TPUSA. Trump tells the crowd, “Arizona is being turned into a dumping ground for the dungeons of the third world.”
June 8, 2024
Speaking on a podcast, Kirk attacks Ms. Rachel for quoting “love your neighbor” to defend Pride celebrations on “Songs for Littles,” her YouTube series that uses music and games to help toddlers develop language and social skills.
“Ms. Rachel, you might wanna crack open that Bible of yours. … Leviticus 18 [says] that ‘thou shall lay with another man, shall be stoned to death.’ … Ms. Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ The chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
When opining about how Christians should act towards gay people, Kirk calls homosexuality an “error” and equates it to an addiction: “How do you love somebody? You love them so much to correct their error. … If you meet an alcoholic or you meet a drug addict, do you affirm their struggle? No! You say, ‘You’re better than this, let’s get you free from that.’”
When speaking about LGBTQ rights advocates, Kirk says, “First, they wanted you to affirm, and then they wanted you to celebrate and then they wanted you to participate. And if you don’t, they are willing to destroy your life.”
Oct. 28, 2024
Kirk wears a T-shirt with the slogan “xy = man” at an election rally in Arizona, referencing that sex and gender are biological and insinuating that trans people don’t exist.
Jan. 10, 2025
TPUSA and The Daily Wire release Identity Crisis, a documentary that cherry picks stories from detransitioners and parents fighting to protect children from gender ideology. The main expert in the documentary is Dr. Drew Pinsky, a TV personality who is not a gender specialist.
March 3, 2025
Kirk speaks at the 2025 TPUSA Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Texas. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
When asked by a gay conservative college student for advice, Kirk responds, “You are a complete human being. … We act as if the most important part of your identity is what you do in the bedroom. It doesn’t mean that much to me. If you asked from a perspective as a Christian, I don’t agree with that lifestyle.”
Aug. 25, 2025
“While we’re talking about flags, we should work to overturn every conviction for those arrested, fined, or otherwise harassed for the ‘hate crime’ of doing donuts over Pride flags painted on public streets,” Kirk writes on X, referencing a teenager who was arrested in St. Petersburg for doing circular “doughnut-burnouts” on a rainbow pride mural.
In a separate post, Kirk writes that “it should be legal to burn a rainbow or BLM flag in public.”
Sept. 10, 2025
Charlie Kirk is shot and killed while speaking at a TPUSA event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. In the moments leading up to his death, Kirk is speaking about gun violence.
The mainstream media spreads disinformation based on falseleaks from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that say the shooter had “expressions of transgender and anti-fascist ideology” written on the bullets.
Trans hate has risen since Kirk’s death, and trans students unaffiliated with the shooting have been doxxed and harassed.
“[People online] were asking for my class schedule,” Simone Goodheart, a trans woman and UVU alum, told Uncloseted Media. “A few of them made awful comments about my appearance and who I am as a person.”
Sept. 12, 2025
Kirk’s widow, Erika, issues a statement at the TPUSA headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, signaling an escalation of tension:
“If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country, and this world. … You have no idea the fire you’ve ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”
Two weeks after Kirk’s assassination, a Texas man faces charges for threatening to open fire at the Abilene Pride Parade as “revenge” for Kirk’s death. In Facebook messages, he urges a friend to “lock and load and pay them back” and suggests they go “hunting fairies.” The FBI says his threats were targeted toward Pride participants.
Sept. 30, 2025
TPUSA returns to Utah for the first time since Kirk’s death to host a panel at Utah State University.
The panel discusses political tolerance. Jason Chaffetz, a former Utah State Representative, says, “I worry that we’re putting too much tolerance. You do not need a man with junk in a woman’s bathroom. End of story.”
When discussing LGBTQ allies who lit up the iconic Brigham Young University’s “Y” in the color of the trans flag, the moderator calls it “some of that evil that’s just seeping in throughout the state.”
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October 12, 1492 Natives of islands off the Atlantic shore of North America came upon Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who was searching for a water route to India for Spanish Queen Isabella.
October 12, 1945 Pfc. Desmond Doss became the first conscientious objector ever to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist, enlisted in 1942 but refused to carry a rifle or train on Saturdays. On the island of Okinawa, under heavy Japanese fire, he saved the lives of 75 sick and wounded soldiers by lowering them, one by one, down a 400-foot cliff. The guest house at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is Doss Memorial Hall in his honor. Read more (includes movie trailer)
October 12, 1958 A Reform Jewish Temple in Atlanta (the city’s oldest) was firebombed with fifty sticks of dynamite in retaliation for Jewish support of local black civil rights activists. The Temple’s Rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was outspoken in his support of civil rights and integration, and was a friend of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. before he became well known nationally. From Georgia PBS
October 12, 1967 British zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his book, “The Naked Ape,” a frank study of human behavior from a zoologist’s perspective. Morris had earlier studied the artistic abilities of apes and was appointed Curator of Mammals at the London Zoo. Read more
October 12, 1967 “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” appeared in The Nation and the New York Review of Books. 20,000 signed it, including academics, clergymen, writers. It urged “that every free man has a legal right and a moral duty to exert every effort to end this war [Vietnam], to avoid collusion with it, and to encourage others to do the same.” This document became the main basis for the federal government’s criminal prosecution (for encouraging draft evasion) of five of the signers: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber, and the Reverend William Sloane Coffin. Read the Call
October 12, 1970 Lt. William Calley was court-martialled for the massacre of 102 civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai; far more actually died during the incident. The full sad story Lt. Calley
October 12, 1977 “Regents of the University of California v. Bakke” was argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question: Did the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by practicing an affirmative action policy that resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke’s application for admission to its medical school? Read more
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