‘Broken Bones, Burning Eyes: How ICE Deploys ‘Less than Lethal’ Weapons on Protesters

Alec Bertrand, a 30-year-old musician and recording engineer, was hit multiple times with projectiles while peacefully protesting ICE activity in California. Besides being struck in the testicle, shoulder, and leg fired by federal agents, he felt a rubber bullet hit his hand, shattering the bones in one of his fingers and causing profuse bleeding. Even after surgery on his finger, he can no longer play guitar. He had to leave his job and has since started physical and psychological therapy.

Minneapolis resident Leon Virden, 73, was horrified after hearing about ICE’s January 24 killing of Alex Pretti. He and his son drove to the scene and joined a small group of protestors chanting in an alley, where federal officers who appeared to be from DHS showed up.

As is increasingly common during protests a federal agent threw a flash-bang grenade at the protestors, which exploded, “shattering Virden’s face,” according to NBC News. 

Expanded, aggressive immigration enforcement activity has become a key feature of the second Trump administration, and Bertrand and Virden are two more victims of its violent side. The fact that agents seem to use force indiscriminately contributes to a sense of “constant fear” and anxiety for many across the country.

These days, Virden is recuperating at home, taking Tylenol – his jaw had to be surgically rebuilt.

“I’m really pissed off that these, you can call them anything you want, I call them agents of the Antichrist, that they can come in and do this and get away with it,” Virden said. “I’m pissed off. I hurt a bit, and I just want to see some change.”

Virden is one of the hundreds of protesters injured at the hands of DHS force.

As Jon Schuppe and Natasha Krecki of NBC News write in their excellent investigation of DHS use of “less lethal” weapons, “They batter bodies with rubber bullets and sear eyes with pepper spray. They lob tear gas and explosive flash-bangs at chanting crowds. They smash car windows. They shove people to the ground. They ram vehicles and point their guns.”

“Federal officers carrying out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in cities across the country have shot 13 people with guns. But far more often, they have used harsh tactics to scare or repel those they see as getting in their way.” 

And, as the reporters note, “courts in at least four states have found that officers used force inappropriately and indiscriminately.”

In a review of dozens of incidents since the spring – involving interviews with experts and witnesses, as well as court documents and videos – NBC News found that Department of Homeland Security officers repeatedly used “less lethal” weapons in ways that would violate their own policies or general policing guidelines unless they believed their lives were in danger. 

Rubén Castillo, a former federal prosecutor and federal judge who now leads the Illinois Accountability Commission, which is reviewing allegations of abuse against immigration officers, said he’d “never seen federal agents so out of control and acting in such a malicious manner. They said they were going after ‘the worst of the worst,’ then they became the problem.” 

You can read NBC’s report on ICE’s violence here, as well as its earlier report on 13 shootings by ICE agents.