Attacks on ICE Officers Escalate

It would be an understatement to say that the rhetoric surrounding ICE enforcement is currently heated and becoming more so by the day. In response, activists and even some elected officials are impeding immigration officers who are carrying out their duties – imperiling those officers, other members of our communities, and the aliens themselves. To quote Fred Thompson’s character in the 1990 spy thriller “The Hunt for Red October”: “This business will get out of control.”

As a caveat, I’ll be discussing various individuals who have been arrested and charged with many and sundry offenses. Each is entitled to due process and a presumption of innocence unless convicted. 

Protest Turns into Alleged Road Rage in the City of Angels

ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Border Patrol agents went out in Los Angeles on February 28 to serve what the agency described as “four criminal search and arrest warrants to a known transnational criminal organization allegedly involved with international human smuggling.”

Groups of people started forming to protest that action, according to CBS News, with some of them shouting “hostile remarks” at the agents. 

A May 14 press release from the local U.S. Attorney’s Office describes what happened after those agents got into their government vehicles and left:

At the intersection of 61st Street and Broadway in South Los Angeles, [Gustavo] Torres and [Kiara Jaime-] Flores – driving a Honda Fit – allegedly pulled in front of one of the government vehicles and blocked its pathway at the intersection. The defendants also drove westbound on 61st Street in an opposing lane, passing another two government vehicles. The defendants allegedly pulled in front of one of the vehicles and slammed on the brakes, which the agents believed was an attempt to cause a collision.

Torres and Flores aggressively followed one of the government vehicles for two miles, attempting to cross multiple lanes of traffic as it followed it and the other cars. 

The pair were arrested and charged with conspiracy to impede or injure an officer, an offense that carries a maximum six-year sentence. 

Torres allegedly later told authorities that he thought his actions were a “good idea”, explaining: “If it was immigration, they were taking someone’s family member unjustified. Well, me and my girlfriend, the first instinct was, well, to block the cars”.

Massachusetts Melee

On May 10, the New York Post reported that: “A Massachusetts police union is calling for charges against a City Councilmember who allegedly assaulted local and federal officers – and incited a caught-on-video chaotic protest of an [ICE] arrest of an accused violent criminal.”

The councilmember in question is Etel Haxhiaj, and the incident was apparently quite the circus. 

Reports indicate the Worcester (Mass.) police were called to the site of that incident on the morning of May 8, and found a crowd of 25 people surrounding an ICE officer who had stopped a BMW to take a Brazilian national, Rosane Ferreira de Oliveira– who had allegedly been charged in February for “assault and battery with a dangerous weapon on a pregnant victim” – into custody. 

De Oliveira’s daughter allegedly jumped in front of the officer’s vehicle, baby in tow, to prevent the arrest. Boston 25 News described the situation that unfolded next: 

A crowd of neighbors, community leaders, and immigration activists went to the scene and tried to stop the family from being separated.

Then, things escalated.

Neighbors at the scene accused ICE agents of not having a warrant and wanted to know why they were taking the unidentified woman into custody. 

. . .

Brian Webb, who went to the scene when he saw social media posts from the scene cropping up, told Boston 25 News that when things started getting out of hand, officers announced over loud speakers that the gathering was an unlawful assembly and that people in the crowd should disperse or face arrest.

The Worcester cops allege they arrived to find “a chaotic scene”, describing the crowd as “unruly”, with “several people were putting their hands on federal agents and Worcester officers in an attempt to keep the vehicle and the arrestee from leaving.”

The daughter, a juvenile, was arrested and charged with (among other things) reckless endangerment of a child and resisting arrest after she alleged “ran after” the government vehicle carrying her mother “and kicked the passenger’s side of it.”

Also arrested was Ashley Spring, a 38-year-old candidate for the local Worcester School Committee. 

Spring has been charged with (again, among other things) with assault and battery on a police officer and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after she was alleged to have “push[ed] multiple officers at the scene” and threw what’s described as “an unknown liquid substance” on the officers.

Haxhiaj was apparently present at the incident, purportedly to “protect her constituents”. DHS, on the other hand, contended that what was she was doing there was more of a “political stunt”, but it doesn’t appear that she has been arrested or charged. 

As for the crowd’s demand to see the arrest “warrant” for the alien, I’ll note that I’ve seen social media posts claiming ICE agents “must have a warrant signed by a judge” and that bystanders have a right to see it. 

Neither of those claims is legally valid, and each is potentially reckless. 

Under section 236(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), ICE officers are authorized to arrest aliens on an administrative – not judicial – warrant, and section 287(a) permits them to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States” without a warrant and make warrantless arrests in certain circumstances.

In any event, ICE officers have no obligation to share an administrative warrant with anyone other than the arrestee or the arrestee’s lawyer. There’s no “unruly crowd” or even “Good Samaritan” exception.

N.C. Man Charged with Threats to Make “Swiss Cheese” of ICE Officers

High-profile ICE arrests in and around Charlotte, N.C., have been on the rise of late. 

A mid-March ICE operation in the city netted “24 illegal aliens” (including two alleged MS-13 members), with a combined “13 aggravated felonies or other violent offenses”, “three illegal firearms or weapons offenses”, “11 DWI charges”, and various other offenses including “assault on a federal officer”. 

Next, on April 25, ICE agents arrested four aliens near the Mecklenburg County courthouse, and on May 12 officers took one or more aliens into custody near the drop-off line for a Charlotte magnet school. 

Then, on May 15, ICE officers “chased a [shirtless] man across the lawn of the courthouse, across 3rd Street, and into a duck pond in nearby Marshall Park” in an incident caught on video by local outlet WBTV. 

Not surprisingly, ICE’s enforcement efforts in Charlotte and Mecklenburg have stirred outcries from local immigrants’ advocates who are complaining about “widespread fear” and “family separation” due to the ICE operations, but enforcement has also allegedly triggered one local to make some pretty hostile threats against agents. 

On May 19, 27-year-old Johnathan Thomas of Linwood, N.C., appeared in federal court in Charlotte, charged with “making threats of violence against federal law enforcement officers”.

A DOJ press release reports Thomas is charged in connection with a call he allegedly made to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) on May 14, in which he “threatened to kill” ICE agents and officers from CMPD “if immigration enforcement actions did not stop.”

The release further asserts that: 

During a second telephone call with a CMPD officer, Thomas allegedly warned that he was coming to Charlotte with armor piercing ammunition, night vision devices, and body armor to kill law enforcement officers and threatened to “shoot them all” if he observed anyone making arrests. Thomas allegedly was referencing arrests [near the drop-off line] made previously by ICE federal agents on Albemarle Road in Charlotte. 

Thomas also purportedly claimed that if an “officer pointed a gun at him, he was just going to open fire”, and “also allegedly said that he would ‘Swiss cheese’ the officers if they were doing the same thing they did before, meaning making arrests”.

Finally: 

Thomas allegedly made additional threats to law enforcement, including that he had Tannerite (an explosive) all around his house if the police came, and referenced April 29, 2024, which is the date that four law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty in Charlotte, warning that he “could do a whole lot better than that.”

Delaney Hall Dust-Up

Likely the most high-profile interference claims, however, relate to an incident I’ve discussed recently, when Mayor (and would-be New Jersey governor) Ras Baraka was arrested on May 9 for trespass during a demonstration at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark.

The man whom Baraka would replace, Gov. Phil Murphy (D), quickly issued a statement calling the mayor “an exemplary public servant who has always stood up for our most vulnerable neighbors” and describing his arrest as “unjust” while demanding Baraka’s release. 

Murphy got his wish on May 19 when Acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba dropped the federal charges against Baraka – but surprised many when she instead charged Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) under 18 U.S.C. § 111(a) with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement”. 

As Habba tweeted:

🚨 Today my office has charged Congresswoman McIver with violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 111(a)(1) for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/TV00uwRtKq

— US Attorney Habba (@USAttyHabba) May 19, 2025

Rep. McIver was one of a trio of Democratic U.S. House Members from the Garden State (including Rep. Bessie Watson Coleman) who went to Delaney Hall unannounced (as legally allowed) to do an oversight tour of the facility. 

I wasn’t there, and the timing is unclear, so I have no idea what occurred either before or after that tour, but according to a May 20 report from the New Jersey Monitor: 

Video shows Baraka exiting the property to join protestors on the other side of the gate separating the street from the detention center. Federal agents then moved to arrest him, and, according to the complaint, McIver started to shout, “Hell no! Hell no! Hell no!”

McIver, Watson Coleman, and other protestors circled the mayor, and during the scuffle that ensued, McIver pushed past a federal agent and pushing [sic] another on his shoulder, according to video of the episode.

Having performed congressional oversight of ICE for eight years, I toured countless immigrant detention facilities and knew better than to directly confront anybody during such activities –there is a time and place for everything, and if Congress has a beef, it’s best to put it down on paper and hash it out later.

In any event, Rep. McIver denies the charges and is fighting the case, while 11 former GOP House members have come out in her support. 

Other Incidents

There are, of course, other incidents, such as one for which a Mexican national was indicted in Kansas for purportedly “forcibly assaulting and causing bodily harm to an [ICE] deportation officer while the officer was performing his official duties” in February; the indictment in New Jersey of a Dominican national in April for supposedly assaulting an ICE deportation officer while in immigration detention; and a similar indictment of a Colombian national (also in New Jersey) for a February incident in which he allegedly elbowed an arresting ICE officer in the face – to name just a few. 

Aliens and criminals resisting arrest is nothing new, but the vitriol that is being directed at ICE officers for simply doing their jobs is unprecedented. 

Consider the following headline, from the Harvard (University) Crimson on May 27: “‘It is Pure Fascism’: More Than 100 Rally Against ICE in Boston Common”. There are three writers of that piece, and none of them bothered to seek a point of view contrary to the protest attendees. 

“Veritas” (Truth) – the school’s motto – has plainly taken on a very different meaning under Trump 2.0. 

Nearly two dozen people were arrested outside an immigration court in Lower Manhattan on May 28, one of countless protests against immigration enforcement that have been ongoing in recent months.

As CBS News described the scene in New York: “Protests erupted into chaos as officers and members of the crowd clashed over barricades.”

Opponents of Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are complaining she is fundraising on calls to abolish ICE, which she describes as “an agency that was just formed in 2003 during the Patriot Act era” and “a rogue agency that should not exist”.

Having immigration laws without enforcement is as absurd as imposing taxes without a system to collect them, but that hasn’t cooled advocates’ ardor. “This business will get out of control” and people – agents, protestors, and aliens alike – will be harmed unless responsible adults turn down the heat on ICE enforcement, assuming any such adults are left.