Dem
47
GOP
53
Back in January, ICE officers shot and killed two people, and the political blowback forced the agency to dial it down for a while. Now, in July, ICE officers have shot and killed two more people, and the political blowback is forcing them to dial it down again.
To be specific, "Border Czar" Tom Homan announced yesterday that ICE would stop making "most" traffic stops, and that agents would be instructed not to pursue fleeing vehicles. He also said that body and dashboard cameras would be used more widely, though we'll believe that when we see it. Homan characterized all of this as a "short pause" and not a permanent change in policy. The number of days that lapsed between the shooting of Alex Pretti (January 24) and the shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo (July 7) was 165. So, we can estimate that the next two fatal shootings will take place... well, as chance would have it, 165 days from today is Christmas.
Even if ICE agents finally learn to properly holster their weapons, however, plenty of other damage is being done. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley (HRC) have painstakingly documented the harms being done by ICE officers, and have just produced a report that covers June 2025 through May 2026 and that summarizes their findings. While the four fatal shootings and the sixteen non-fatal shootings have gotten the lion's share of the attention, HRC and PHR identified a staggering 412 incidents where misuse of crowd control equipment and techniques (a.k.a. "less-lethal force"), like pepper spray and rubber bullets, led to serious injuries, up to and including blinding and brain damage. ProPublica also did a study, covering roughly the same timeframe, and found that at least 70 children were among the people seriously injured by ICE officers.
We are not in a position to review every single incident, of course. But we have no doubt that at least some ICE targets did things that were ill-advised when dealing with law-enforcement personnel, particularly when those personnel are under-qualified, under-trained and on edge. Still, in politics, perception is reality. And the shootings and the other injuries, given there are so many of them, and in such a short timeframe, creates the perception that ICE is out of control. In particular, it is hard to piece together a hypothetical circumstance where ICE was justified in taking actions that led to children being injured.
We remain uncertain whether ICE will be an important part of the conversation this election season. But we can at least offer three salient observations. The first, which we noted yesterday, is that the four fatal shootings all took place in states with key U.S. Senate races. The second is that the Democrats appear to be making corruption their central theme this cycle, and police overreach is a significant element of government corruption.
The third is that polls continue to show that Latino voters are furious. The latest, from the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, reveals that virtually all Latino business owners have been hurt by the tariffs, or by the immigration enforcement, or both, and that even though the majority identify as Republican, they favor state Rep. James Talarico (D) over AG Ken Paxton (R) in the race for Texas' U.S. Senate seat by 7 points, 43% to 36%. Meanwhile a New York Times/Siena poll of all Latinos in Texas (so, not just business owners) indicates that demographic has swung dramatically away from the GOP. Though Texas Latinos went for Donald Trump by 10 points in 2024, they now favor Talarico by 32 points. That, of course, is a 42-point swing, which would be a little hard to believe, except that the NYT/Siena poll tends to be a little right-leaning, and so is not likely to err dramatically in the Democrats' direction. If the polls have the right of it, then the House is probably lost to Republicans (just based on what will happen in Texas and other southwestern states), the Senate is perilous, and Gov. Joe Lombardo (R-NV) might not want to sign any long-term leases or service contracts. (Z)