Federal agents, including members of the Department of Homeland Security, the Border Patrol, and police, attempt to keep protesters back outside a downtown U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Oct. 4, 2025 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Members of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee decried violence against law enforcement, but seemed to make little headway in identifying how to address the issue during a Wednesday hearing that often saw each party harshly blame the other.

Chairman Andrew Garbarino of New York, at his first hearing since taking over as for the retired Mark Green of Tennessee, sought to strike an even tone in an opening statement, condemning violence against police while noting that officers have a responsibility to maintain the public’s trust.

“Law enforcement personnel are public servants, not public figures. They stepped forward to safeguard our nation and uphold the laws enacted by this body,” Garbarino said. “But that alone does not absolve them from facing any form of accountability. Public trust and public safety go hand in hand.” 

Other members of the panel, though, were less even-handed, with Democrats strongly criticizing some tactics used by federal law enforcement officers under President Donald Trump and Republicans denouncing such criticism as fueling violence against police.

Several members of the panel, of both parties, acknowledged the two West Virginia National Guard members shot in a Nov. 26 alleged ambush in Washington, D.C.

Police witnesses denounce Nazi comparisons

Witnesses from three police organizations, the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, largely agreed that heightened rhetoric about law enforcement activity was a danger to their members.

“The rhetoric coming from the top, calling officers Nazis and Gestapo, it better stop right now,” Jonathan Thompson, the executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said. 

“You are inflaming dangerous circumstances. You’re attacking people that wake up every single day and do one thing: they put on their uniforms, they put on their star and… enforce the laws of this country.”

Daniel Hodges, a D.C. Metropolitan Police officer who responded to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and who Democrats invited to testify to the panel as a private citizen Wednesday, said protocol of federal officers under Trump invited the comparison.

“There is a semi-secret police force abducting people based on the color of their skin and sending many of them via state-sponsored human trafficking to extraterritorial concentration camps,” he said. 

“Before we go around the room clutching our pearls, wondering how people could possibly compare law enforcement in this country to the Gestapo, maybe we should take a moment and ask ourselves if there isn’t some recent behavior on the government’s part that could encourage such juxtaposition,” Hodges said.

Patrick Yoes, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said violence against officers was a nonpartisan issue.

“My members are both Democrat and Republican,” he said. “And we’re all having the same problem.”

ICE under microscope

Several Democrats said the tactics used by officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, undermined their law enforcement mission and endangered them, while Republicans blamed that rhetoric for making police targets.

New York Democrat Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor, objected to Thompson’s testimony that police officers “put on their uniforms.”

“The problem is that’s not the case,” Goldman said. “They don’t put on a uniform, they don’t wear identification, and they go out with masks on to — violently in many cases — arrest unsuspecting immigrants, non-violent, many of whom are actually here legally.”

Goldman said as a federal prosecutor he worked with DHS officers “who represented the very, very best of our country.” But under Trump, the department’s behavior had grown irresponsible, he said.

Illinois Democrat Delia Ramirez went further, calling DHS “the single biggest threat to public safety right now.”

“They use anonymity to terrorize our communities and to violate our rights,” she said. “They reject accountability. They disregard court orders and they violate consent decrees. Bottom line: DHS agents lie. They act with impunity. They reject checks and balances, and they ignore Congress and the courts.”

GOP defends DHS

Republicans on the panel deflected blame from DHS and drew a direct line from the rhetoric of some Democrats opposed to ICE’s tactics to physical attacks on law enforcement.

Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles said Ramirez’s comment “pisses me off” and characterized DHS agents as carrying out the rule of law.

“This is about the rhetoric against law enforcement, violence against law enforcement,” Ogles said. “This isn’t about ICE. This isn’t about deportations, or the (Homeland Security) secretary doing her job, securing the border and deporting those who are here illegally.”

Rep. Eli Crane, an Arizona Republican, played a video showing Rep LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat who also sits on the panel, confronting ICE agents at a detention facility in her district.

“What do you think it means to people that are out there watching and listening, watching social media, watching the news, and they see a member of Congress who sits on this committee go out there and behave like that?” Crane asked the witnesses.

Thompson answered he was “appalled.”

“Quite honestly, I find it reprehensible, and it’s obviously dangerous,” he said.

McIver said she had been doing her job to provide oversight.

Jan. 6 pardons at issue

Democrats also cited Trump’s pardons of people convicted of crimes as part of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as condoning violence against law enforcement.

McIver suggested committee Republicans were hypocritical in condemning some anti-police rhetoric while staying silent or praising Trump’s decision to pardon Jan.6 rioters.

“It is not Democrats who are praising, let alone pardoning, people who stormed this very Capitol complex to beat police officers and hunt down elected officials,” she said.

Masked federal immigration officers talk while they patrol at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York City on Oct. 16, 2025. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) 

WASHINGTON — Federal immigration officers are making unlawful arrests in the District of Columbia because they are relying on ethnicity to identify targets, immigration advocates argued in federal court Wednesday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are allowed to make warrantless arrests if an officer has probable cause or reason to believe a person is in the United States without legal authorization and can escape before a warrant is obtained. But the immigration advocates challenging ICE’s methods say the officers are using ethnicity-based criteria that have led to wrongful arrests.

“People are living in fear that they will be arrested unlawfully or subject to detention,” Ama Frimpong, the legal director of immigration advocacy group CASA and lead counsel in the case, said.

CASA is seeking class certification for people affected by the policy.

U.S. Justice Department attorney John Bardo said the Trump administration was against class certification because it would cause “micromanaging” by the courts for federal immigration officials and he argued that the plaintiffs in the class have different immigration statuses.

“You don’t even have commonality among the four plaintiffs,” Bardo said.

U.S. District Senior Judge Beryl A. Howell said she would make a decision on class certification and whether to narrow a preliminary injunction soon. 

Quota challenged

The suit stems from President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration in the district that flooded the 68-square-mile capital with federal law enforcement and National Guard troops. As a result, there has been an uptick in aggressive immigration enforcement.

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said officers should arrest 3,000 people per day on suspicion of being in the country without legal authorization. 

Bardo confirmed that policy in court Wednesday, but said the figure was a goal. 

Questioned by Howell, he said the quota was not leading to unlawful arrests and that officers were properly trained. 

Profiling policy

A policy that allows officers to target people based on factors like ethnicity and accent has also swept up U.S. citizens and legal residents. 

Groups challenged the policy, and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually heard it. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 6-3 decision temporarily allowing profiling based on ethnicity that citizens face few problems in having their immigration status verified if federal agents apprehend them.

The four individual plaintiffs in the case in Howell’s court are immigrants who have some form of legal status such as a pending asylum case or temporary protections but were arrested by federal officers. They argue they were targeted because of their ethnicity and fear they will continue to be targeted because they are Latino. They have moved for class certification.

One plaintiff, B.S.R., said in his declaration he was arrested twice by officers in the district, despite having a pending asylum claim.

Another plaintiff, N.S., said in his declaration that was leaving a Home Depot after buying supplies and was arrested by officers, even after he showed his documentation showing he had Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela. He was transferred to several ICE facilities across the country and detained for 28 days before he was released and able to return to his family in the district.

A third, R.S.M., has a pending application for a visa category for victims of a crime who are helpful to law enforcement in cases. 

In her declaration, R.S.M. said that during her arrest, officers scanned her husband’s face, and found he was not the person they were looking for. 

“For a moment, I was relieved and thought they would not arrest us, but one officer said it did not matter that my husband didn’t match the person they were looking for, and the officer decided to arrest us anyway,” she said, adding that only one officer out of the seven who arrested them was in clothing that identified them as law enforcement.

R.S.M. said she was released and given an ankle monitor, but her husband is still detained.

‘Like being kidnapped’

In a declaration submitted to the court, the lead plaintiff, José Eliseo Escobar Molina, detailed how he was detained by federal immigration officials. 

Escobar Molina came to the U.S. in 1998 and obtained Temporary Protected Status in 2001. The status is granted when the Department of Homeland Security deems a national’s home country too dangerous to return to due to violence, natural disaster or other unstable environments.

He lives in the district neighborhood of Mount Pleasant, which has a large Salvadoran immigrant population, with his significant other and their two sons, both U.S. citizens. Escobar Molina, who works in construction as a scaffolder, said he was getting in his truck to head to work.

“Officers dressed in plainclothes got out of the vehicles,” he said in his declaration. “First, two of them grabbed me by the arms and immediately handcuffed me, and then the two officers from the other Suburban came over and grabbed me by the legs.”

Escobar Molina said the officers didn’t identify themselves and he tried to inform them of his legal documentation, which he said was in his wallet.

“I felt like I was being kidnapped,” he said. “Once in the car, I told them again that I had papers. The driver of the car, who was one of the officers that handcuffed me, told me, ‘Shut up b–-h! You’re illegal.’ After he yelled at me, I stayed silent. I did not try to resist arrest or to flee.”

Escobar Molina said he was asked no questions from any law enforcement officer before being transferred to a facility in Chantilly, Virginia. He said that during his 23-hour detention, all he was given was “one small bean burrito, something sweet, and a glass of water.” 

Officer mistake

Escobar Molina said while at Chantilly, Virginia, one of the officers at Homeland Security said his TPS “doesn’t count as being legal here,” and he was then transferred to Richmond, Virginia. 

TPS for El Salvador is still valid, and DHS extended the status earlier this year. 

Escobar Molina said once he was at Richmond, an ICE supervisor realized the mistake and said he was free to leave.  

“He said to me, ‘Sorry you had to live through this. These are new officers. They do not know what they are doing,’” Escobar Molina said, recounting his interaction with the ICE supervisor. “He gave me a copy of my TPS approval notice and told me to carry it with me so I could show it if officers stopped me again.” 

Escobar Molina said when he was arrested in the summer, it was the first time he had been arrested since being in the U.S. for more than 20 years. 

“I fear the same for my sons because even though they are U.S. citizens, they are Hispanic just like me,” he said. “I told them to carry their U.S. passports with them at all times just to be safe.”