Investigative journalists with ProPublica published a disturbing video essay showing ICE officers smashing car windows to get to frightened undocumented migrants locked inside.
“We’ve documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests — a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office,” reads the introduction to the piece. “ICE claims its officers use a ‘minimum amount of force.’ You can judge for yourself.”
The essay guides viewers through an initial six videos of ICE agents, some wearing masks and wielding various instruments to break into the vehicles.
“In Los Angeles, a terrified immigrant sits inside a truck as a masked man swings a baton, shattering his window,” write reporters Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk for the first video.
The second video caption reads, “In Baltimore, agents break a window and grab a man by the neck, pulling him out of the car.”
“ICE says its officers ‘use only the level of force that is objectively reasonable,’” reads the next caption as video shows an agent reaching inside of a broken window to get at the car door handle.
The story quoted a “high-ranking ICE official” in suburban Maryland explaining the process of pulling over a wanted immigrant: “He can either give us a license, or we’ll smash the f—— window out and drag him out.”
Another clip shows an officer swinging a sledgehammer to smash through a car window after the occupants said they were waiting for their lawyer before opening the door.
“Before the sledgehammer swung, one of the officers threatened them in broken Spanish: ‘We can do it two ways. Hard or easy?’”
A car “is a constitutional gray zone,” according to the report, without the “same Fourth Amendment protections as homes.” That means while you can refuse to open the door of your home to officers without a warrant, “you can’t refuse to step out of your car.”
In a lawsuit filed by one person pulled from his vehicle, a 3-year-old is quoted saying, “Police broke the window and threw daddy on the floor.”