Report shows crowd control measures, 'misuse of force' by police during ICE-related protests

A new report analyzes the impacts of crowd control measures carried out by Homeland Security officers and other police during immigration enforcement and protests across the U.S.

The report comes from a pair of human rights and medical groups and uses bystander video and news reports to put together a database of incidents where pepper spray, rubber bullets and other measures were used by local and federal law enforcement.

Report co-author Payal Shah is the director of research, legal, and advocacy with Physicians for Human Rights — one of the groups behind the report. She says researchers were already examining individual cases, but want to get a sense of what was happening on a national scale.

“What we were hearing time and again from courts and from the litigators that were seeking to end the use of crowd control weapons improperly by law enforcement officials was that there needed to be more information, more evidence around the patterns of use of these weapons,” she said.

The report identifies over 400 use-of-force incidents between June 2025 and this May — including one where an ICE agent pepper sprayed an observer at close range during an enforcement action in South Tucson.

Demonstrators and journalists made up the vast majority of people impacted.

Shah says the report focuses on procedural misuses of force — where weapons are used against vulnerable groups like children, protected groups like journalists, or in a way that goes against manufacturer safety recommendations.

“Including fire of projectiles not meant to be used in this manner, close range fire, shots targeted at the head or groin, or used in enclosed places or without exit,” Shah said. “The clear message that comes from looking at this data is there is an incredibly concerning pattern of international human rights and constitutional rights violations likely occurring by the use of force by law enforcement in response to immigration protests — and yet, there is incredibly limited visibility into what is happening.”

The report documents over 190 resulting injuries, ranging from cuts and burns, to traumatic brain injuries.

Sasha Schell is the supervising reporter at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, which released the report alongside Physicians for Human Rights. He says researchers also worked to identify patterns in the weapons used and by which agency. They found multiple agencies were involved in various crowd control efforts, each with varying protocols.

“We had just a soup of sub-agencies at DHS, each with their own use-of-force manual, each with their own weapons, from different parts of the country, and it just makes accountability and understanding who’s doing what, why, how, that much more difficult,” he said.

Shah says Congress should exercise its oversight authority and require accountability measures like body-worn cameras and no masks. The report calls on lawmakers to ban federal law enforcement from using certain weapons — like projectiles with metallic components.

A pilot program enacted under the Biden administration required some Border Patrol agents to wear body cameras and the agency released footage of serious use-of-force incidents. But the program has stalled under the Trump administration.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to clarify the role of Shah and Physicians for Human Rights in authoring the report.