ICE Agents Violently Arrest Black Corrections Officer

ICE agents in Maine arrested a Black law enforcement officer, even after he repeatedly told them he was a legal immigrant.

Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce confirmed to reporters Thursday that a viral cell phone video of a man being detained by ICE agents in a Portland neighborhood Wednesday was a corrections officer recruit from the county. In the video, the man can be heard shouting “What’s wrong? I’m just coming from work. What’s wrong, guys? I don’t understand this. I don’t have any violations.”

An eyewitness who recorded video of the arrest, Ben Bozeman, told the Portland Press Herald that while taking a walk nearby Wednesday night, he saw five cars swarm the man and that ICE agents threatened him with a Taser before detaining him. Bozeman that the agents left the recruit’s car still running on the side of the road, with his corrections uniform sitting in plain sight in the back seat.

“It’s very dark, just jarring and threatening,” Bozeman told the newspaper, saying that witnessing ICE’s violence had shaken him.

“They all took off, leaving his car with the windows down, the lights on, unsecured and unoccupied,” Joyce said in a press conference. “They left it right on the side of the street. Folks, that’s bush-league policing.”

The sheriff excoriated the agents for their conduct, saying the arrest had changed his mind about the federal government’s immigration actions.

“We’re being told one story, which is totally different than what’s occurring or what occurred [Wednesday] night,” Joyce said, noting that the recruit had passed the county’s application process to qualify as a corrections employee, and was cleared to work in the United States until April 2029.

“In fact, he was squeaky clean. Squeaky clean,” Joyce said. “I guess if you’re not the card-carrying, you know, U.S. citizen, then you must be illegal, because that’s what they told me is he’s illegal, and he’s definitely not a criminal. So what part of him is illegal? I don’t know.”

Law enforcement officers across the country have been caught up in ICE’s violence, including in Minneapolis, where local police have complained that officers of color have been questioned and detained on multiple occasions. ICE’s leadership has proclaimed that nearly everyone is considered fair game in their mass deportation agenda, as it becomes increasingly clear that the Trump administration is deploying a racist goon squad.

Federal judges in Minnesota are rejecting arrest warrants for some anti-ICE protesters because federal officials haven’t actually backed up claims that demonstrators have broken any law.

Federal immigration agents have repeatedly failed to provide sufficient evidence that demonstrators have committed crimes, such as assault, when trying to obtain warrants for arrest, two people briefed on discussions of sealed court proceedings told MS NOW Friday.

In order to obtain an arrest warrant, a federal officer is only required to show a fair probability that the suspect has engaged in criminal activity—but apparently, they’re not even doing that.

For example, U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Micko struck a charge listed on an arrest warrant for Chauntyll Allen, one of the demonstrators arrested at an anti-ICE protest during services at a Minnesota church Sunday. The warrant originally alleged that Allen had physically obstructed entrance to a place of religious worship, impeding the churchgoers’ religious freedom. CBS News Minnesota’s Jonah Kaplan reported that Micko had struck this charge on the arrest warrant, noting that there was “no probable cause.”

The other charge listed on the warrant alleged that Allen had committed a conspiracy against rights, accusing her and her fellow protesters of intending to injure, threaten, or intimidate someone exercising their right to religion.

Micko also rejected the arrest warrant of journalist Don Lemon.

Customs and Border Protection Commander Greg Bovino claimed that his agents “work very hard with the Department of Justice” to obtain arrest warrants, even working for “several days” to get a warrant for one person. Of course, Bovino is probably best known for “outright lying” about protesters himself.

MAGA operative Corey Lewandowski—who has long been rumored to be having an affair with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—will be extending his stay as her de facto chief of staff.

Despite being classified as a temporary employee, Lewandowski has been playing a shadow role of sorts at DHS since Trump was reelected, pulling many of the logistical strings behind the scenes while Noem played dress-up in tactical gear and posed for pictures.

Lewandowski’s continued work at DHS was confirmed when an Axios reporter spotted him loudly discussing DHS vendor contracts on the phone at Reagan National Airport in D.C. last week. Lewandowski reportedly mentioned a drone program, as well as Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

There have been countless reports of the alleged affair between Noem and Lewandowski over the last five years.

“Everybody knows they’re together. Can I prove it? No, but they’re together,” an anonymous administration employee told New York magazine last year. Another called it the “worst-kept secret in D.C.” Since 2019, various people have claimed they witnessed interactions like Noem sitting in Lewandowski’s lap and Lewandowski slapping Noem’s butt.

Lewandowski has kept his role at DHS officially unofficial. As a special government employee, he is only supposed to work for the government for 130 days. He does not receive a federal paycheck, has not filed a public form, and is allowed to do work outside of his work at DHS—which apparently includes securing contracts from Palantir, hiring and firing ICE agents, and approving plans. Now he’ll get to do it all over again in the new year. And he’ll get to do it with his so-called girlfriend.

Americans have booed, jeered, and chased Greg Bovino out of their communities—but the Customs and Border Protection boss still hasn’t gotten the message that the country does not like him.

In a bizarre interview with News Nation Thursday night, Bovino claimed that despite the mass unrest spurred by his agency’s violence, public support is still on his side.

“With those inner-city residents in places like Chicago, Los Angeles—what we’re seeing is fantastic public support,” Bovino told the network. “Here in Minneapolis, a lot of thumbs-up and a lot of ‘Good jobs.’”

Bovino went on to suggest that support for ICE and Border Patrol comes from a silent majority, evidenced by compliments he’s received from people “under their breath.” Somehow, in Bovino’s world, that’s because the commenters are afraid of some “5 or 10 percent of agitators” rather than of provocation by the relatively untrained and violent militias that have captured and killed their neighbors and have been expressly permitted to operate under the Department of Homeland Security with impunity.

Meanwhile, thousands of Minnesotans participated in a general strike Friday to express their fury and frustration with ICE’s ongoing presence in their state. The “Day of Truth & Freedom” protest is no small feat. It involves “no work, no school, no shopping,” with hundreds of local businesses closing in solidarity as the state attempts to make a bold statement after ICE agents shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good on January 7.

The Minneapolis City Council also endorsed the community blackout, as did local and state labor unions.

“I think what generated the idea for this action comes out of the need to figure out what we can meaningfully do to stop it,” Kieran Knutson, the president of Communications Workers of America Local 7250 in Minneapolis, told The Guardian. “The government in the state of Minnesota has not offered any path towards stopping these attacks, this violence.”

In a memo issued on January 19, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that the department had arrested 10,000 “criminal illegal aliens who were killing Americans” in Minneapolis—with 3,000 of those arrests occurring over the preceding six weeks.

But it has become glaringly obvious over the course of the last year (or even just this last week) that the Trump administration’s pledge to focus on deporting violent criminals was little more than centrist lip service.

In reality, immigration agents have arrested practically anybody—including U.S. citizens—in order to meet Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller’s quota of 3,000 or more arrests per day. On Tuesday, ICE agents detained a 5-year-old preschooler, Liam Ramos, in his driveway shortly after he and his father arrived home.

In an attempt to defend their own city from the state-sponsored violence, some Minneapolis residents have opted to openly carry their firearms, brandishing their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Locals have formed neighborhood watches to follow ICE vehicles, banging pots and pans and screaming to alert others when agents enter their residential neighborhoods.

Local politicians—including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—have advised ICE and Border Protection to exit their cities and state, arguing that the federal agents have done more harm than good. In 2025, before Good’s death, the agency killed 32 people—its deadliest year in more than two decades.

A CBS News poll published earlier this week found that 61 percent of surveyed Americans felt that ICE agents were “too tough” when stopping and detaining people—an increase of 5 percent from November.

Some 52 percent of respondents said that ICE was making communities “less safe,” while a similar percentage of respondents (53 percent) felt that ICE operations should decrease in light of recent events in Minneapolis.

It’s official: ICE abducted a Tufts University student over an op-ed.

Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. candidate, was snatched off the street by six masked federal officers in March last year, even after the State Department had determined that the Trump administration had no evidence linking her to antisemitic activity.

The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Homeland Security Investigations alleged that by co-authoring an opinion essay in the student newspaper that demanded Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies tied to Israel, Öztürk was “creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a terrorist organization.”

A State Department memo, newly unsealed Thursday, states that the Trump administration “has not provided any evidence showing that Ozturk has engaged in any antisemitic activity or made any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally.”

While Öztürk had expressed support for a student resolution put forth by the now-banned group Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, the Trump administration did not supply evidence that Öztürk was involved in “any of the activities which resulted in TJSP being suspended from Tufts.”

Öztürk’s apparent kidnapping was part of a spate of arrests of foreign-born academics who had merely expressed support for Palestinians. If cruelty is the message of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants and free speech, then Öztürk’s arrest was part of the opening salvo.

In May, a federal judge ordered that Öztürk be released from federal custody “immediately,” as she had made “substantial claims” that her constitutional rights had been violated. “Her continued detention chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens,” U.S. District Judge William Sessions said at the time.