{"id":765909,"date":"2026-05-01T12:20:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/765909\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T12:20:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:20:37","slug":"opinion-what-body-cam-footage-reveals-about-ices-tactics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/765909\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | What Body Cam Footage Reveals About ICE\u2019s Tactics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">I was literally at work. \u201cDon\u2019t be an idiot.\u201d All of a sudden, I see the lights behind me. \u201c[Expletive] God.\u201d I see them with guns and everything drawn, and I\u2019m like, all of a sudden they just \u2014 somebody just grabs me, from my shirt. The first question they asked me was, where was I born? One of them tells him: Just get him, he\u2019s Mexican. He points me out. It was a matter of seconds. \u201cOh my [expletive] God.\u201d My daughter was passing by. \u201cThat\u2019s my mom. What the [expletive]!\u201d She got her phone and she started recording. \u201cHey, what are you doing? She has her green card. That\u2019s my mom.\u201d And they pulled me out of the car. And \u2014\u2014 [SCREAM] I started screaming because I \u2014 because I panicked. They never asked my name or ID anything. \u201cYou guys don\u2019t listen to what somebody says.\u201d \u201cBecause they lie all the time.\u201d I\u2019m a U.S. citizen, and I was detained \u2014\u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re touching a U.S.A. citizen right there. You can\u2019t do that.\u201d for five days. Immigration agents appear to have had no clear reason to approach Juanita Avila and Javier Ramirez other than, it seems, the color of their skin. That\u2019s because Chief Justice John Roberts\u2019s Supreme Court has given ICE the rubber stamp to racially profile. This is the opinion of the New York Times editorial board. It\u2019s happening across the country. \u201cWhere were you born?\u201d \u201cYou were born here?\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d \u201cReally?\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d \u201cOK.\u201d \u201cYou speak English?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t understand why y\u2019all are here because this is a traffic stop.\u201d \u201cYour buddy\u2019s takin\u2019 a ride. He\u2019s going with ICE.\u201d This is body camera footage from just one night of traffic stops in Nashville, Tenn. \u201cYou got your driver\u2019s license?\u201d In May 2025, state troopers and federal immigration agents teamed up. \u201cDoes he speak English?\u201d \u201cBroken.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m going to run it real quick.\u201d We rarely get to watch ICE in action like this. \u201cHe looks like a [expletive] terrorist.\u201d \u201cShe might be wet. When we say \u2018wet,\u2019 it just means illegal.\u201d A nonprofit had to sue to get this footage, which was first made public by Lighthouse Reports. \u201cMight have two.\u201d \u201cAre you here illegally?\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re creeping up on 20 stops already.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s my record.\u201d What it shows is troubling. \u201cDo the passengers look like anything?\u201d \u201cWere you born here? You were born in Nashville? OK, I got you.\u201d \u201cDo you have yours on you, boss?\u201d \u201cMa\u2019am, do you have your ID on you as well?\u201d \u201cStep out of the vehicle for me, OK?\u201d \u201cWhere were you born at?\u201d Take these two stops. \u201cEvening, folks.\u201d \u201cIs it my brake light?\u201d \u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d \u201cI have an appointment for it to get fixed.\u201d In the first, a driver is pulled over for a broken brake light. Before the officer even runs her license, he tells the ICE agent waiting nearby \u2014\u2014 \u201cNah. Striking out.\u201d She\u2019s let go without any further questions. \u201cYou are good to go.\u201d \u201cThank you so much.\u201d \u201cNo problem.\u201d Now, compare that to these stops. \u201cWhat about you, amigo, identification?\u201d \u201cDo you have your license?\u201d \u201cDo you have an ID as well, buddy?\u201d \u201cHey, how are you doing?\u201d \u201cHola.\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t have, uh, got a licensia on you? Ma\u2019am, do you have a, you have a driver\u2019s license?\u201d In most cases, when a driver looks Latino or speaks with an accent \u2014\u2014 \u201cHey, do you want to check the other occupants?\u201d officers ask everyone in the car for identification. \u201cI\u2019m asking you, do you have a licensia?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not driving.\u201d But when the driver looks white \u2014 \u201cCool, man. Did you just buy this thing?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll be right back with you, OK?\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s going to be good.\u201d \u201cYou got your license, registration, insurance?\u201d \u201cCan I reach for it?\u201d \u201cYeah, yeah. You got any weapons in the car?\u201d \u201cYeah, under my seat, that\u2019s why I was stickin\u2019 my hands out the thing.\u201d \u201cOK, well, you don\u2019t reach for it, I won\u2019t reach for mine.\u201d The footage also shows officers stopping Black and brown drivers for minor issues \u2014 \u201cI have a problem?\u201d \u201cYeah, the window tint.\u201d like a tinted window, a license plate without a light, \u201cYou got to have the lights illuminate your license plate.\u201d even a bent plate that\u2019s still clearly readable. \u201cIt\u2019s like bent in half.\u201d Then come the questions. \u201cAre you from Nashville?\u201d \u201cYeah, I\u2019m from Nashville.\u201d \u201cYou are? You born here?\u201d \u201cHow long have you been in the country?\u201d \u201cWere you born here?\u201d This is what racial profiling looks like. \u201cWere you born here, in the United States?\u201d What\u2019s even more troubling, the Supreme Court has effectively signed off on all of this. In a recent ruling, the court said immigration agents can weigh factors like race, language and accent when deciding who to stop and question. \u201cHopefully they roll up in a big truck, a bunch of them, and it\u2019s like, well there\u2019s 9, 10, 11 and 12.\u201d Juanita and Javier carried documents with them proving their citizenship or legal status. But when stopped, they say they weren\u2019t even given the opportunity to show those documents. My passport was in my wallet that day. I pulled out my green card from my pocket. And I said, \u201cI have my ID. You guys didn\u2019t even ask for it.\u201d I was moving a lot because they put their knee, put it on my neck. So I remember the video of George Floyd. I\u2019m like, I don\u2019t want to die. So I was trying to move from it. I just didn\u2019t want them to take me for no reason. I actually called 911. I just hear the officers just laughing. They took the picture of me with the face recognition. You hear them laughing, high-fiving themselves, like, hey, how many did you get, how many did you get? You know, oh, I got 18, I got five, I got six. Yeah! You know, high-fiving. And all of a sudden, it got alerted again, who I was, and they seen that I was a U.S. citizen. So that\u2019s when, you know, it was like awkward silence. So why is this happening? \u201cI\u2019m a U.S. citizen!\u201d \u201cI literally have my passport!\u201d \u201cI\u2019m a citizen, I\u2019m a citizen.\u201d \u201cGet on the [expletive] ground.\u201d \u201cI got rights to talk, bro.\u201d \u201cYou got no rights here.\u201d \u201cI do!\u201d It\u2019s long been the case that law enforcement can use physical factors like race, gender and height to identify an individual suspect. But for years, the Supreme Court has been very clear that you can\u2019t use race in broad, blanket ways in many parts of American life. Take education. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against Harvard, saying colleges could no longer consider race in admissions decisions. Also in 2007, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that if you sort people by race, it\u2019s discrimination. He put it simply: \u201cThe way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.\u201d But when it comes to immigration, the court has taken the opposite approach. It has allowed ICE to consider race during immigration stops. This is a double standard, and communities of color are left living with the consequences. \u201cI was born and raised here.\u201d I was traumatized. I couldn\u2019t even \u2014 I didn\u2019t even want to get up. Just by seeing cars pass by, you know, with tinted windows, you know, or plates from a different state, you don\u2019t know if they\u2019re ICE or not. I thought they were coming for criminals. To me, that was fine, but not this. They had no reason for them to pull me over, or to stop me and to do all the things that they did. \u201cOK, we\u2019re going to let you go.\u201d \u201cI have my ID. You guys didn\u2019t even ask for it.\u201d I told my daughter: If anybody asks you where are you from, tell them, \u201cI am a U.S. citizen,\u201d and you were born in L.A. So remember those words. And she said, \u201dOK, Daddy.\u201d The Supreme Court and the Trump administration must uphold the promise of the Constitution. All persons, regardless of race, must be treated equally under the law. The Supreme Court needs to address its contradictory rulings. Otherwise, millions of people will continue to live in fear of their own government. \u201cOh, hold on, man. Let me, let me turn this&#8230;\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll be on the news tomorrow.\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re 100 percent going to be on the news tomorrow. No doubt in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was literally at work. \u201cDon\u2019t be an idiot.\u201d All of a sudden, I see the lights behind&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":765910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,29070,16956,60462,45110,2934,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,2068,151564,81214,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-765909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-citizenship","tag-discrimination","tag-hispanic-americans","tag-immigration-detention","tag-legislation","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-roads-and-traffic","tag-supreme-courtscotus","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116499292312004715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}