DHS agents operate as people take part in a protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policies outside the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 30, 2026. REUTERS/Jill Connelly
Federal immigration officers are routinely lying to people watching and tracking them, alleging they're violating federal law, with legal experts clapping back that the vast majority of community observers are simply exercising their constitutional rights.
A Minneapolis-area woman named Jess learned this the hard way when agents smashed her car window with a baton and detained her for eight hours for legally tracking U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
"We followed at a distance. We never got in front of them. We never honked our horns. We never made any sort of noise. We were just keeping an eye on them," Jess told NPR, explaining that she fears federal retaliation.
When the vehicles she was following suddenly turned around and rushed toward her with guns drawn, officers shattered her window and dragged her from the car in handcuffs. She's now waiting to learn if the feds will charge her with a crime for doing something legal.
And she's not alone.
Dozens of people told the outlet that immigration officers falsely claimed they were impeding federal investigations while engaging in perfectly lawful behavior.
Legal experts say observing officers, recording them, following at a safe distance, and even shouting at them are all constitutionally protected activities.
"A lot of the activities that the government is claiming are interfering or obstructing, in the vast majority of those examples, they're engaged in perfectly lawful conduct," Scarlet Kim, asenior staff attorney with the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the ACLU, told the outlet.
The ACLU is suing the Trump administration over these First Amendment violations.
Courts across the country have thrown out charges against observers.
Civil rights attorney Will Stancil called the tactics "gross intimidation," which he experienced firsthand: three ICE vehicles once surrounded and escorted him home.