This story first appeared in Power Shift, The Yappie's weekly newsletter on national AAPI power, politics, and influence. Subscribe for free here.
U.S. citizens who are wrongfully detained by ICE could receive $500,000 or more in legal damages under a new House bill.
Sponsored by Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-New Mexico), the legislation comes after a ProPublica investigation found that federal immigration agents have wrongfully detained over 500 U.S. citizens since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
- The bill would authorize U.S. citizens who are arrested or detained without a warrant or “probable cause” during immigration enforcement proceedings to file lawsuits against the federal government for relief.
- They would be able to sue for $500,000 in damages and $100,000 for every day they were detained following the first day of their arrest.
That includes cases where officers injured people, threatened them at gunpoint, and detained them without access to a lawyer or their family despite proof of citizenship.
- Agents held more than 100 Americans after questioning their citizenship—including ChongLy Scott Thao, a 56-year-old Hmong American U.S. citizen who says ICE agents broke into his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, and held him at gunpoint, the New York Times notes. (He was released one hour after they took him into custody.)
- Nearly all were people of color, ProPublica reports.
The findings directly contradict the Trump administration’s previous claim that “DHS is NOT arresting U.S. citizens by mistake.”
- While Stop AAPI Hate recently reported that arrests of Asians have quadrupled under Trump, it’s unclear how many involve wrongfully detained U.S. citizens.
Our take: Federal agents are largely shielded from lawsuits—Supreme Court precedents only allow cases to proceed in narrow scope. The bar for filing criminal charges against federal agents is also extremely high, according to Reuters.
- This bill would give wrongfully detained U.S. citizens a clearer path for redress by establishing a minimum standard of financial compensation. Whether it actually clears Congress is another story.
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