(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Fake ICE agents are terrorizing immigrants [1] ['Oliver Willis'] Date: 2026-05-26 Families across America are being terrorized by criminals posing as immigration enforcement agents. These incidents have skyrocketed in the last year, fueled by President Donald Trump’s decision to target vulnerable communities as part of his racist anti-immigrant agenda. Noticias Telemundo investigated crime reports where perpetrators pretended to be from immigration enforcement agencies like ICE and found that there were 31 such cases in 2025. That’s up from an average of 5.4 incidents per year in the previous decade, an increase of over 484%. Attribution: AP Protesters hold a silent vigil outside 26 Federal Plaza, home to immigration courts and ICE offices, calling attention to the treatment of immigrants and condemning actions by ICE agents on April 2, 2026. At least two of the incidents involved women being raped by men posing as immigration enforcement. In one instance a Venezuelan immigrant in North Carolina was assaulted at her workplace by a fake agent. In a New York case, a Dominican woman was dragged into a basement and raped and beaten by a fake immigration agent. Many of the targets of these crimes, which also include offenses like robbery and assault, are in immigrant communities that have been singled out by Trump and other Republicans. Some of these crimes go unreported because these people are fearful of being detained and deported due to their current immigration status. Naureen Shah, director of government affairs at ACLU, told NBC, “We’ve never in this country experienced masked agents on this kind of scale. And so, we’ve never experienced this problem before of people being able to credibly impersonate federal law enforcement agents.” The data compiled by Telemundo echoes other reports where ICE impersonators used their attire as a method to gain access to facilities that were then robbed. The anti-immigrant crusade by the Trump administration has also fueled a rise in immigration scams, where scammers set their sights on immigrant communities who believe they need to pay for protection from Trump initiatives, only to funnel cash to crooks. Related | Trump’s deportation push continues, as appalling as ever Trump campaigned in the 2024 election on the false argument that a purported increase in crime can be blamed on immigrants. In fact, crime fell under the administration of President Joe Biden after swelling under Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 outbreak. Since taking back the White House, Trump has directed resources toward a racist mass deportation campaign that seeks to purge nonwhite immigrants, particularly Latinos, from America. In multiple instances armed immigration agents have been deployed to states like Illinois, California, Minnesota and others—often with disastrous outcomes, including multiple deaths by shooting. These deployments have given criminals a template to work from, and they have responded by covering their faces like ICE agents and wearing official-looking uniforms with lettering that mimics ICE and other agencies. The phony ICE agent problem isn’t the only crime wave extending from Trump policies. His decision to pardon hundreds of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to prevent Biden from being sworn in has led to brand-new criminal charges filed against many of those same people. Trump has recently come under fire for his plans to pay them from a federally funded slush fund, but what people across the country are experiencing firsthand is a Trump crime wave at multiple levels. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/26/800045408/justice/fake-ice-agents-are-terrorizing-immigrants/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/