PHOENIX — According to a press release by the Arizona House Democrats, Peter Yazzie, an Indigenous man of Arizona’s Navajo Nation, was on his way to work when he was unconstitutionally seized by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, despite having government-issued documentation proving his U.S. citizenship.
Indigenous members of the Arizona House Democratic Caucus stated, “Yazzie was carrying his tribal identification and birth certificate but was detained anyway.” ICE agents indiscriminately detained Yazzie and racially profiled him, according to the caucus.
ICE did not present Yazzie with a signed, court-ordered warrant, violating his Fourth Amendment rights.
A joint statement from Reps. Brian Garcia, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Myron Tsosie and Mae Peshlakai, who are members of the Navajo Nation, stated that “heavily armed masked agents manhandled him, detained him, and accused him of lying and theft.”
According to National Public Radio immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd, in September 2025 the Supreme Court enabled a temporary order that allowed ICE agents to engage in discriminatory practices to meet former President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
Under the order, ICE agents can discriminate based on factors including race, whether Spanish is being spoken, whether English is spoken with an accent, and employment location.
The Arizona House Democratic Caucus said the actions of ICE officers are stoking civil unrest as communities experience violence perpetrated by ICE agents and risk the safety of all individuals involved.
“ICE agents continue to show a complete disregard for the rule of law and have absolutely no justifiable reason to go after Indigenous tribal members,” the caucus said.
Yazzie said via TikTok that he complied with the ICE agents and informed them of his citizenship after agents tossed him to the ground using excessive force.
While in detention, Yazzie said, “The men in there, the detention center, were guys just like me who had left early for work or they left to the store to get dinner for their families and they never came home.”
Within the facility, people were desperate to contact their families and let them know where they were.
According to NPR, the Trump administration failed to check ICE agents’ use of excessive force and reinforced unjust behaviors, tweeting that ICE agents had immunity and were exempt from the law.
At the same time, the administration criminalized the victims of ICE raids just three days after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother from Minneapolis.
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said, “Native Americans are not immigrants in our own homelands. We are citizens of the United States and citizens of our sovereign tribal nations, and our rights must be respected.”
According to NPR, Trump’s mass deportation goal was set at 3,000 people per day, despite 70% of those individuals lacking criminal convictions.
That agenda becomes untenable, critics say, when citizens are terrorized and detained by ICE agents.
Kate Huddleston, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, “These kinds of police-state tactics are contrary to the basic principles of liberty and equality that remain a bedrock of our legal system and our country.”
ICE officials have also been gathering at schools and workplaces, chasing people through the streets, according to advocates.
The ACLU said citizens will inevitably be swept up in ICE raids without warning.
Nygren said, “Federal agencies must ensure their agents are properly trained to recognize tribal identification and to respect the civil and constitutional rights of Native people.”
Nygren also highlighted that underfunding of the Office of Vital Records makes it difficult for Native communities to distribute tribal identification cards to those in need, a safeguard that could protect people from indiscriminate ICE raids.
According to the Arizona House Democratic Caucus, stopping and arresting people without probable cause violates Americans’ rights, especially as citizens without identification risk prolonged and unjust detention as ICE facilities are not equipped to legally process the volume of people detained by street agents.
Yazzie said, “This is something you see on TikTok, but I feel like this is going to get worse. I feel like it’s going to move further into the Native community as well.”
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