The recent series of fatal encounters involving federal immigration agents reflects a broader pattern of excessive force that has long characterized American policing, according to Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, who argues that increased federal law enforcement activity has predictably led to more violent encounters while a lack of transparency has left the public with few answers.
Bonds, a civil rights attorney with approximately 15 years of litigation experience, said the National Police Accountability Project is closely monitoring several recent officer-involved killings connected to federal immigration enforcement while continuing litigation against law enforcement agencies across the country.
The organization also is calling for independent investigations into the recent deaths, arguing that the federal government cannot impartially investigate its own officers.
“I think unfortunately these aren’t totally unprecedented times,” Bonds said. “I think the folks that we’re seeing or the type of police that we’re seeing perpetuate the violence are getting much more visibility. But I think a lot of what we’re seeing is pretty common, unfortunately, for a lot of communities with the gratuitous use of violence, the lack of deescalation, just everything we’re seeing has been foretold, I think.”
Bonds said the increase in federal immigration enforcement has expanded the number of routine interactions between federal agents and members of the public, creating more opportunities for force to be used.
“I think that there’s a strong correlation between contact between law enforcement and the public and the number of incidents of violence that result from that,” she said. “And I think that we’ve seen that with local police, and I think right now we’re just seeing it with federal police.”
She continued, “In the past, federal police have represented a very small percentage of police in the United States, and we include ICE in that, we include all the folks who are in the federal task force in Memphis in that. And now we have so many more federal law enforcement officers engaged in regular person-to-person interactions and standard on-the-street policing tactics, including traffic stops, including terry stops and other detentions to investigate.”
“I think it’s sadly a predictable consequence that there’s going to be use of force incidents that stem from that and sadly deaths as well,” Bonds said.
Although several recent fatal encounters have generated national attention, Bonds said the available evidence remains limited because little information has been released publicly.
“I think out of all of these incidents, everything that happened in the last two weeks, there has not been any video footage,” she said. “But we have heard a lot of witnesses coming forward.”
Bonds said she has followed publicly available developments, including information surrounding the shooting in Maine and the ongoing FBI investigation in Houston.
“We’re obviously not getting a lot of information directly from the administration,” she said.
She contrasted the current lack of disclosure with the investigative practices that generally follow local police shootings.
“With local law enforcement, there are nationally accepted standards,” Bonds said. “There’s typically a timeframe in which certain information is going to be released.”
She acknowledged that information is frequently withheld in local cases as well but added that “we’re usually getting more transparency and more of the narrative, even if it is a police narrative after an incident that results in death than we’re getting right now.”
Bonds described the National Police Accountability Project as both a membership organization and an advocacy organization representing approximately 550 civil rights attorneys who primarily represent victims of police, jail and prison violence and other government misconduct.
“So the National Police Accountability Project is a national civil rights organization,” Bonds said. “We are both a membership organization and an advocacy organization.”
She said the group’s work extends beyond individual lawsuits to broader policy reform.
“What we really focus on is it’s kind of in our name, the accountability part anyways, we want to stop police from hurting people in the first instance and in all the ways that the government can hurt people,” Bonds said. “And when they do, we want to make sure that there is accountability and consequences and a process towards change when those things happen.”
The organization currently is pursuing impact litigation in several states, including California, Texas, South Dakota, Florida, Nevada and Kentucky. According to Bonds, the cases are selected because they have the potential to produce systemic reforms rather than simply individual recoveries.
“We get all of our cases through our members,” she said. “And the cases that we prioritize are the cases where we believe we have an opportunity to make a change, whether that is a change within a particular police department or jail or prison or pushing the law forward in a way that is going to be helpful for future victims of police misconduct or would potentially deter misconduct in the future.”
Among those cases is litigation on behalf of the family of Alexis Cardenas in Houston.
Bonds said Cardenas was arrested on an old bench warrant connected to a traffic matter, the underlying case was quickly dismissed, and he remained in jail for another 17 hours before being released late at night. According to Bonds, Cardenas was then involved in an altercation with detention officers while attempting to secure transportation home.
“He ended up being beat by five to six officers and several of those officers kneeled on his back while he said he could not breathe and kneeled on him for seven minutes,” Bonds said.
“You can see the video footage from this,” she added. “There’s surveillance video that was released to the public. It’s very clear he stops moving pretty early after they get him on the ground.”
Calling the incident “a really tragic situation,” Bonds noted that Cardenas left behind four children.
“We weren’t able to stop the violence from happening in the first place, but we are trying to make sure that there is accountability, that there is compensation for his family as well,” she said.
The organization also is representing the family of Jaime Naranjo in Sacramento County.
According to Bonds, Naranjo’s wife called 911 because he was experiencing a mental health crisis and informed dispatchers that although he possessed a kitchen knife, he was not threatening anyone.
“The sheriff’s deputy arrived and shot Mr. Naranjo to death within seconds of arriving on the scene,” Bonds said.
She said the litigation seeks not only accountability but broader policy changes.
“We are working not only to get accountability, but also to be able to see if we can get the sheriff’s department and the county to enact better crisis response policies so other people don’t suffer the same fate as Mr. Naranjo.”
Asked how recent ICE shootings compare with local police killings, Bonds said many of the same patterns appear.
“I would say one of the ways that they’re similar is how most of them have started,” she said.
She noted that recent fatal encounters involved individuals who were not originally the targets of immigration enforcement and said that mirrors many local police shootings.
“Neither of these men were suspected of any kind of criminal misconduct and definitely not any felony criminal misconduct when they were shot,” Bonds said.
She also pointed to another recurring feature.
“I think that in all of these situations, there’s multiple people, multiple officers on the scene,” Bonds said. “Usually there’s multiple people there and kind of a failure of somebody to be the adult in the room and take it down a notch.”
Where Bonds sees a significant difference is in the repeated use of officers firing into moving vehicles.
“It’s been kind of a nationally accepted best practice amongst the policing community since I think the late ’90s probably that you don’t shoot into a vehicle absent very extreme circumstances,” she said.
“And that’s because there’s so much data that it’s not only unsafe for the driver that you might be pursuing, but passengers, bystanders and the officers themselves.”
Bonds said several recent ICE shootings have involved that tactic.
“To have that many incidents within the span of a year where they’re shooting into a moving vehicle is pretty uncommon,” she said.
She also criticized the tone of the federal government’s public response.
“There’s usually a little bit more of a tone of contrition in their public messaging around a death like this than we’ve seen from ICE and DHS and this administration,” Bonds said. “I think that difference in mentality and difference in messaging I think says a lot about how they’re perceiving these incidents and how they see their role as they interact with the public.”
During the interview with the Davis Vanguard, Bonds also addressed concerns about racial profiling in immigration enforcement, noting that local policing has historically targeted different communities depending on the jurisdiction.
“I would say that there’s definitely parts of the country where local law enforcement target Latino people,” she said. “We know Phoenix, for instance, from the DOJ report, they had a huge problem with racial profiling Latino residents.”
“But you’re right, I do think that is typically the profiling that we see by local law enforcement data-wise typically does skew more towards Black Americans, African-Americans, and here we’re seeing it skew more towards Hispanic Americans or Latino Americans.”
Separately, the National Police Accountability Project announced that it is urging law enforcement agencies to conduct transparent and independent investigations into recent officer-involved killings because it believes the federal government cannot effectively investigate itself.
The organization also is hosting a two-day training program later this month, “Building Police Misconduct Cases: FTCA Fundamentals & Section 1983,” to train attorneys, law students and legal advocates in investigating police misconduct, developing civil rights litigation and protecting voting rights through legal responses to law enforcement activity at polling places.
To comment please go to one of these social media platforms:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavisVanguard
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/peoples-vanguard-of-davis-inc/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davisvanguard/
X: https://x.com/davisvanguard
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/vanguardnewsgroup.bsky.social
Subscribe to the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
