LA Taco covers the incident in the first minute of the video. Love that a tow truck took one of ICE’s vehicles. Small victory there.
Downtown L.A.: Tatiana Martinez, a Colombian TikToker who works with Dianalu213, a prominent figure on the Spanish side of TikTok who reports on ICE raids. She was violently dragged out of her car as she was leaving the parking garage from her home and pinned to the ground with a knee over her head and neck. Their eventual treatment of her caused her to pass out, needing medical attention, and she was sent to White Memorial Hospital for treatment. She was released around noon and is now at the downtown detention center.
First They Came For…
Once the fascist machine starts rolling it doesn’t stop.
These are your canaries in the coal mine.
Remember, trump was elected largely on his stance on immigration and his promise to deport the “criminal illegals.” In March they expanded the scope to include all non-citizens. In April they started using legal loop-holes to arrest documented immigrants when they attended their court hearings. In May they started mass sweeps of cities, detaining people without due cause, purely based on race. How can we be sure they’re rounding people up purely based on race? Because dozens of US citizens and immigrants with legal status have been swept up in this manner. Here’s a case where ICE told a US citizen that his Real ID was fake and arrested him anyway. Another case where a US citizen was held for 10 days.
ICE Profiling Targets US Citizens and Legal Immigrants
It is no surprise that US citizens are also being tackled and arrested. Here’s a case just minutes away from the others where, after tackling the US citizen, the agents shrug and say, “Why were you running?” ICE tackled and arrested a US citizen and veteran, George Retes, and detained him for three days following a worksite raid in California. US citizen Leonardo Garcia Venegas, who was tackled by agents at a jobsite in Alabama in May, said they dismissed his REAL ID as fake. The casual dismissal of identification is also a common refrain in these racial profiling cases of US citizens.
Agents tackled a 32-year-old US citizen, Andrea Velez, on her way to work in June. The 4’11” woman was then accused of assaulting the ICE agent by putting her hand out as the agent ran her over. The agents claimed that they were chasing some other people to figure out if they were in the country illegally when they crashed into her. They asked Velez about her legal status after literally picking her up and carrying her away. These bogus assault charges against US citizens are becoming a disturbingly common tactic to justify racial profiling mistakes. Fortunately, the charges against Velez and several others were dismissed. Another US citizen, Job Garcia, was also tackled and beaten in a similar manner and was detained for 24 hours.
https://www.cato.org/blog/1/5-ice-arrests-are-latinos-streets-no-criminal-past-or-removal-order
In June and July arrests of activists documenting ICE activities started in earnest. Many of those arrested and brutalized are later released without charge, a clear indication that there was no legal grounds to attack or arrest them.
In Los Angeles, a nurse and community activist was released from federal custody this weekend without criminal charge, after she was arrested early Friday morning while recording the operations of ICE agents. Amanda Trebach is a member of the group Unión del Barrio. She was participating in a peace patrol outside Terminal Island, a Coast Guard base that’s used by ICE and Customs and Border Protection as a hub to prepare and deploy agents for raids across California. Dozens of volunteers have routinely stationed outside Terminal Island to monitor the movement of the federal vehicles streaming in and out of the staging area. Terminal Island was once a thriving Japanese American fishing village that was demolished during World War II, its residents forcibly sent to internment camps.
The FBI raided homes of activists in Spokane, Washington in July. Another clear intimidation tactic and the charges laid against them will likely come to nothing.
Federal prosecutors are accusing nine protesters of crossing the line into violence against federal agents during a chaotic mass demonstration in Spokane over the detainment of two young asylum seekers.
Some leaders , including U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown, are instead pointing the finger at the federal government for carrying out intimidation tactics to enforce the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown.
FBI agents on Tuesday morning arrested and searched the home of at least one of multiple people who took part in the protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Spokane.
Among those arrested was former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, who is charged with conspiracy to impede or injure law enforcement, according to court records.
The grand jury indictment filed July 9 in U.S. District Court Eastern District of Washington alleges Stuckart, Justice Forral, Mikki Hatfield, Erin Lang, Collin Muncey, Thalia Ramirez, Bobbi Silva, Bajun Mavalwalla II and Jac Archer used “force and threats” against federal agents to “impede” the transport of federal detainees to their immigration hearings in Tacoma and to “coerce the release” of the detainees.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2025/jul/15/spokane-ice-protesters-including-stuckart-arrested/
This week MPD in Washington D.C. was placed under federal control, and 800 members of the D.C. National Guard were deployed. All to fight an imaginary crime wave and to disappear homeless people.
Target Lists are Expanding
The target lists are expanding and the illegal activities are becoming more blatant. They targeted and arrested this citizen journalist, Tatiana Martinez, because of her work covering ICE activity in Los Angeles. They waited outside of her home and grabbed her out of her car.
This is a very important detail. If they had a warrant for her arrest they could have arrested her at home. They knew she was home. They were outside waiting for her. If they had a warrant, they would have arrested her at home. Just like this official White House propaganda video where they charged a man with felony assault for throwing a Subway Sandwich at a cop in D.C. and arrested him at his home with a full SWAT team.
This isn’t the first time ICE has targeted a journalist and abused their immigration powers to retaliate against a journalist for exercising their protected first amendment speech. In June, ICE detained Mario Guevara, who was covering the No King’s protests in Atlanta. All charges against him have been dropped and a judge has ordered his release. He is still in ICE detention.
Guevara, a Spanish-language digital reporter, has been in detention for two months after his June 14 arrest while livestreaming a protest in an Atlanta, Georgia suburb. He was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after the agency issued a detainer against the journalist, who has authorization to work in the United States.
All misdemeanor charges against Guevara have been dropped, and a federal immigration judge granted the journalist bond on July 1. Yet Guevara remains in detention at Georgia’s Folkston ICE Processing Center after having been shuffled around five different local and federal detention facilities across the state.
It’s only a matter of time until you’re criminally charged for your online activity. In this case, Tatiana Martinez was arrested under the guise of immigration enforcement, but the reason she was targeted and ICE staked out her home was because her anti-ICE online activity attracted their attention.
The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived
Starting today, UK adults will have to prove their age to access porn online. Experts warn that a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speech and ultimately harm children and adults alike.
Beginning today, millions of adults trying to access pornography in the United Kingdom will be required to prove that they are over the age of 18. Under sweeping new online child safety laws coming into force, self-reporting checkboxes that allow anyone to claim adulthood on porn websites will be replaced by age-estimating face scans, ID document uploads, credit card checks, and more. Some of the biggest porn websites—including Pornhub and YouPorn—have said that they will comply with the new rules. And social media sites like BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, Grindr, and X are introducing UK age checks to block children from seeing harmful content.
Ultimately, though, it's not just Brits who will see such changes. Around the world, a new wave of child protection laws are forcing a profound shift that could normalize rigorous age checks broadly across the web. Some of the measures are designed to specifically block minors from accessing adult material, while others are meant to stop children from using social media platforms or accessing harmful content. In the UK, age checks are now required by websites and apps that host porn, self-harm, suicide, and eating disorder content.
Protecting children online is a consequential and urgent issue, but privacy and human rights advocates have long warned that, while they may be well-intentioned, age checks introduce a range of speech and surveillance issues that could ultimately snowball online.
We are in 1930s Germany. The further the escalations creep, the more marginalized groups are in danger. Cases like Martinez, like Trebach, are your early warning signs to get ready. Your personal level of danger will depend on your status and activities. Are you an immigrant? Naturalized citizen? Trans? Disabled? Politically active? Reporting truth? “A burden to society” AKA poor?
They’ll keep moving down the list until there’s no one left to speak up, as long as the masses don’t stand up.
It's fascinating that the Cato Institute website is hosting reports and commentary on these abuses. Granted that they're one of the "purer" conservative mouthpieces, they haven't always given prominence to this type of issue despite laying claim to libertarian bona fides.
Admittedly we on the left flank are thirsty for any signs that "the worm is turning" (and we need to be careful interpreting them). But this may be one.
Thanks for compiling these incidents and delineating our progression toward fascist authoritarianism.