Masked ICE agents stands guard outside the Delaney Hall detention during a protest against the transfer of detainees on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, in Newark, New Jersey.
A 68-year-old nurse who brought her mobile clinic to serve visitors at an ICE detention center, only to be thrown to the ground by ICE agents. A pair of cemetery workers who were maced and handcuffed at work after ICE agents broke through a gate to reach them. A family of six wrongly detained for a month. A trans man forced to labor without pay in ICE detention, and a legal observer beat with a baton at the scene of Alex Pretti’s killing.
These are some of the 54 people who filed tort claims against federal agents this week as part of a nationwide ACLU push for ICE accountability. 32 are US citizens, 22 are immigrants. And they’re all seeking monetary damages for harm sustained during Donald Trump’s ICE surge.
Under US law, it is near-impossible for a person to file a civil rights lawsuit against an individual federal agent, the way someone who’s been hurt by a local or state police officer could. But an increasing number of people harmed by ICE and DHS agents are filing tort claims: demanding monetary compensation from the federal government for what has been done to them.
Two US citizens who work as groundskeepers at a cemetery outside Chicago, were maced, handcuffed, and detained after masked officers broke into a gated area of their workplace.
Norma Bowe, the nurse attacked outside a detention center, is suing in New Jersey. For years, Bowe has operated a mobile health clinic out of an RV, traveling to underserved areas of the state to provide vaccines, diabetes screenings, and stroke assessments.
When the husband of one of her students was detained a week before graduation, Bowe and her volunteer team took her clinic to the notorious Delaney Hall detention center. There, they served families who came to visit detained loved ones—and, as protests outside and inside the detention center heated up this summer, they provided first aid.
“Mostly it was, can I have a band aid? Do you have any feminine hygiene products? I need diapers for my baby,” Bowe said. But on May 25, things changed when Bowe tried to help a woman who ICE agents were dragging across the ground. “This young woman was yelling, ‘Help me! Help me!’ I’m thinking I’m going to help her up,” Bowe told Mother Jones. “And the ICE agent behind me grabbed the back of my shirt and just threw me like a sack of trash.”
Bowe was in shock. “I thought of Alex Pretti, because he was also a nurse, and he was also helping someone who’d been knocked down.” Bowe was treated for a concussion, and for a kneecap fracture. She’s now suing ICE for $500,000.
Some of the other people filing tort claims against ICE weren’t even at a detention center or at a protest. Darren Eichler and Daniel Greer, two US citizens who work as groundskeepers at a cemetery outside Chicago, were maced, handcuffed, and detained after masked officers broke into a gated area of their workplace. Eichler was taken to the hospital, and Greer was held in an unmarked DHS facility, they said.
“The ICE agents that attacked me followed me by transport in one of their unmarked vehicles to the hospital, and then came into my room with me in a trauma unit while I was trying to be treated,” Eichler said. His eyes burned for hours, since he had contact lenses in when he was maced.
Both were released after several hours without charges—though the agent in the hospital with Eichler forgot to remove Eichler’s handcuffs before leaving, and a nurse had to chase him down, the men told Mother Jones. They say they both still get flashbacks when they hear a police car or helicopter go by.
“Without accountability, you know this is just going to continue, and continue, and continue,” said Bowe, the nurse from New Jersey. “How many people have been injured by these folks and cannot speak for themselves, cannot do anything in fear of retaliation?”
