From Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis to Maine, ICE agents are leaving a trail of destruction and fear.
From Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis to Maine, ICE agents are leaving a trail of destruction and fear. The most important harms they leave behind are broken lives, injuries, and deaths. There are already important efforts in the works to hold them to account via criminal investigations and civil actions.
Yet these actions will be hard to win. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are wreaking another, second-string harm, this one involving the destruction of personal property. This damage flagrantly violates another constitutional provision—and there is a clear and uncluttered legal pathway to address those harms that so far has not been invoked. It’s past time it was used.makes such property destruction unconstitutional. Demanding damages for these harms may seem to miss the mark, in the sense that they do not address the features that make ICE’s strategies so horrifying, specifically the physical violence against human beings. This is quite fair. But often there will simply be no other practical way for ICE’s victims to obtain redress, such that an action for property harms may well be the best, even the only, route available.down Thao’s door, dragged him out in his underwear, and handled him in a degrading, contemptuous, and very likely racist manner—before confirming that he was, as he said, a U.S. citizen. Thao surely ought to be able to seek damages for the grave harms to his person and dignity. The conservative Roberts court, however, has made such damages actions—calledto win thanks to doctrines such as “qualified immunity.” The latter is a misleading name, as it is practically insurmountable in many cases. Some federal courts of appeals have evenBut the facts of Thao’s case are unlikely to prove outliers in coming weeks. ICE has developed an internal policytelling its officers that they can forcibly enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. This policy, which perversely echoes the British colonial abuses that precipitated the American Revolution, invites the repetition of Thao’s ordeal around the nation. A key way to fight back would be lawsuits under the takings clause., immigration agents have stopped people’s cars, smashed in windows, dragged out drivers, and left cars running on the street—in effect inviting their theft. In other cases, ICE agents haveBut there is an explicit constitutional prohibition against the federal government destroying property without “just compensation.” Again, it’s the takings clause. While it’s usually applied when the federal government exercises eminent domain and takes title to land, the takings clause also covers the government’s outright destruction of personal property. What’s more, there are no barriers to recovery akin to qualified immunity.Applying the takings clause to the destruction of personal property by lawless federal agents makes a certain historical sense. At least one influential legal treatise–writer of the founding period, St. George Tucker,that the takings clause had been threaded into the Bill of Rights as a response to the military destruction of personal property during the Colonial-era wars. If Thao or other victims of ICE brought suit, that is, they’d arguably be walking in hallowed footprints. Would courts be willing to entertain these claims today? Some courts of appeals have dismissed takings claims against state and local police on the theory that the takings clausethat a federal regulation requiring a raisin farmer to destroy a portion of his crop is a per se taking. The government destruction of things, that is, counts as a taking.that a takings claim can be brought only when a police officer is acting unreasonably in destroying property. In Thao’s case, and many others, agents’ claim that they are acting “reasonably” would be thwarted by body-cam footage, or the fact that their tactics violate well-established policing practices, such as don’t ram a suspect’s car to get it off the road. Indeed, there are now aThe Uniquely American Legal Kink That Is Threatening to Destroy Our DemocracyIf there was any doubt about such claims, it should be extinguished by the fact that Congress has identified precisely how such cases can be brought. It hasin the relevant district court. In both kinds of cases, federal law establishes a fee-shifting mechanism: A win for a plaintiffthat the government has to pay attorney’s fees. This fee-structure means that takings claims should be available even when litigants lack upfront fees for a lawyer, but have an otherwise strong case.Property damage is, no doubt, a decidedly venal sin in comparison to the grave violations of civil and human rights for which ICE is responsible. But it is a sad fact that Congress and the courts have made it well-nigh impossible to sue if you are brutalized or injured by ICE—and straightforward to prevail if your personal property is busted up. In a moment of less acute emergency, there are good reasons to fix that topsy-turvy situation. In the bleak midst of ICE’s violent blizzard, we must use every lawful tool at our disposal to hit the brakes on its lawless destruction and desecration of Americans’ homes and
Judiciary Supreme-Court Donald-Trump Immigration Minnesota Police-Shootings Police-Violence Ice Slate-Plus
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
The 2026 Grammys Ceremony Made One Thing Clear: ICE OutThe night's biggest winners, like Bad Bunny, SZA and Billie Eilish gave powerful speeches about immigration and unity.
Read more »
Here's The One Hurdle Texas Must Clear To Win its First SEC TitleThe requirement for winning the SEC title is obvious, but do the Longhorns have what it takes to win the conference?
Read more »
US teams rename ‘Ice House’ due to ICE presence at Winter OlympicsThe hospitality venue will now be called 'Winter House' amid pushback from locals in Milan, Italy, against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Read more »
The 2026 Grammys Ceremony Made One Thing Clear: ICE OutThe night's biggest winners, like Bad Bunny, SZA and Billie Eilish gave powerful speeches about immigration and unity.
Read more »
US Winter Olympics hospitality space changed from ‘Ice House’ to ‘Winter House’ following anti-ICE protestsThree US Olympic bodies have changed the name of their shared athlete hospitality space at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics from “Ice House” to “Winter House,” following widespread protests in both Italy and the US over the role and conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Read more »
Adventures on ice: Meet a woman snowmobiling, ice skating, and cooking out on Lake ErieAmanda Merrell a senior producer for News 5 Cleveland.
Read more »