seeking compensation – From an Oxnard auto shop raid to a cannabis company sweep in Camarillo, U.S. citizens and immigrants say federal agents used pepper spray, tear gas, and other force—leaving them with injuries, trauma, and expensive medical bills. As hundreds of claims move thr
For weeks after agents stormed into a business in Oxnard, Juan Carlos Ramirez says the pain didn’t fade—it just became part of his routine.
Last June 16, Ramirez, a U.S. citizen. filmed as armed immigration agents forced their way into an Oxnard auto body shop and arrested his father by breaking the locks. Ramirez said the agents then pepper-sprayed him. slammed him onto the hoods of two vehicles. punched his face and kneed him in the side. and he later filed a legal claim against the federal government.
The day after the arrest, local attorney Vanessa Valdez denounced Ramirez’s treatment at an Oxnard City Council meeting. The next month, Valdez said she found herself on the other end of a similar raid—this time at Glass House Farms, a cannabis company.
Valdez. a Ventura-based attorney. said that although she identified herself as a legal observer. agents—she said possibly including the National Guard—deployed tear gas and shot her six times with rubber bullets. She ran, then, unable to see, crawled on all fours to escape. In her claim, Valdez is seeking compensation for alleged injuries and the costs that followed.
Ramirez and Valdez are among dozens of U.S. citizens and immigrants now seeking financial compensation for what they say they suffered during President Trump’s immigration dragnet. For Valdez, that includes the cost of hospital visits, lost wages during recovery, anxiety medication and seeing a therapist.
After reviewing public accounts and legal documents and interviews with more than a dozen lawyers and immigrants, The Times found that claimants across the country are seeking at least $260 million.
Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis, in a statement, said ICE officers are held to the highest professional standard and receive regular training. Bis said that when agents are faced with danger, they use their training to protect themselves and the public.
Bis rejected claims that federal agents used force unlawfully. “The pattern is NOT of law enforcement using force. It’s a pattern of violent agitators attacking our law enforcement,” she wrote. Asked about Valdez’s case. Bis said law enforcement deployed chemical irritants. including pepper balls. but not rubber bullets after agitators attempted to breach the perimeter at Glass House Farms. Bis said Ramirez refused officer’s commands and physically attacked them, so they pepper-sprayed him in self-defense.
Lawyers who specialize in tort claims say the process can be slow and complex. and any awards would likely be lower than what claimants are seeking. Still. the Federal Tort Claims Act is one of the few legal paths available for people pursuing damages tied to deaths. physical injuries. emotional trauma. unlawful detention or property damage caused by federal employees.
Advocates expect the number of claims to rise.
In recent months. advocacy groups have prepared practice advisories for attorneys filing tort claims. and law groups across the country have held training sessions on how to proceed. Jonathan Feinberg. a Philadelphia-based attorney who specializes in cases involving excessive force by police and abuses of detained immigrants. said in a statement that he believes many people have been harmed and will be legally entitled to damages payouts. “We’re going to be talking about Minneapolis in 2030,” he added.
Feinberg leads the National Police Accountability Project, which focuses on law enforcement misconduct.
Before a claimant can sue in federal court. individuals must first request agency review of the claim—such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection. The agency has six months to respond and deny the claim or offer a settlement. If the agency does not respond or denies the claim, the claimant can then file suit. Unlike civil rights lawsuits, where juries decide verdicts, tort cases are decided by judges. Only agencies are named as defendants, not individual officers.
The Times reviewed the claims of nearly 80 people filed since the start of 2025, and the vast majority remain in the review stage. Lawyers anticipate most will not be settled, “unleashing a flood of lawsuits starting this summer,” according to their expectations described in the report.
Legal remedies for constitutional violations have long existed for state and local officials. Federal law since 1871 established that people can sue those officials for violating constitutional rights, but it left out federal actors. A century later. the Supreme Court allowed damages lawsuits against federal officials who violate a person’s civil rights. though recent decisions narrowed that ability.
In California. Democrats have pursued legislation that would make it easier for residents to seek financial damages for constitutional violations committed by federal agents. Similar laws were already enacted in Maryland. Illinois and Connecticut. though the Trump administration has sued to block the latter two.
For many plaintiffs, the route now is tort claims.
Benjamin Zipursky. a Fordham University law professor who studies torts. said government defenses can focus on a “discretionary function exception. ” which can shield agencies from liability when a situation involves a policy-driven judgment. “So that’s what a lot of plaintiff’s lawyers are really anxious about. ” Zipursky said. explaining what he expects the Trump administration to argue—that immigration policies are meant to give agencies the authority to make policy judgments.
Zipursky also said plaintiffs’ lawyers often respond by arguing the facts aren’t about policy at all.
“You have to have a lot of courage to be able to stand up against an administration that has put a bull’s-eye on you and that has targeted you based on your identity,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Lawyers for Civil Rights.
He described how, even now, clients wake up wondering whether suing the federal government is worth the risk. Some fear they’ll be targeted for deportation; others are deported before they can sue.
Some people instead have turned to mutual aid and online fundraisers. On GoFundMe, donation campaigns describe shattered car windows, broken limbs, head trauma and mounting bills.
Not all injuries are fully compensable, Espinoza-Madrigal added.
For Jose Pineda, Temporary Protected Status shaped how his case unfolded. A year ago. Pineda. a Salvadoran man with Temporary Protected Status. was stopped by ICE officers on his way to work in East Boston as a landscaper. In his tort claim. he said officers wouldn’t accept his Social Security and work authorization cards as proof that he was not deportable. and detained him without explanation.
Pineda spent nearly two days in a holding cell at the ICE Boston Field Office with around 50 other people, according to the claim. He said he couldn’t sit or sleep and received minimal water and food.
Bis said agents “briefly questioned” Pineda because he matched the description of the subject of an operation, and that he was released after being identified. When he was released, the claim alleges, Pineda’s documents were returned but $600 in cash he had been saving to pay rent was missing.
The incident, he said, left him with frequent headaches, anxiety and memory loss and exacerbated his gastritis. His absence from work resulted in a demotion from lead foreman to an assistant role.
Pineda described the fear that follows him even during ordinary moments. “Whenever I drive, if someone stays behind me for three, four or five minutes, I start to imagine that it’s them again,” he said.
He said the arrest also triggered recurring nightmares—night terrors that leave him shouting and thrashing in bed. Out of fear he could inadvertently harm his wife, he said they now sleep in separate beds.
Other cases described in the reporting trace a pattern claimants say is repeating across states and across months. Public disapproval rose after federal immigration agents in Minneapolis shot and killed two 37-year-old U.S. citizens—Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse—in separate incidents.
Other deaths tied to federal actions included 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez. who was killed in Texas after an ICE agent fired repeatedly through the open window of his car; Keith Porter. 43. who was killed in Los Angeles by an off-duty ICE agent after shooting his gun into the air on New Year’s Eve; and Jaime Alanis Garcia. 57. who fell 30 feet from atop a greenhouse while fleeing agents at the Glass House Farms site in Camarillo.
Lawyers for the families of Good, Martinez and Garcia confirmed they are pursuing tort claims. Lawyers for the other families did not respond to requests for comment.
The report also points to additional highly publicized cases that resulted in tort claims: Marimar Martinez. who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in Chicago; Mahmoud Khalil. the Columbia University student and Palestinian rights activist who spent 104 days detained after the administration labeled him a national security threat; and Aliya Rahman. a disabled woman on her way to a doctor’s appointment in Minneapolis who blacked out at a detention facility after ICE agents detained her.
New claims appear to be filed weekly. Seventeen men, women and children detained in a military-style raid at a Chicago apartment complex filed claims this month seeking about $5 million each.
In many cases, Bis said, claimants impeded or assaulted agents. Pretti’s death remains under investigation, she said.
One defendant is already a plaintiff in other litigation. Willy Wender Aceituno, a Honduran-born U.S. citizen, was arrested last November by ICE agents in Charlotte, N.C. He was already a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU of North Carolina challenging the policy allowing warrantless immigration arrests after he was stopped twice in a span of minutes by immigration agents.
In March, Aceituno also submitted a tort claim. He said he voted for Trump.
On the day he was arrested, Aceituno said a group of masked agents checked his identification and left. He then filmed as a second group surrounded his red truck. In Spanish, Aceituno told them, “If you break it, you will pay for it,” seconds before one agent smashed the window with a baton.
Aceituno suffered cuts when agents threw him to the ground, which was covered in shattered glass. He said they placed him in an SUV with other detainees and drove him around Charlotte before releasing him, still bleeding, more than 2 miles from his vehicle.
Aceituno said the moment brought him back to his childhood. when he watched his father be arrested by the Honduran military and disappeared. “I remember they broke down the door, entered, put him in handcuffs and threw him to the ground,” he said. “I thought. ‘It’s happening again.’ To see the other Hispanics in the car made it feel like this is racial persecution. This is about skin, not criminality.”.
Bis said Aceituno acted erratically, escalated the situation and refused to comply with officers’ commands.
In Minnesota. the stakes are shaped by memory and by the fear that police powers can feel absolute before accountability arrives. The law office of John Burris. an Oakland-based attorney who represented Rodney King after he was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in 1991. has taken on damages clients in Minnesota. Burris said he expects to file around 80 tort claims stemming from the immigration enforcement actions there.
He said his work has brought back flashbacks to the period before King’s beating and the protests that followed. when officers felt they could act with impunity. “There’s 1779810245 a more fundamental understanding that bad stuff does happen,” Burris said. “Everyday people are not as willing as they once were to just accept a police officer’s perspective.”.
For the claimants described in these filings, the legal system is now becoming the next battlefield—one measured in agency review windows, courtroom timelines and the question of whether injury and trauma can be translated into dollars.
As the Federal Tort Claims Act process moves, the number of cases already filed and expected to follow is set to grow. And for people like Ramirez and Valdez, what began during raids is now stretching into a fight over what happened next—and who will pay for it.
ICE immigration raids Federal Tort Claims Act excessive force pepper spray tear gas rubber bullets Minneapolis Minnesota Oxnard Camarillo Glas House Farms legal claims