Leonardo Garcia – A U.S. citizen in Alabama says immigration agents have detained him three times, even after he tried to show authorities his REAL ID. His latest stop came May 2, and the denials from senior officials—paired with public videos and congressional attention—have d
When immigration agents pulled U.S. citizen Leonardo Garcia Venegas from his car this month and shackled him, he said he wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t scared. He was tired.
Garcia Venegas, now 26, has been detained twice before his most recent incident—detentions he says he has experienced as a recurring threat, not a one-off mistake.
Last fall. ProPublica detailed the pattern after Garcia Venegas was detained previously and after viral videos helped put his case before Congress. He says his ordeal began a year ago during a raid on their coastal Alabama construction site. when he was filming his brother’s arrest. In that moment, agents tackled him even after he pleaded that he was a citizen.
A few weeks later, an officer entered the home Garcia Venegas was building and refused to trust his Alabama REAL ID, which only citizens and legal residents can get.
Videos of both incidents went viral, and Garcia Venegas appeared before Congress. He also has a suit pending against the Trump administration.
Then, on May 2, agents followed him back to his home. He says they again didn’t believe his claims of citizenship or the REAL ID he once again tried to show them.
After that latest detention. Garcia Venegas told ProPublica he sounded demoralized—“Honestly. it feels terrible.” He described the mental burden of wondering when it will happen again. saying it weighs on him with stress and depression. “I drive to work every morning and I know, at any moment, they could pull me over again.”.
A separate video, shared alongside his account, shows officers stopping him and dealing with him after he was taken from a vehicle.
Days after Garcia Venegas’ most recent incident, masked agents tackled an American teen in the Bronx. When they finally realized he was a citizen, they left him in an unfamiliar neighborhood, bloody and bruised. The juxtaposition underscored what Garcia Venegas’ case has come to represent: a federal immigration system that. in rare but devastating moments. has treated Americans as if they were something else.
During that same week, administration officials spoke on a panel at a border security conference in Phoenix and downplayed and denied that citizens have been mistakenly detained. Recordings of the conference were shared with ProPublica.
Matthew Elliston. a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. said on the panel: “Since the start of this administration. we have not had any arrests of U.S. citizens for false identification, where we thought they were an illegal alien but they were actually a U.S. citizen,” adding, “That’s happened zero times.”.
On another part of the conference, Todd Lyons—the outgoing head of ICE—acknowledged that agents sometimes detained American citizens in cases where those citizens allegedly put “hands on law enforcement.” Lyons also said the arrests operated as “a deterrent.”
For Garcia Venegas, the details of the most recent stop are tangled with blame over paperwork that should have resolved the question.
In response to questions from ProPublica. a DHS spokesperson said in a statement that despite the shackles. Garcia Venegas was “NOT detained.” The statement continued: “ICE conducted a routine vehicle stop on a car registered to an illegal alien. After Venegas’ identity was established. he was released.” DHS also said the teen in the Bronx was “NOT arrested” but rather “temporarily detained.”.
The agency’s statement added that it is “NOT arresting U.S. citizens by mistake. DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted.”
But the question that hangs over every version of the story is what happened inside the vehicle stop—what officers saw, what they checked, and how identity was “established” after repeated detentions.
Garcia Venegas said agents and local law enforcement blamed him during his most recent arrest because he was driving a car registered to his brother.
He described the exchange in a recent filing in his lawsuit. saying: “The officers told me that I risk being stopped again until I register the license plates in my own name. ” and arguing that “the officers could have known immediately that I was not my brother just by checking the REAL ID that was in my hand when they pulled me from the truck and tackled me to the ground.”.
His allegations have taken on a name in public discussion: “Kavanaugh stops.” Those are stops in which. Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh wrote in a case last fall. agents are allowed to stop people based in part on their “apparent ethnicity” (Garcia Venegas is Latino). job (he works in construction) and language (he primarily speaks Spanish).
Kavanaugh wrote that Americans have no reason to worry and that agents will establish citizenship and “promptly let the individual go.” In a later footnote in that same opinion, Kavanaugh added that “officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.”
In Garcia Venegas’ latest stop, he was let go after about 15 minutes. But the fallout is far from over.
Even though he was born in Florida and graduated high school in the same county where he keeps getting detained, he said he sometimes wonders if he should leave the area—and move to his family’s home in Mexico.
“I just want to live in peace,” he told ProPublica.
Garcia Venegas’ court fight has sharpened the stakes. Last fall, he filed a federal lawsuit against the government and demanded more than compensation. He has insisted agents stop “unconstitutional” raids in his area. In response. the government said in court that the immigration sweeps are “based on reasonable suspicion and probable cause and the Constitution.”.
After his third detention, his lawyers moved to update the lawsuit with details of the latest stop. The government’s lawyers have argued that Garcia Venegas’ case still has no merit.
He also filed a separate claim for damages with the government last fall and received a denial from ICE in mid-April that contained no explanation. His third detention came roughly two weeks later.
The case has followed Garcia Venegas into national scrutiny—into public statements, into conference panels, and into the courtroom. During this month’s border security conference. the head of Customs and Border Protection. Rodney Scott. was asked about ProPublica’s reporting on citizens’ detentions and how the agency is addressing them.
“I’m not going to do anything to not arrest U.S. citizens,” Scott said. “Because we arrest criminals, period.”
For Garcia Venegas, the dispute over what the government calls the stops—detention versus release, arrest versus “temporarily detained”—doesn’t change the lived reality he describes each morning: driving to work with the knowledge that, at any moment, the same questions could start again.
ICE immigration enforcement U.S. citizen detention REAL ID Leonardo Garcia Venegas Alabama Kavanaugh stops DHS Congress border security conference Todd Lyons Matthew Elliston Rodney Scott
So they detained a citizen like 3 times??
This is crazy. If he had a REAL ID and is a US citizen, how are they still doing this? Makes me think it’s just profiling and they don’t care.
Wait I’m confused—does REAL ID mean he’s got like some federal background check thing? Cuz if they saw it, why keep grabbing him. But also raids usually happen for a reason so maybe he left something out? Idk.
I saw a clip where they just yanked him and it’s like… why would anyone trust that agency if they’re doing it to citizens too. And then “senior officials denied it” like yeah okay, sure. Meanwhile people keep acting like this is a rare mistake, but the guy says it happened over and over. Honestly I’m tired too, seems exhausting just trying to prove you’re you.