Federal and local law enforcement officers repeatedly misused tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and other crowd-control weapons against people protesting immigration enforcement, according to a new nationwide investigation that documented hundreds of incidents and more than 200 injuries.
The report, released this week by Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, examined immigration-related protests between June 1, 2025, and May 31, 2026. Researchers verified 412 incidents across 16 cities in 13 states in which officers used crowd-control weapons in ways that violated international standards, police policies or manufacturers’ safety instructions.
Medical reviewers documented 203 injuries, including blindness, traumatic brain injuries, fractures, lacerations, chemical burns and contusions. Researchers cautioned that the actual injury count is likely substantially higher because publicly available videos and photographs cannot reliably capture respiratory damage, hearing loss, chronic pain and other less visible conditions.
The findings document a system of force that extended beyond clashes with demonstrators. Journalists accounted for 177 of the people targeted, or 43 percent of the total documented cases. Healthcare workers, legal observers, children, elderly people, bystanders and people with disabilities were also struck or exposed to chemical agents.
The researchers classified 179 incidents as involving protected groups, including journalists, medical workers and legal observers. They found 264 incidents involving improper weapon use, including 148 close-range deployments, 97 shots to the head, 32 instances of direct fire, 13 deployments inside enclosed spaces and 10 cases in locations where people had no clear way to escape.
The report’s findings challenge the official description of these weapons as “less lethal.” Tear gas, pepper spray, rubber and plastic bullets, beanbag rounds, foam projectiles, pepper balls and stun grenades are intended to provide alternatives to firearms, but they can still cause permanent injuries or death when used improperly.
Physicians for Human Rights uses the term “crowd-control weapons” in part to avoid suggesting that the devices are safe.
The investigation found that Department of Homeland Security agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, were responsible for most of the documented force. State and local law enforcement agencies also participated, particularly in Los Angeles, where local officers accounted for a larger portion of the incidents.
More than 90 percent of the documented cases occurred in the Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Newark and Portland regions. Incidents often increased shortly after federal authorities announced or began major immigration-enforcement operations.
Those operations included a Los Angeles campaign known as Operation At Large, Chicago’s Operation Midway Blitz, Operation Black Rose in Oregon and Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. The Minnesota operation involved approximately 3,000 federal agents and was described by DHS as the largest immigration-enforcement operation in the department’s history.
Researchers said the arrival of large numbers of federal agents was frequently followed by protests and aggressive crowd-control tactics. The report connected several increases in documented force to operations directed by former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who was deployed to several cities during the administration’s immigration crackdown.
“In each city where there were federal directions to escalate enforcement, incident counts rose sharply within days,” Physicians for Human Rights said in announcing the findings.
The weapons documented in the investigation included high-capacity pepper-spray devices capable of dispersing substantially more chemical irritant than ordinary police or civilian sprays. The report examined the MK-9, a crowd-control sprayer holding as much as 18.5 ounces of chemical agent and capable of firing from up to 30 feet away.
Researchers warned that sustained exposure from these devices can cause respiratory distress, rashes and chemical burns. A powerful stream directed into a person’s face can produce corneal ulcers and lacerations.
Individual cases show how quickly such weapons can produce life-changing injuries.
In January, 21-year-old Kaden Rummler was shot in the face at close range during an immigration protest in Santa Ana, California. Doctors found plastic and glass fragments in his skull and a metal fragment near his carotid artery. He lost sight in his left eye.
Another demonstrator, Britain Rodriguez, also lost sight in one eye after being struck in the face during the same protest.
In Los Angeles, 23-year-old Jesus Javier Gomez Islas said he was permanently blinded in his right eye after being struck by a projectile while standing near an immigration protest outside the Metropolitan Detention Center. Video provided by his attorneys appeared to show him standing beside his scooter immediately before he was hit.
Gomez Islas filed a claim against the Los Angeles Police Department alleging excessive force and negligence. The department declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Federal agents have also used chemical agents against elected officials and members of the press. During protests outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in Newark, ICE personnel pepper-sprayed U.S. Senator Andy Kim during a confrontation at the facility. Local, state and federal officers later deployed tear gas, batons and other weapons against crowds gathered outside the detention center.
The report raises constitutional questions involving freedom of speech, assembly and the press. Courts have found that firing projectiles at people’s heads or directly targeting journalists may serve as evidence that officers intended to retaliate against protected First Amendment activity.
Force severe enough to incapacitate a person may also constitute a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, which requires police force to be objectively reasonable under the circumstances.
Researchers did not attempt to count every use of force at immigration protests. Their database includes only incidents that were publicly documented, independently verified and determined to satisfy specific criteria for misuse. Each incident underwent two independent verification processes, including checks of its location and timing.
That methodology means the investigation cannot establish the percentage of all crowd-control deployments that were improper. It also means incidents that were not recorded or made public are absent from the data.
The high number of journalists in the database may partly result from reporters’ greater likelihood of documenting attacks against themselves. Even with that limitation, the documented targeting of reporters creates serious concerns about whether law enforcement tactics are discouraging independent coverage of federal immigration operations.
DHS did not provide a response to The Guardian before its report on the investigation was published.
The researchers concluded that the problem extends beyond individual officers or isolated protests. They found that immigration-enforcement surges produced recurring patterns of chemical exposure, projectile injuries and force against people who were protesting, observing or documenting government activity.
“In the vast majority of incidents, protests were peaceful before crowd-control weapons were deployed, and in all cases, basic standards of proportionality, precaution, and necessity were not met.”
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