Immigration Agents Continue to Detain U.S. Citizens Despite Official Denials

Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S. Citizen born in Florida, was detained for a third time by immigration authorities on May 2, 2026. The incident occurred when agents followed him to his home, where they shackled him and ignored his claims of citizenship and the Alabama REAL ID he attempted to present. According to reporting from ProPublica, Garcia Venegas was released after approximately 15 minutes, but the repeated encounters have left the 26-year-old experiencing stress and depression.

The May 2 incident is the latest in a series of encounters between Garcia Venegas and immigration agents. Approximately one year prior, in May 2025, he was tackled by agents while filming his brother’s arrest during a raid on a coastal Alabama construction site. During that encounter, agents ignored his assertions that he was a citizen. A few weeks after that first incident, an officer entered a home Garcia Venegas was building and refused to accept his Alabama REAL ID, a document available only to citizens and legal residents.

Following the May 2, 2026, detention, Garcia Venegas stated in a recent lawsuit filing that agents and local law enforcement attributed the stop to the fact that he was driving a vehicle registered to his brother. He noted that officers informed him he risked further stops until the license plates were registered in his own name, despite the fact that he had his REAL ID in his hand when he was tackled.

Contradictory Official Accounts

The repeated detentions of Garcia Venegas and other citizens occur amid public denials from senior immigration officials. During a border security conference in Phoenix in May 2026, Matthew Elliston, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official, claimed that the administration had not made any arrests of U.S. Citizens based on false identification. Elliston stated that such an occurrence had happened “zero times.”

However, other officials provided different contexts. Todd Lyons, the outgoing head of ICE, acknowledged during a panel at the same conference that agents sometimes detain American citizens in instances where those citizens allegedly put “hands on law enforcement.” Lyons described these arrests as acting as a “deterrent.” Rodney Scott, the head of Customs and Border Protection, responded to questions about the detention of citizens by stating, “I’m not going to do anything to not arrest U.S. Citizens, because we arrest criminals, period.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disputed the characterization of the May 2 incident, stating that Garcia Venegas was “NOT detained” but was instead the subject of a “routine vehicle stop on a car registered to an illegal alien.” The spokesperson further asserted that the agency is “NOT arresting U.S. Citizens by mistake” and that enforcement operations are “highly targeted.”

Similar discrepancies appeared regarding another incident the same week as Garcia Venegas’ third detention, in which masked agents tackled an American teenager in the Bronx. The teen was left in an unfamiliar neighborhood, bloody and bruised, after agents realized he was a citizen. The DHS spokesperson stated the teenager was “NOT arrested” but was instead “temporarily detained.”

Legal Framework and Ongoing Litigation

These incidents reflect the application of what are known as “Kavanaugh stops.” In a case decided in the fall of 2025, Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh wrote that agents are permitted to stop individuals based on factors including their language, job and “apparent ethnicity.” Garcia Venegas is Latino and works in construction, and primarily speaks Spanish. Kavanaugh wrote that agents should establish citizenship and “promptly let the individual go,” though he later included a footnote in a separate case specifying that officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.

Garcia Venegas has sought legal recourse through a federal lawsuit filed in the fall of 2025 against the government, demanding that agents cease “unconstitutional” raids in his area. The government has argued in court that the immigration sweeps are based on “reasonable suspicion and probable cause and the Constitution.”

In addition to the lawsuit, Garcia Venegas filed a separate claim for damages with the government in the fall of 2025. In mid-April 2026, ICE issued a denial of that claim without providing an explanation. This denial arrived approximately two weeks before his third detention on May 2.

Despite being born in Florida and graduating from high school in the same county where these detentions occurred, Garcia Venegas told ProPublica that the mental burden of the experience has led him to wonder if he should move to his family’s home in Mexico. He stated, “I just want to live in peace.”