ICE arrests and contested use‑of‑force

A video of masked federal agents making an arrest in New Jersey and a shooting on Interstate 5 in California look like separate stories, but they collide in the same place: what can be proved after Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows up, who had authority, and whose version of the encounter a judge believes. (ice.gov) (abcnews.com) In Trenton, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said a February 20, 2026 operation was not an agency-led raid at an auto shop, but an arrest by federal partners using a court-ordered criminal warrant, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement later taking two other men into custody for immigration violations. The agency named Eduardo Reyes as the primary target and said two others, Cristian Moreno-Posso and Jorge Luis Lemus Urliz, were detained afterward. (ice.gov) That matters in New Jersey because the state’s Immigrant Trust Directive draws a bright line between local police enforcing state criminal law and federal officers enforcing civil immigration law. The New Jersey Attorney General says local agencies are limited in the voluntary help they can give federal immigration authorities, and lawmakers moved in January 2026 to put that approach into statute. (njoag.gov) (whyy.org) So when an arrest happens in a place that calls itself protective of immigrants, the first fight is often not “did someone get taken,” but “who exactly did it, under what warrant, and with which agency in the lead.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaned hard into that distinction in its March 3, 2026 statement, saying federal partners executed the criminal warrant and Immigration and Customs Enforcement was notified during the operation. (ice.gov) The California case is the same problem with higher stakes. On April 7, 2026, near Patterson in Stanislaus County, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Todd Lyons said officers tried to arrest Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, described him as an 18th Street gang member wanted in El Salvador for questioning in a homicide, and said he “weaponized” his vehicle and tried to run over an officer. (abcnews.com) (nbcbayarea.com) By April 9 and April 10, Mendoza Hernandez’s lawyer was telling a sharply different story: that his client denied gang ties, had been acquitted in El Salvador in 2019, and was recovering after multiple surgeries for more than half a dozen gunshot wounds. Federal investigators also said he was in a Modesto hospital, not in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation reviewed the shooting. (ktvu.com) (apnews.com) (nbcnews.com) On April 11, a witness account and dash camera video added another layer. Local reporting said a witness came forward disputing the agency’s sequence of events, which turns the case into a frame-by-frame argument over whether officers fired before the car reversed or after. (abc10.com) (yahoo.com) That is why these cases become evidence fights before they become policy fights. In one file, lawyers will want the criminal warrant, the body camera footage, dispatch logs, and the chain showing when immigration detainers were lodged; in the other, they will want video, ballistics, radio traffic, hospital records, and the foreign court documents behind the claim that the target had already been acquitted. (ice.gov) (ktvu.com) (abcnews.com) For immigrants and defense lawyers, the practical question is often simpler than the politics on television: can the government show lawful authority for the stop, lawful custody after the stop, and a reliable factual basis for what it says happened. In New Jersey, sanctuary-style limits do not stop federal arrests, but they do make agency roles and local cooperation a live issue; in California, a single disputed second on video may shape both the use-of-force inquiry and everything that follows in immigration court. (njoag.gov) (whyy.org) (abc10.com)