Federal immigration agents have repeatedly violated federal law and their own rules in Ohio. according to a lawsuit filed in federal court this week.
The agents did so by arresting people without warrants — and without doing anything to determine whether the person was a flight risk, the suit said.
The agents conducted aggressive arrests and held people for weeks or months, according to the suit, filed by the ACLU of Ohio and several other rights groups and law firms.
Those detained reported being mocked and mistreated by agents who apparently were paid bonuses for locking people up — regardless of whether the arrests were proper, the suit said.
Some of the detainees came to the United States on visas and some had work permits, the suit said. In at least one case, the detainees were citizens from Puerto Rico, possibly indicating racial profiling by agents.
And in virtually all the cases detailed in the lawsuit, detainees reported that after they were released they were terrified of going about their day-to-day lives for fear that it could all happen again.
The alleged violations have been so frequent that the plaintiffs want a judge to allow the case to proceed as a class action.
“The most recent release of data from (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE) shows that there are currently 670 immigration detainees in Ohio,” the suit said.
“Countless of these individuals were arrested and detained without a warrant and without any pre-arrest, individualized determination of probable cause.”
ICE didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the lawsuit is asking that the courts stop the agency from making arrests without warrants or probable-cause determinations.
It also asks that the government pay the expenses and legal fees of those who were improperly detained.
Violent criminals?
The lawsuit details several allegations of masked ICE agents acting callously and improperly since President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations came to Ohio in April 2025.
Trump campaigned on the promise that he would lock up undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes.
But the Cato Institute in November reported that just 5% of those detained in his crackdown had been convicted of violent crimes. A full 73% had no convictions at all.
That seems not to matter to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. Instead, the agency denies those statistics.
Regardless, the ACLU and other groups say ICE must follow the law.
Before making an arrest, the suit said, “the agent must have ‘reason to believe’ both that (1) the individual ‘is in the United States in violation of any [immigration] law or regulation,’ and (2) the individual ‘is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.’”
It gave an example in which it said that didn’t happen.
Moises Javier Aguilar Peralta, 38, came to Ohio from Honduras in 2023, sought asylum and got a work permit, Social Security number, and a driver’s license.
On Dec. 18, as he walked out of a Columbus Home Depot with materials he needed for work, four masked men in civilian clothes stopped him. When he told them he had an active asylum case, the agents told him it wasn’t valid, the suit said.
They put Peralta in handcuffs and leg chains, drove him and 10 other Latinos to Detroit, and then to a jail in Baldwin, Mich., where he was held for 27 days, the suit said.
A judge ordered that he be released, concluding that Peralta isn’t a risk to flee as his asylum case proceeds. That might be because he’s supporting people in both Ohio and Honduras — and he fears he’ll be killed if he returns to his native country.
“Since his release, Mr. Peralta still feels panic,” the ACLU lawsuit said. “He lives near Cleveland Avenue, which is an area where a lot of immigrants are being targeted and ICE has targeted a lot of nearby apartments. Mr. Peralta changed his routine in an effort to avoid rearrest, but he still has to go to Home Depot to get materials for work. Before getting out of his car or getting gas he checks his surroundings for ICE. He fears being sent back to Honduras, a country he fled, and that if he is sent back, he would be murdered.”
Pressure for more arrests
The Trump administration has imposed a quota of 3,000 arrests a day on ICE. The ACLU suit said that agents and their supervisors are ignoring warrant and probable-cause requirements in a rush to meet it.
The case of a Peruvian woman identified as S.T. illustrates some possible abuses.
She came to the United States in 2014 and she lives in the Northland area of Columbus with her partner and three children. She worked in a restaurant at Easton Town Center.
On Dec. 18, as she was driving in the mall parking lot, unmarked trucks cut her off and two agents with guns got out. They walked up to her vehicle yelling in English and Spanish and banged “on her car door so hard it felt like they were going to break it,” the suit said.
S.T. opened the door, holding out her phone and bank cards. But the agents immediately cuffed her, without a warrant and apparently without determining whether she was a flight risk.
As agents gathered other detainees outside the mall, S.T. said, they were laughing and celebrating their haul.
In a crowded building in Westerville, she asked for a restroom that didn’t have a surveillance camera pointed at the toilet.
She was told the camera in the one she saw didn’t work. But after she used it “the same guards later said, ‘actually the camera was on’ and started laughing with one another,” the lawsuit said.
S.T. was taken to Michigan and held for a month before a judge ruled that she was not a flight risk and released her. But while she was there, S.T. learned why agents might have an incentive to arrest as many people as they can without warrants or following other rules.
“The manager of the place kept telling the officers to work hard because they would get bonuses and gift cards for the more people they detain,” the lawsuit said. “The officers continued to laugh at the people they arrested and talked about their bonuses and overtime pay.”
In their eagerness, agents also swept up U.S. citizens, according to the ACLU lawsuit.
Sweeping up citizens
Since the start of Trump’s mass deportations, ICE has arrested many who had legal status.
That includes those who had deferred status for childhood arrivals along with unknown numbers of people with pending asylum cases or who received parole using the Biden-era CBP One app.
Hundreds of thousands more with temporary protected status could soon be objects of the ICE net.
In Ohio, that could include a large population of Somalis, whom Trump called “garbage,” and thousands of Haitians in Springfield, whom Trump and his vice president falsely accused of eating their neighbors’ pets.
Already, ICE has arrested people based in the Buckeye State based on nothing more than how they looked or spoke, according to the ACLU lawsuit.
ICE agents appeared at a Columbus hotel on Dec. 17 looking for someone. As they did, three housekeepers had the bad luck to walk to their cars on their lunch break.
They were “snatched by federal agents who jumped out of their vehicles then sped off the property,” the lawsuit said. “All three housekeepers appear Hispanic or Latino, and two are Puerto Rico-born United States citizens.
“No questions were asked before these federal agents grabbed them and placed them in their vehicles. Two of the women were ultimately released once ICE realized they were U.S. citizens — but only after spending four days in jail.”
Despite claims that the ICE surge is getting “the worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants out of Ohio, agents are doing something else, the lawsuit said.
Agents “target law-abiding Ohioans going about their daily lives,” it said. “They are going to work, carrying groceries, getting gas, or arriving home, when they are abruptly approached by unidentified men, often masked and in civilian clothing, insisting they are ‘illegal.’ And despite the lack of any arrest warrant or probable cause to believe that they pose a likelihood of escape, federal agents snatch these Ohioans out of their lives and into jail, flouting the requirements of the law.”
Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.