I was detained by ICE — even though I'm 100% Native American - The Times

Parked at a petrol station, Peter Yazzie slipped into his orange high-vis vest before heading to work on a construction site when several cars pulled abruptly into the lot.

Seeing other vehicles or people was rare at 4.30am in Phoenix. But on January 12, there were plenty of both — and they were closing in on Yazzie. Someone yelled at him to put his hands on his car before demanding that he put them behind his back.

“They tossed me on the ground and put a zip tie on my hands, my wrists. That’s when they finally told me that they were with immigration,” he told The Times.

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But Yazzie, 34, can’t be deported. He is half Navajo and half Laguna — or, in other words, 100 per cent Native American. He pointed this out, telling the agents that inside his car was his driver’s licence, social security card, birth certificate and Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB). As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents searched his car, he was put in one of theirs.

“I wasn’t exactly freaking out too bad because I figured they were going to find my identification and I’ll be let go,” he recalled. But the agents drove away with him inside their vehicle.

“Where are we going? My identification is in there. What’s going on?” he asked the agents. One said that because the registration on the car didn’t match his ID, they weren’t sure whether he had stolen the vehicle — or his identification. He’d been living out of his mother’s Chevrolet Malibu to save on costs while she borrowed his truck. He explained this to the agents, but said they ignored him.

He said: “Dude, I have a job. I have family, I have bills, I have kids.” One of the officers who was riding in the passenger seat replied: “We’ll get them, too.”

After hearing that remark, Yazzie thought: “If there was any respect I would have ever had for them, that was out the window.”

Yazzie was put in to a holding cell with eight others and detained for four hours. All of the other people were Hispanic, including one man who was wearing a bright orange shirt just like his. Yazzie believes he was racially profiled by ICE: “Not only because of how I look, but because within the Phoenix area, it’s a very large population of Hispanics as well as Native Americans. Every job site I go to in Arizona is always full of Hispanics … so I’m sure they saw the orange shirt, and probably living out of the car [and thought], ‘Hey, let’s take that one, too’.”

The Department of Homeland Security said it had no record of detaining Peter Yazzie. “Any allegations our law enforcement are engaging in racial profiling are FALSE and disgusting,” Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, said.

Yazzie is one of several indigenous people who have reported being detained by ICE. Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese, a scholar of American Indian tribal law at Stanford Law School, told The Times that the recent reports of Native Americans’ encounters with ICE were “unsurprising”.

“Unfortunately, it’s unsurprising to me that this is happening because the Trump administration has been very clear that they are racially profiling people and are trying to detain folks who fit a certain physical criteria that, to them, makes them think they might be an undocumented immigrant,” she said. “The difference between Native American people and people with Indigenous ancestry from Central and South America is just a border.

“Native people have gotten really good at persevering and surviving some pretty horrific treatment. So we’ll survive this too.”

McLaughlin denied this claim. “ICE does not target, and will not target, Native Americans or any US citizens based on appearance, ethnicity or community affiliation. ICE agents recognise tribal identification cards and continue to acknowledge tribal IDs as proper and accepted identification to verify citizenship status,” she said in a statement. “To date, there have not been any ICE operations in tribal lands.”

In light of the encounters with ICE, the president of Navajo Nation as well as dozens of other tribes across the country have urged members to carry identification with them at all times.

“It’s just ridiculous for indigenous individuals to have to carry proof of identity that they’re actually residents of this land, being the original inhabitants of this territory,” David Wilkins, a professor of Native politics and governance at the University of Richmond, told The Times. “The fact that some Native individuals were questioned and detained. Even after they showed their tribal ID card, even if they showed their US passport, driver’s licence, they were still detained.”

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Tribal nations had the power to exclude or banish people “if they view them as a threat to their health, safety, or welfare”, Wilkins said. In 2024, when she was the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem was banished from seven of the nine reservations in her home state after claiming there was cartel activity on their lands.

The president of the Oglala Sioux tribe banned DHS from the tribe’s reservation in South Dakota after four members were detained during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis last month. Red Lake Nation, based in Minnesota, prohibited ICE from its lands after immigration agents dragged a 20-year-old tribal member from his car in Robbinsdale and detained him the day after agents had killed Renee Good six miles away in Minneapolis.

Weeks later, Alex Pretti, another US citizen, was also killed at the hands of immigration agents in Minneapolis. William LaFromboise, a member of the Dakota Sioux tribe, was protesting against ICE in the same area a few hours later. After two hours of demonstrations, agents threw tear gas at the protesters. He and his friend tried to help an elderly person when suddenly, he told The Times, “all I see is one of the border agents running towards my direction”.

Agents tackled him to the ground, punched him and pepper-sprayed his face, LaFromboise, 23, said. Although some federal agents tried to pour water on his face, he could not see for three hours.

“When they got me on the floor, I did not resist,” he said. “I basically surrendered and then they did all that extra brutality, which was not needed at that moment.”

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Agents detained LaFromboise and approximately 20 others after accusing him of having “swarmed and attacked” agents, according to ICE’s social media post, which included a photo of him with bruises on his face. He was held for nine hours at the Whipple Building — ICE’s headquarters in Minneapolis — and then, he said, released without being charged.

According to a DHS spokesperson, LaFromboise was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol “after throwing chemical munitions at officers during a protest”. They added: “He was arrested and charged for his actions. LaFromboise was transported to the Whipple Federal Building for processing and then released.”

The Times has not been able to find any record of such charges being filed against him.

LaFromboise said he did not know why he was detained. “When I go out there, just like every other Minnesotan, we got gas masks, we got goggles. We’re here to protect our community … and when I mean my community, I mean a surrounding area. Everybody’s my people.”

After Yazzie was released, he returned to his car and found his possessions scattered. His arrowhead necklace and a photo of his baby niece were missing, so he went back to the jail to retrieve them. The DHS agents told him they took his necklace because it was a “dangerous weapon” and that they were running the photo through their database to ensure there were no missing children or “paedophilic stuff” tied to her, Yazzie said. He was able to pick up his belongings later that day. DHS has not replied to a request for comment.

Yazzie said: “It’s something you hear about, but it’s not something you imagine is going to actually happen to you.”