ICE Kills Two U.S. Citizens in Three Weeks as Enforcement Terror Spreads to Schools

Samantha Barrientos learned she was the only U.S. citizen in her family when she was three years old. That conversation shaped the rest of her childhood in ways no child should have to experience.

Now a youth organizer with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Barrientos runs the Dream Center at Van Nuys High School, connecting immigrant students with legal resources, counseling, and support. She has spent most of her life afraid that ICE would tear her family apart. Her grandfather was detained when she was four. ICE threatened her aunt and cousin if he wasn't deported. At 13, she watched ICE raid her father's workplace. He only escaped because a coworker hid him in the back of a truck.

That was the moment Barrientos decided she couldn't stay silent anymore. She joined CHIRLA's Wise Up program, and eventually that path brought her back to Van Nuys High School, where she now helps students living with the same fear she grew up with.

In 2025, ICE has escalated raids across the country, and the consequences have reached far beyond undocumented immigrants. U.S. citizens have been caught in the crossfire, sometimes fatally.

In Minneapolis, Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S.-born citizen, was shot three times while sitting in her car. According to BBC News, Good had been serving as a legal observer of ICE activity in her neighborhood when agents opened fire as she tried to maneuver around them. An autopsy commissioned by her family, reported by NBC News, found that one bullet went through her head.

Less than three weeks later, Alex Pretti, also a U.S.-born citizen and also 37 years old, was killed after agents accused him of holding a gun. Video footage reported by ABC News showed him holding his phone. He was filming ICE before he was shoved and taken down. One agent was seen hitting Pretti multiple times before 10 shots were fired in less than five seconds.

These shootings are not isolated incidents. They are part of a pattern that has left families across the country, documented and undocumented alike, afraid to leave their homes.

The political justification for aggressive enforcement rests on the claim that undocumented immigrants are dangerous. President Trump once referred to Mexicans as criminals or rapists. But research consistently shows otherwise. A 2020 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that undocumented immigrants are significantly less likely to be arrested for violent crimes than U.S.-born citizens. The narrative does not match the data.

Supporters of ICE argue that immigration laws exist for a reason and that enforcement is an issue of national security. But enforcement that kills unarmed U.S. citizens, terrorizes children and families, and operates without transparency is not public safety. It is intimidation. There is a difference between a working immigration system and a government that has lost any sense of proportion.

Some undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children have protection under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). But DACA is temporary, limited in scope, and not available to everyone. And even DACA is under attack. The Department of Homeland Security is currently prohibited from approving first-time applicants, and the program's future remains uncertain under the current administration. For undocumented students who grew up in this country, losing DACA does not just mean losing work permits. It means losing any sense of security.

The government and ICE are not addressing the causes of undocumented immigration. They are punishing the people caught in a broken system. They do not see the faces of children when their parents are taken away or the loss of a family member. They see the perfect scapegoats.

This is not an abstract issue at Van Nuys High School. The Dream Center on campus exists because the need is real. Barrientos works with students who are afraid to talk about their family's status, who have missed school after local raids, and who do not know where to turn when a parent is detained. Some have joined walkouts and protests only to be told they are disrupting the peace. But there is no peace when your classmate's parents do not come home.

Barrientos grew up never being allowed to talk about her family's status for fear of being ratted out. Now she is here helping students who are living with the same fear she grew up with. The rest of us have a choice. We can walk by the Dream Center without thinking about why it exists, or we can demand that immigration enforcement in this country answer for what it has become.

No one should be afraid to walk to school. No one should wonder if their parents will still be there when they get home.