The year of the Border Patrol’s unchecked power

from Sergio OlmosCalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Subscribe to your newsletters.

This article is also available in English. Read it here.

Over the past 15 months, Border Patrol agents have swept through city after city, away from their bases in California and elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, engaging in an unprecedented campaign of mass deportations.

A collaboration between CalMatters, Obvious media Mr Bellingcat has followed these agents since their first “proof of concept” raid in Bakersfield in January 2025, documenting their tactics on the ground and through extensive video footage.

Exactly one year later, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Goode in Minneapolis, followed weeks later by the killing of Alex Pretty at the hands of a Border Patrol agent.

Our investigation shows that, in addition to these two shootings, immigration agents used a pattern of use of force and questionable detentions — aggressive tactics that courts have found likely unconstitutional — as they moved from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, and then to Chicago and Minneapolis.

In each city, federal courts stepped in to stop them from infringing on civil liberties in that jurisdiction. The agents were later sent to another city. Video footage shows the officers’ tactics getting bolder with each stop.

Under President Donald Trump, immigration agents have operated without the usual public accountability. Many employees wear masks to cover their faces. Incident reports are largely kept hidden from the public.

“We’re in a completely unfamiliar world with these undercover agents,” said John Roth, who served as inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security under Presidents Obama and Trump.

“The first thing you have to do when you give an officer a gun, a badge and authority over the American people is make sure he follows the Constitution, period,” he said.

In this new documentary, we focus on the activities of five border agents between the United States and Mexico whose identities we have been able to confirm.

We are not aware of any disciplinary action taken against these employees. DHS did not respond to requests for comment; The agents in question either declined to comment or did not respond to calls and emails.

We showed the incidents to Roth and Steve Bunnell, former DHS general counsel. Both have testified before Congress, warning of what they see as an erosion of accountability and trust in the department. Roth called the incidents “difficult to witness.”

“For the Department of Homeland Security and law enforcement to be effective, there are two essential components: trust and reliability,” Bunnell said. “And they’ve lost them to the extent that they’ve had them.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under license Creative Commons Attribution/Attribution-Noncommercial.