ICE keeps accusing immigrants of ‘weaponizing’ vehicles. Most claims fall apart
“A Guardian review of 26 cases promoted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as evidence of a surge in “vehicular attacks” by immigrants reveals that most claims lack evidence and have been disproven. Only one of the 26 cases resulted in an assault conviction, highlighting a pattern of DHS making unsubstantiated claims and failing to correct the record when those claims are debunked. The review underscores the need for greater transparency and accountability from DHS and ICE regarding their actions and statements.
The Trump administration has repeatedly accused immigrants and protesters of “weaponizing” their vehicles to “assault” federal immigration agents, a claim used to justify arrests and deadly shootings by officers.
But a Guardian review of 26 cases that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has promoted as evidence of a surge in “vehicular attacks” reveals most of those claims have fallen apart under scrutiny, with the accusations consistently disproven by evidence or rejected in court. Only one of the 26 cases has resulted in an assault conviction, according to court records and information shared by prosecutors.
The findings come as DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are facing intense scrutiny over the back-to-back fatal shootings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. In both cases, ICE officers killed the men during attempted traffic stops, with DHS arguing the men had endangered officers and the public with their vehicles – claims that witnesses have rejected.
DHS has repeatedly claimed its officers have faced a “3,300% increase in vehicle attacks” under Donald Trump’s second term, but has not provided evidence to support that figure and has not responded to requests for a list of cases.
To better understand how the government’s vehicle assault allegations have been adjudicated over time, the Guardian reviewed the most detailed list DHS has put out: a February press release asserting agents have experienced “more than 180 vehicle attacks” since Trump took office. The 2,100-word release provided summaries of 23 incidents from across the country from June 2025 to January 2026, saying it was a “non-exhaustive list”.
The Guardian looked at records for each case and contacted local and federal authorities and immigration and defense attorneys for more details. We identified 26 people accused in the cases of using their vehicles to threaten, assault or injure immigration officers. Five of them were shot by officers during the encounters, one fatally.
The review reveals a stunning failure by DHS and prosecutors to prove the government’s initial allegations of violence in those cases.
The review showed:
Fifteen of the 26 people accused of vehicle attacks never faced federal criminal charges over the incidents, and 11 of the 26 people did.
Eight people who were charged had their cases dismissed, including one person who received a “deferred prosecution”, meaning charges will be dropped if the defendant meets certain conditions.
One person has a pending assault charge; one pleaded guilty to assault; and one was convicted of “destruction of government property”, but acquitted of assault.
DHS has repeatedly continued to promote people’s cases as evidence of violence long after the original claims fell apart.
Cases were dropped or never charged in California, Colorado, Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Maryland and Washington DC.
The people on the list who never faced federal charges include one man who DHS claimed was “at large” and one who was fatally shot by ICE during the encounter. The sole guilty plea for assault involves a man accused of reversing his car during a traffic stop and hitting an ICE officer in the leg.
DHS’s list of 26 cases is not comprehensive. It excludes other high-profile incidents that took place in that timeframe, including dismissals of vehicle attack charges and the case of Renee Good in Minneapolis, who was also accused of “weaponizing” her car before an ICE officer killed her. The list also leaves out a man accused of “dragging” an agent with his car in a case that ended in an assault conviction in December.
And there have been additional cases since the timeframe covered by the DHS list. Last week, the agency promoted a case of an alleged vehicle assault from April, but no charges have been filed in that case, either. This week, a Nebraska defendant pleaded guilty in a vehicle assault case.
DHS did not respond to inquiries about the findings or questions about specific cases.
“This whole narrative that all of these people were trying to run over officers with their cars is frankly bizarre and laughable,” said Margaret Hellerstein, a California attorney. She represents Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a TikTok streamer who was shot by an officer in October during a traffic stop. He was charged with assault, with DHS claiming he began “ramming” officers, but video showed the car did not appear to be moving when he was shot, and a judge threw out the case, saying his rights had been violated during the prosecution. The US attorney’s office has appealed the dismissal.
“It’s just brazen to tell the same story over and over when it’s been disproven over and over. They believe they have ultimate power and they’re phoning in their explanations,” Hellerstein said.
The review of cases also reveals a pattern of DHS blasting statements to the press and on social media, painting the subjects of their traffic stops as violent assailants without evidence and then failing to correct the record when those claims collapse under basic scrutiny.
In many of the cases, DHS has claimed drivers were attempting to flee or were resisting arrest and “rammed” ICE vehicles in the process. Some statements include unsubstantiated claims that the alleged assaults were “intentional” or “deliberate”.
The reasons for the dismissals or lack of charges varied and often were not formally disclosed by prosecutors. In one case, agents were found to have made contradictory statements about the encounter. In another, prosecutors failed to meet deadlines to hand over evidence. In some instances, videos disproved DHS’s narratives.
Nine of the 26 vehicular attack cases touted by DHS were in Illinois, tied to Operation Midway Blitz, Trump’s highly publicized crackdown in Chicago last fall. Of those nine, only one person faced assault charges, though a judge “deferred” her prosecution in March, meaning it’s on track for dismissal. Another person was issued a violation notice for misdemeanor assault, which is not a formal charge, and the violation was dismissed in January.
In one Illinois case, DHS said a man “resisted arrest by intentionally ramming an officer’s vehicle into a tree”. But experts with an Illinois state accountability commission said it was more likely federal agents actually rammed their car into his car based on the damage sustained to both vehicles. No charges were filed, and the department said the man was placed in removal proceedings.
How one case collapsed
Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero, a Minnesota father of two, was accused of committing a vehicle assault on 21 December. In a post on X that day, DHS called Rodriguez Romero an “illegal alien from Cuba”, though his lawyers have said he had entered the country lawfully through Customs and Border Protection and had work authorization and a pending immigration case.
After ICE pulled Rodriguez Romero over, he “drove off, striking one of the officers in his attempt to escape”, according to DHS’s initial account. Rodriguez Romero then pulled into a parking lot, hit two parked vehicles and “began ramming his car into an ICE vehicle and struck ANOTHER ICE officer”, DHS wrote.
One agent fired two rounds, but did not hit Rodriguez Romero, who eventually fled into his apartment building. DHS alleged that he subsequently “bit” one of the officers trying to arrest him.
Rodriguez Romero was charged with three counts of assault. But in court, the entire case collapsed.
The alleged assaults and shooting were not caught on camera. But internal DHS records show an ICE officer, who was the “team leader” during the arrest, gave an interview to an ICE official on the day of the incident contradicting DHS’s social media claim that Rodriguez Romero struck an officer while driving away. The team leader repeatedly described Rodriguez Romero’s vehicle as “almost hitting” an officer identified as Ibanez. The team leader did not say Rodriguez Romero struck an agent.
Four other agents on the scene also gave interviews that day, and only one alleged Rodriguez Romero hit Ibanez as he drove off, according to a filing from Rodriguez Romero’s attorney summarizing the officer interviews. One officer was quoted saying Rodriguez Romero “just began to slowly pull out and continue driving”.
Ibanez, during a DHS interview in February, claimed he was hit in the shoulder by Rodriguez Romero’s car. Ibanez was also the officer who later fired shots at Rodriguez Romero. Agents gave conflicting accounts of when the shots took place.
As the case moved forward, prosecutors specified the justice department was not alleging Rodriguez Romero “made contact” with Ibanez when he first fled. Rodriguez Romero’s attorneys said the government was admitting DHS had presented “false testimony” about the incident.
In June, nearly six months after the incident, the justice department moved to dismiss all the charges, including one stemming from the “biting” claim, saying prosecutors had “thoroughly reassessed the evidence in this case” and were “not confident” the government could secure a conviction.
Bruce Nestor, Rodriguez Romero’s lawyer, noted the dismissal came after a judge ordered the justice department to disclose additional evidence, including information from agents’ personal phones. The dismissal was “with prejudice”, meaning prosecutors agreed they could not try the case at a later time.
“I can only believe the government moved to dismiss with prejudice because there was even more evidence ICE officers had engaged in misconduct, or at minimum a coverup of a bad shooting,” Nestor said. “All of DHS’s claims were entirely unsupported and exposed by the contradictory statements of the federal agents … Mr Rodriguez Romero is lucky to be alive.”
The Minnesota US attorney’s office declined to comment on the case.
‘We can’t get the truth from this administration’
Federal immigration officials were reportedly instructed last week to stop pulling over vehicles until further notice amid the outrage over the recent fatal shootings. But Trump said soon after that the stops should continue.
There have long been concerns these kinds of traffic encounters and law enforcement chases recklessly endanger the lives of the people being targeted, officers and bystanders, with critics arguing they are particularly unjustified for civil immigration enforcement.
Nestor argued that the narrative of immigrants “weaponizing” their vehicles to attack officers was rooted in the Trump administration’s framing of immigrants as violent criminals: “Looking at Houston and Maine, what possible motive would any of those victims or Mr Rodriguez Romero have to assault an ICE officer?”
The pattern of the shootings, he said, reflected the “culture of the agency and is a logical extension of the rhetoric by the president which suggests noncitizens are a deadly threat to be met with deadly force”.
Even when people accused of assault are cleared of wrongdoing, the allegations can have lasting impacts.
Phillip Brown, a US citizen in Washington DC, was accused by DHS of making a “deliberate attempt to run [officers] down” during a traffic stop in October. An officer fired shots at him during the stop, but missed. DHS’s February press release continued to cite his case, even though the government’s story fell apart days after the incident – and the only charge he ever faced was in DC superior court, accused of “fleeing” law enforcement. A judge quickly tossed that charge after learning that a police report had omitted the fact that an officer had shot at him.
Brown has been forced to deal with the double trauma of nearly losing his life and having the government repeatedly spread falsehoods about the encounter, said his attorney, E Paige White.
“The scariest thing is we can’t get the truth from this administration even when it’s staring us directly in the face,” she said, “even when the judges and courts and systems put in place to actually determine what happened make a very clear decision. They refuse to be honest and that’s terrifying.”
