When Bruno Guedes da Silva was waiting for his young daughter to get out of school this past Sunday, he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now living in Sewickley, Silva and his family moved to the U.S. from Brazil seeking asylum.
Last month, in Oakmont, Jose Flores was detained as he was buckling his daughter into the car outside of his home. Flores, who works at the Oakmont Bakery, was later released and reportedly is on electronic monitoring until his next hearing.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has entered Pittsburgh. Detaining immigrants around the city, ICE has spread fear and division in this diverse and beautiful city.
Sadly, this is happening across the country, headlining many breaking news articles for the past month. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has displayed an aggressive approach, entering neighborhoods, restaurants, hospitals, and churches in an attempt to detain undocumented immigrants.
On Jan. 20, the Trump Administration gave ICE the ability to enter “sensitive spaces” such as schools, hospitals, and churches. Families have been split up and have had limited communication with each other.
While deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes has support, the actions being taken by ICE are unnecessarily aggressive. ICE is also killing legal citizens.
So far, eight people have died in ICE custody or have been shot and killed in 2026, and in 2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades, with 32 deaths in custody.
At the beginning of this year, 3,000 federal officers were sent to Minneapolis, which escalated to major protests and conflicts between citizens and federal agents for the past two months.
One of the killings was of legal citizen Renee Nichole Good, who was killed in her car on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis. Good was legally observing ICE, acting as a volunteer to monitor law enforcement while they made arrests.
The situation escalated. The White House claims the Good was obstructing an ICE officer and driving her car dangerously, and the ICE agent responded with warning shots that killed her.
The fact is that Good was not the one with a gun, and the video taken of the killing does not match up with the claims from the White House.
Another person in Minneapolis, nurse Alex Pretti, was killed while acting as a legal observer recording an arrest of immigrants in Minneapolis.
Pretti was carrying his gun, which he had a license for, but all he had in his hand was his phone, recording the ICE officers. Subsequently, Pretti was pepper-sprayed, pinned, beaten, and then shot 10 times.
There have been nationwide protests against the killing of Pretti and Good.
A problem with ICE is that the interaction can escalate quickly, as seen with Good and Pretti. ICE agents are given too much power and believe that they are above the law. Unfortunately, that belief is not necessarily wrong, since ICE agents apparently can publicly kill someone, with video footage available, and they are not being held accountable. They cannot even be identified because they hide their faces like cowards.
ICE does not take mercy on children, detaining 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father in their driveway. Ramos had just arrived home from school and was used as bait, being asked by officers to knock on the front door to see if anyone else was at home. The father and son were later released after the story broke on the news around the country.
The point of ICE is to detain undocumented immigrants and deport them. The difficult thing about trying to deport as many people as possible is that getting legal citizenship in America is exceedingly difficult. In a best-case scenario, it takes years for someone seeking asylum, as was the case in Ramos’s family, to gain citizenship.
This is a clear overuse of power being taken by the Trump administration. There are so many situations and circumstances in which someone would be here illegally; more information needs to be gathered before immigrants are detained.
In opposition to Trump’s personal opinion, these people are exactly that – people, not animals. They are humans who deserve empathy and understanding. If they are detained, they deserve evidence and warrants, and basic accommodations like communication.
Immigrants are also what make up America. Native Americans make up 1.4% of the population, which means that at one point in time, 98.6% of American families have come to this country. Immigrants are what make America beautiful and interesting; it’s supposed to be a melting pot of cultures and diversity. ICE threatens that.
ICE agents also must act like actual federal agents, have badges, show their faces, and be able to de-escalate a situation, not pull out a gun and just start shooting.
There are things that people can do to protest ICE and its behavior. Volunteering with Frontline Dignity, a non-profit organization dedicated to rapid response to ICE, organizing protests, and training others in how to react to ICE, is a great option.
One of the most important things people can do is be aware of where ICE is in the city and spread factual information. Be there for each other. When our government is taking dangerous actions against the people, we need to unite.
