A federal judge in New York reprimanded the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on Monday, accusing its officers of lying, lacking proper training and fabricating records to cover up illegal arrests.
In a scathing 28-page ruling, the judge, Gary R. Brown, condemned the agency’s tactics when it mistakenly arrested two Hispanic men, including a U.S. citizen, in the Bronx in May, finding that ICE had “falsified official records trying to conceal” its “illegal actions.”
Judge Brown wrote that immigration agents involved in the arrests had given “inconsistent, false and misleading testimony” in court, and said that they had probably perjured themselves. He found that the officers were inexperienced, possessed little understanding of the law and used “false testimony to conceal these failings.”
More broadly, Judge Brown concluded that the agency’s claim — that it had confused the two men it arrested with the intended targets — was part of a “troubling” pattern by ICE to justify erroneous arrests.
“The claims of misidentification here prove baseless, the arrests were procedurally deficient and legally invalid, and ICE agents falsified official records trying to conceal their illegal actions, which included significant injury to a U.S. citizen,” Judge Brown wrote. He was appointed by President Trump in 2019 to serve in the Eastern District of New York.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The ruling joins a growing wave of decisions by federal judges — including those appointed by Republicans — who have sharply rebuked ICE. Judges have said that the agency has conducted warrantless arrests and trampled due process rights amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation push.
In numerous cases, ICE has argued that it has mistakenly detained people after mis-identifying them, drawing scrutiny from judges and immigration lawyers who argue that the arrests are indiscriminate. Last month, immigration agents in the Chicago suburbs detained a U.S. citizen — who suffered injuries to his head, neck and teeth during the arrest — after claiming they mistook him for a fugitive.
Judge Brown’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed in June by one of the two men mistakenly detained on May 6 — around the time that ICE began escalating operations across the United States — in the Norwood section of the Bronx.
In back-to-back arrests, ICE detained a 26-year-old Dominican immigrant, who filed the lawsuit, which sought his release, and a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, who sustained head injuries after officers tackled him to the ground. At the time, news outlets published surveillance footage that showed an ICE agent pointing a gun at the back of the U.S. citizen while he walked on a sidewalk.
In response to the lawsuit, ICE submitted evidence and testified during hearings that offered a window into the arrests. Judge Brown determined on Monday that the agency’s actions had been riddled with “failings,” which he ordered ICE to correct.
The episode began when at least five immigration officers arrived on Hull Avenue in three unmarked vehicles to conduct a targeted operation, three of the officers testified in court.
The three officers, Judge Brown said, had “relative inexperience.” One of them, the team’s leader, had worked for two years as a deportation officer, while the other two had joined ICE eight months earlier, after working for U.S. Border Patrol.
The three officers said they had been searching for an undocumented immigrant with a criminal history and a second person who had no criminal record but had failed to show up to an immigration appointment. The officers said they had photographs of their targets, but provided conflicting testimony as to whether they also had their physical descriptions, including their weight and height, Judge Brown said.
While conducting surveillance, the officers said they had seen a man who resembled one of their targets exchanging drugs for money outside a building. As the agents moved in, the man darted away. Four or five masked ICE agents took him down, handcuffed him and hustled him into a vehicle, according to court filings.
Soon after, the agents realized they had apprehended “the wrong person,” the team leader testified in court.
They had detained Angel Jesus Almonte, 26, an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, who was five inches taller and 80 pounds heavier than the man the officers said they had been after, according to the judge. The ICE team leader acknowledged in court that “it’s very easy to see they’re two different people.”
While handcuffed inside the vehicle, Mr. Almonte acknowledged to the agents that he was in the United States illegally.
But the judge found that the ICE agents had improperly arrested Mr. Almonte — and then tried to cover up their mistake. He found that ICE had faked an arrest warrant after the fact, claiming official databases had already confirmed that Mr. Almonte was in the country illegally. In reality, initial searches turned up nothing — so agents arrested him first, entered his information into the system afterward and lied on official forms to cover their tracks, the judge said.
“ICE agents prepared a substantially false administrative warrant in an attempt to rationalize their actions,” Judge Brown wrote.
He also questioned whether Mr. Almonte had been seen dealing drugs, saying that testimony from ICE agents on the matter “bear all the hallmarks of coordinated fabrication.” No drugs or money were found on Mr. Almonte, he said, and no observations of drug dealing were mentioned in ICE records.
In an interview, Mr. Almonte said that ICE had lied about him selling drugs, saying that he was returning home from a nearby store when the agents ambushed him.
“I just started running to save myself after seeing how ICE treated people,” Mr. Almonte said in Spanish. “I was scared.”
Mr. Almonte, whom the judge ordered released after nearly two months in detention, said that he had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2022 in search of “a better quality of life.” He has continued working in bodegas and making food deliveries, and is now in deportation proceedings in immigration court.
Michael Musa-Obregon, a lawyer for Mr. Almonte, argued that ICE had fabricated a story of “mistaken identity” to justify randomly stopping and illegally detaining his client.
“Clearly a different person,” Mr. Musa-Obregon said. “Yet ICE arrested him anyway — and the court found that they tried to manufacture the justification afterward. The government cannot arrest first and invent the reason later.”
A few minutes after Mr. Almonte was detained, officers ran up to another man on the same block whom they said they had believed was their second target.
Video shows a masked ICE officer brandishing his gun and briefly pointing it in a man’s direction while he walks on a sidewalk with two other men, their backs turned to the officer. The officer then grabs the man’s arms before he is tussled to the ground and handcuffed with the help of two other masked officers who pile on top of him.
The man was later identified as Jeury Concepción, 19, an American citizen who said he had been on his way to get a haircut when the ICE officers began following him. He sustained a gash on the right side of his head that required stitches.
“I’m from New York, I was born and raised here,” Mr. Concepción told News 12 in an interview in May, after he was released, adding that the agents had never asked to see his ID before he was arrested.
Joshua Dayan, a lawyer for Mr. Concepción, said that his client planned to sue the agency.
“We are pursuing litigation on behalf of our client because what happened to him should not happen to anybody just walking the street innocently on any given day, let alone a U.S. citizen,” Mr. Dayan said. “All they did was run up to Jeury and attack him.”
In court, the ICE officers said that Mr. Concepción’s arrest had also been a case of mistaken identity and that they had been trying to arrest an undocumented man with motor vehicle charges on his record.
In his ruling, Judge Brown included side-by-side photos of Mr. Concepción (skinny, without much facial hair) and ICE’s intended target (heavily built and heavily bearded), suggesting there was little resemblance. The judge described Mr. Concepción’s arrest as illegal and “extremely violent.”
Judge Brown has repeatedly criticized ICE’s behavior, including in December, when he accused the agency of holding migrants in filthy conditions in a Long Island lockup and said it had presented false information in a Jamaican immigrant’s arrest and violated court orders.
On Monday, he ordered the agency to explain within three weeks the steps or disciplinary measures it would take to ensure future enforcement actions are conducted lawfully, and to address illegal arrests and falsified records and testimony.
He did not rule out imposing penalties or holding ICE in contempt in the future.