American Civil Liberties Union affiliates across the country said they filed 30 claims this week seeking damages for the wrongdoing of federal agents involved in immigration enforcement.
The litigation effort announced Wednesday includes 54 claims filed since February in 17 states and Washington, D.C. The claims include allegations of abuses in immigration detention, attacks against people exercising First Amendment rights, racial profiling and unlawful arrests of U.S. citizens and immigrants.
The ACLU said it seeks to hold federal immigration agents accountable via the Federal Torts Claim Act, a 1946 statute that allows people to get compensation for federal employees’ misconduct. But attorneys face multiple hurdles and yearslong battles before the possibility of a settlement or bench trial.
“We are filing these coordinated claims for the clients to have a path for accountability, to be able to show and demonstrate the harms that they have endured, and to have redress for that,” Yasmin Cader, an ACLU deputy executive director, said. “But it is also really important that we expose the abuse, and that we elevate the human toll of the Trump’s administration’s brutal enforcement practices.”
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Willy Wender Aceituno and Norma Bowe are two of the clients ACLU affiliates are representing.
Immigration agents twice stopped and detained Aceituno, a U.S. citizen, on Nov. 15 in Charlotte, North Carolina, according to a notice of the claims sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
The agents shattered his car window, which resulted in cuts, and took him in an SUV for 15 minutes, releasing him after confirming his citizenship. His detention caused physical, emotional, and psychological harm, the notice says.
Bowe, a 68-year-old professor of public health at Kean University and registered nurse, brought forward a claim this week that says ICE officers outside of the Delaney Hall detention center threw her to the ground on May 25.
The nurse, who operates an RV clinic outside the New Jersey detention center, argues that at the time she was trying to help a woman protesting whose shirt had ripped. Bowe says she still has doctors’ appointments related to the injuries from hitting the pavement.
Acetituno is seeking $1.2 million in damages and Bowe is seeking $500,000.
“I’m an ordinary woman, and I want to stand up,” Bowe told NOTUS. “I want people to know my story, and I’m hoping that it will help other folks also stand up with their story.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, asked how many claims ICE and CBP have received since January 2025, said agents will continue to arrest the “worst of the worst” immigrants who are illegally present in the U.S., no matter how many lawsuits are filed.
“FTCA claims remain under review. Agitators who obstruct or assault federal law enforcement officers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the spokesperson said in an email.
To bring forward an FTCA claim, the person who suffered the injury has to do so within two years and wait six months for the agency employing the federal worker to respond, according to a congressional research report. If the agency denies the claim or doesn’t respond, the claimant can move forward with a federal lawsuit.
Before Congress enacted the FTCA, the only way to obtain compensation for federal employees’ wrongful actions was to petition lawmakers to pass a bill. “That was a horrible system,” said Paul Figley, a law professor who was the deputy director of the Justice Department’s FTCA division for 15 years.
Figley said immigration-enforcement-related claims are difficult and that the factual details of each case, rather than the policies of the Trump administration, would matter to reach a successful outcome for the ACLU.
And he warned these cases could become too political and attempt to curb the administration’s policy-making decisions, which wasn’t Congress’ intention with the statute.
“The FTCA isn’t there to provide a remedy for everybody that’s been hurt,” Figley said. “It’s there to provide a remedy for run-of-the-mill, everyday kinds of things that don’t affect how the government’s operating.”
Cases arising from President Donald Trump’s second term might not be solved until the next administration. For example, a federal court approved a $435,000 total settlement in March for four undocumented mothers whom Border Patrol agents expelled to Mexico days after giving birth in 2020, according to court documents.
The National Immigration Litigation Alliance and the law office of Bardis Vakili represented the mothers in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
NILA was also part of the legal team that obtained a $1.4 million settlement for a group of mothers and their children separated under the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. Their lawsuit was filed in 2019 and the court approved the settlement in 2024. Fathers and their children got $1.9 million in a similar lawsuit.
“If the government injures an individual, that individual should be compensated for that injury, if it was an unlawful injury,” Mary Kenney, NILA’s deputy director, said. “And our client population can use the money.”
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