Theme: civilian harm
Non-combatants caught in or targeted by state-organized force.
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Survivors of the Don Maca
Ecuadorian fishers aboard the Don Maca survived a US drone strike on their vessel during routine fishing operations; no evidence has been produced linking them or their boat to drug trafficking.
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First Day of the Iran War: An Untested Missile Hit a School
On the war's first day, the United States deployed a ballistic missile that had never been used in combat; analysis of the strike sites shows it hit a sports hall, an elementary school, and residential buildings, killing at least twenty-one including children.
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Four Out of Five Chemotherapy Sessions
Oudone Lothirath, a Minnesota man with aggressive lymphoma, missed four of five scheduled chemotherapy sessions while in ICE detention in Texas in January; he was returned to Minnesota only after a hospital letter warned he would die without treatment, and he is now in hospice.
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Inside Dilley
Sworn declarations from detained children and parents at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center — the nation's only family detention facility, run by CoreCivic and reopened in 2025 — describe vomit-inducing food, denied medical care, intimidating guards, and a four-year-old who developed a black eye after hitting his head, his potential concussion left untreated.
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The Pool
An Associated Press investigation, drawn from 911 calls and detainee accounts, reports that staff at the nation's largest ICE detention facility — Camp East Montana on Fort Bliss in Texas — placed bets on which detainee would next die by suicide; Camp East Montana sits on the site of a World War II Japanese American internment camp.
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The Thirty-Eighth Killing
A running tally maintained by independent observers records the United States military's thirty-eighth instance of unlawfully killing civilians under the orders of the Secretary of Defense and the President; the cumulative count of dead is at least one hundred thirty.
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Gassed in His Own Home
Federal agents deployed tear gas on a Minneapolis crowd that included children; the canisters shattered the window of a low-income apartment occupied by a disabled veteran, who was tear-gassed inside his own home.
2026
2025
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Hours on a Roof, in Subzero
Masked federal agents wearing ICE vests, refusing to identify themselves or present warrants, cordoned off a Minneapolis construction site and trapped two men on the roof for hours in subzero temperatures; one was eventually taken away by ambulance.
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Deported in a Vegetative State
Randall Alberto Gamboa Esquivel, a fifty-two-year-old Costa Rican man held in ICE custody in Texas since February, was put on an air ambulance to Costa Rica in September while in a vegetative state with encephalopathy and rhabdomyolysis; he died in a hospital in his hometown in October.
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The Toddler in the Backseat
Federal immigration agents in California arrested a U.S. citizen and drove away with the man's car — with his toddler still in the backseat — over the protests of a crowd that had gathered, and only after the crowd's intervention did agents permit the family to take the child.
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Less Than a Minute
A New York Times reconstruction of the September 12 Chicago-area shooting of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez — drawing on surveillance footage, body-camera video, and bystander recordings — contradicts the DHS account: the videos do not show Villegas-Gonzalez striking either officer with his car, and one of the officers describes his own injuries on camera as 'nothing major.'
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Tear Gas Almost Every Day
After U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order on October 9 limiting federal agents' use of crowd-control weapons against Illinois protesters, court filings allege that federal agents violated the order 'almost every day,' including a Halloween-eve incident in which children on their way to a school parade were tear-gassed.