Protests of ‘Abolish ICE’ Reach Texas Dems as Trump’s Agents Count the Holes in the Dead

On Saturday, January 24, United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers pepper sprayed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti and pinned him face down in the street. They disarmed him. And then they then shot him “at least” 10 times. 

One of the agents clapped. 

Some then gathered over Pretti’s lifeless body, but not to render aid. They were counting holes. 

Bullet holes are bragging rights for the best funded military force on the planet now patrolling United States streets accosting citizen and noncitizen alike.

After another shooting of a legal observer in Chicago, a Border Patrol agent boasted on his posse’s encrypted chat: "I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”

Like Pretti, fellow legal observer Renee Good, killed earlier in the month in Minneapolis, didn’t get any medical attention from agents after she was shot multiple times after officers apparently gave her conflicting directives.

It’s a pattern highlighted by the Marshall Fund.

“After shooting both Good and Pretti, officers did not perform CPR or any other medical aid, and when physicians at the scene attempted to help, federal agents either delayed or stopped them from doing so.”

In the midst of this mayhem in Minneapolis, background to the abuses piling up in headline after headline, is the daily targeting of local residents for removal. Days before the killing of Pretti, for instance, officers grabbed 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos on his way home from school. He wasn’t the first from his school to be snatched. In spite of active asylum claims, both the child and his father were sent to a family detention center outside San Antonio in Dilley, Texas.

As Deceleration wrote back in December, lawsuits and judges’ orders chronicling persistent inhumane conditions have dogged ICE facilities in Illinois, New York, Baltimore, and California City. A federal judge compared the facilities at Broadview, Ill., for example, to a concentration camp.

Don’t expect better in Texas.

As columnist Moira Donegan writes at the Guardian this week:

“It is likely that [Liam] is not being treated well there. A report on detention camps holding children – including the one in Dilley, Texas – from the non-profit newsroom the Marshall Project, reveals claims of dirty conditions, overcrowding and inadequate food. Detained families said “the food was contaminated with mold and worms.”

Children suffered “so much psychological stress that parents said they were hitting their own faces or wetting themselves despite being potty-trained,” she writes.

Nothing in this contradicts the assessment of U.S. Rep Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, who declared at a press conference outside San Antonio City Hall on Wednesday that Liam must be released. That ICE must be abolished. Democrats didn’t get here overnight. It took time. 

Other recent deaths include Silverio Villegas González outside Chicago, 31-year-old Isaias Sanchez Barboza in Rio Grande City, Texas, and Keith Porter in Los Angeles. Then there are the record-setting death rates in the ICE facilities themselves. Four in-custody deaths in the first 10 days of 2026, including in El Paso, point to a total eclipse of past mortality figures.

And widespread chilling threats continue to be recorded by agents to protesters to "learn their lesson" from the wanton killings.

As the escalation of national demonstrations show, much of the country—and certainly targeted Minneapolis, where residents declared last Friday “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth & Freedom”—have had enough.

The people of Texas too, epicenter of so much of the deportation-industrial complex, are raising their voices against ICE and the rising attacks on communities around the county. 

There have been months of marches, rallies, and protests in cities and towns around the state for months decrying ICE. Earlier this month residents filled the chambers of San Antonio City Council to demand an end to collaboration with ICE. Indigenous danzantes prayed, spoke, and danced on Main Plaza under the shadow of San Fernando Cathedral while being mocked by two counter protestors. Inside chambers testimonies were overwhelmingly in favor of ending San Antonio Police Department cooperation with ICE.

This is the home of the Alamo, Council members were reminded by Antonio Diaz, organizer of the annual Indigenous Dignity Day March and former mayoral candidate. A revered battle site bloodied by a cry of "liberty" masking a demand for slavery led largely by white slaveholders after Mexico itself outlawed the practice.

The United States, Diaz said, "calls itself a democracy, a freedom-fighting nation, when it reality it has always been a racist country." Bringing that allusion current, he pointed to Governor Greg Abbott's filling the waters of the Rio Grande with razor buoys.

"Most Natives know their history. This is a racist, racist nation. It's still a very racist state."

Then last Saturday hundreds of detained families inside of the Dilley detention center itself raised their voices and caught the world's attention. They were loud enough to hear in the parking lot by immigration attorney Eric Lee, of Lee & Godshall-Bennett, LLC, who broadcast their cries during a series of livestreams on X.

That protest came in spite a decision by CoreCivic to cut off internet access to the prisoners for fear they would hear of unrest seizing much of the rest of the United States, Lee said, estimating the number of those protesting inside to be over 1,000. Lee said the protest was intended to signal solitary with those striking in Minnesota but also raise concern about the treatment of Liam Ramos.

Voices cry out: "Libertad!" "Let us out!"

Their cries rise as the number of children incarcerated skyrockets under the Trump administration.

One of those protesting told the Associated Press on a phone call:

“The message we want to send is for them to treat us with dignity and according to the law. We’re immigrants, with children, not criminals.”

Days later, hundreds gathered in Downtown Dilley as part of a rapid mobilization. They bunched together beside an oversized watermelon sculpture in the middle of downtown, a blip along Interstate 35 in the Eagle Ford fracking fields that sprung up alongside the railroad originally to move cattle and crops, becoming a center for watermelon production for a time.

Of course, others were here long before that. Juan Mancias, tribal chair of the Carrizo-Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, paused to sing a song for the incarcerated children in his original language, a language that the land around us remembers and understands, he told Deceleration recently.

He encouraged those attending to resist dehumanizing rhetorics that root in our conversations and imaginations, borne from the capitalist rationales frequently are used to justify displacement and incarceration.

“When they talk about critical infrastructure, that the [border] wall is a critical infrastructure. That the Dilley [detention] building is critical infrastructure. Hey. Aren’t the children inside critical?” Mancias asked.

“Aren’t you critical? Aren’t our ways important? Because they don’t teach you real history about the genocide that happened in this state [and] so-called America, the United States.”

Sulma Franco introduced herself to the group by first highlighting the fact that she was unarmed, perhaps inspired by the killing of Pretti, knowing that the presence of a weapon was used as justification for his murder. She spoke in Spanish with an interpreter as a formerly incarcerated Guatemalan immigrant who spent more than two years imprisoned in various facilities.

“I am brandishing not one weapon. Because we‘re doing this in peace and in solidarity. Because love represents peace and respect. I come in peace.”

Franco described how detention systems create “broken communities.”

“It is not just that our most vulnerable communities must suffer this physical and psychological damage. It is important as an immigrant woman to come here to represent those communities that are still suffering oppression.”

She called for allies to defend those most vulnerable. And to do so with love.

Franco was joined by 13-year-old Candy, who said she was detained and in custody at the age of three along with her mother.

“During this time I was under the custody of an officer and a dog that at one point terrorized me and this marked my infancy completely. It’s been 10 years and I still fill with panic any time I see a dog.”

“I’m here to raise my voice for myself, for my friends, and all the children that have been unjustly incarcerated. There shouldn’t be cages for children.”

They called on elected leadership to defend the rights of immigrants and children.

Several clergy who have just spent time serving the community of Minneapolis assembled at the front as Texas state troopers and local police drove back and forth.  

“We want you to know, you are not alone,” said Reverend Erin Walter, minister and executive director of Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry. “The world is with us in this moment calling for libertad.”

Walter taught the group a song she said some of the faith leaders in attendance that day learned in Minneapolis, where residents have been singing for their neighbors under threat in the street: 

“This for our neighbors who are locked inside. Together we will abolish ICE.”

Soon roughly 200 lined up for the march behind banners and signs reading "Protect Dreamers and TPS" and "Free Them All." Two police cars escorted the procession the 2.4 miles to the Dilley facility, where others had been waiting for hours with signs of their own. Later a local ISD school bus would arrive, filled not with children but Texas Department of Public Safety officers in full riot gear.

Inside the facility, U.S. Reps Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Dallas) and their staffs were meeting with Liam and his father. They met, they report back hours later back in San Antonio, with hundreds of families.

They met a woman imprisoned with a two-month-old baby. Many children under five years old. And, as Castro would say later in the day, "folks who are mentally broken because of the trauma they are experiencing."

And they reached a conclusion.

“Liam Ramos should be release immediately,” Castro told a crowd gathered for the inspection update outside San Antonio City Hall that afternoon to applause.

He posted this photo on his Instagram account:

“His father says that Liam has been very depressed since he’s been at Dilley. That he hasn’t been eating well. … I was concerned, you see how he appears in that photo. His energy. He seemed lethargic. His father said that Liam has been sleeping a lot."

He reported back that Liam had been asking about his mother, who agents tried to lure out of her home by instructing Liam to knock. He'd asked about his classmates. And he asked what became of his Spiderman backpack and fuzzy blue hat apparently confiscated by the authorities.

“I told him we would do everything we could to get him out of there," Castro continued. "I demanded from ICE that they release him. I told them that most of America wants Liam released and he should be released immediately."

Castro described Liam's incarceration as "emblematic" of the entire U.S. immigration detention system. Therefore, he said, we must "dismantle" ICE.

And he had a message for Stephen Miller, considered guiding force behind the most vicious elements of Trump's anti-immigrant agenda:

“If you’re going to be an architect of this kind of viciousness and brutality and inhumanity then you should have the guts to go to these facilities…and sit eye to eye with these kids and tell them why you believe they belong there."

The children and families in the detention center, he and other Democrats reminded attendees of the press conference, are not criminals. Many, like Liam and his father, have permission to be in the United States while they pursue their claim for asylum.

"They followed the rules," said Castro.

A battle in Congress has erupted over federal funding for ICE, as most Democrats have finally drawn a line, recognizing ICE as a lawless agency. Some speak of reforms. Others abolition. Today, a federal funding package was split into portions for individual votes to peel away ICE funding for special consideration as the country moves toward another federal government shutdown.

On the steps of San Antonio City Council, U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin) cast forward in time.

"When there is a new president, we have to make front and center, top priority, passing vitally comprehensive immigration reform so that the millions of people like Liam and his family have some fairness," Casar said.

"And so no president can ever do again what Donald Trump has done to Liam and so many other families here in Bexar County."

Some of the protestors who marched on Dilley to help raise global awareness of the cries form inside, however, didn't get the mention they had hoped for—even after DPS officers advanced on them, pushed some to the ground and arrested them, dispersing chemical spray to break up the remnants of the rally.

Deceleration interviewed several of those gathered before the march.

Robert David Padgett said he regularly videotapes ICE arrests of children at the downtown San Antonio courthouse. Witnessing children as young as 8 being snatched by ICE with their hands ziptied—not the "worst of the worst" that President Trump has promised over and again to target—is what motivated him to activism, he said.

“There'll be some type of justice. If it's not from us, it'll be from Him. And that's just why I'm here," he said.

Hours later, Padgett was on the front line facing a line of DPS officers after most of those who helped organize and lead the march were on buses to head home. He appeared to fall as DPS officers advanced and became one of two arrested.

Solidarity March

Diana Lopez, executive director of the Southwest Workers Union and a Deceleration community advisor, was on the frontline also, as a witness and to stand with her community, she said.

Much has been written about what came next, much of it contested in various media dispatches. What is clear is that the line of officers in riot gear advanced quickly with batons ready, pushing protestors back. Chemical weapons were used to break up the gathering. One canister recovered was branded "LIVE-MAXX," which the manufacturer website claims "produces powder" with "50% more bio-availability than our standard PAVA powders."

Lopez blamed DPS for failing to give the crowd time to respond to orders to withdraw, describing the protest as peaceful without any acts of violence by fellow protestors. "At no point were we actually moving forward or trying to break the line or anything," she said.

In fact, many on the front line were seeking to comply and back up when orders were issued, but there was confusion in the ranks. Some behind those in front continued to push forward.

"You could see this person [in the video] like just ramming at us from behind. The two people that are arrested were next to us."

She said those arrested were essentially arrested for falling to the ground, putting them within reach of DPS.

Gavin Pope was arrested and released later that day on a personal bond on charges of Interference with Public Duties. Padgett got the same charge, as well as an additional charge of Resisting Arrest. He was released late Thursday. A fund for bail support and legal services was set up to assist them through the process.

Lopez said she has been disappointed not to hear any support for protestors or condemnation of the chemical attack from elected representatives.

"I don't know if they actually asked constituents to be out there, but they exposed that there's a meeting, right. And they asked people to be vocal, speak out," she said.

In this new season of indiscriminate state violence targeting those resisting the administration in defense of their neighbors, tighter agreements and understandings are a necessity within movement spaces—including those in elected office seeking to advance calls for justice—to keep people as safe as possible.

"I think that's a challenge. Like is there actual support for people that are speaking out? Because anybody that is speaking out, that is vocal, that is taking the streets, is at this point risking their lives and their livelihood," Lopez said.

Deceleration reached out to the offices of both Reps. Castro and Crockett on Thursday. As of Friday afternoon, neither have responded.

With concerns about safety growing alongside rising cases of state violence, we asked attorney Eric Lee, a key figure behind the increased awareness of family detention practices, his thoughts on Wednesday morning while we were outside the center.

He spoke of how the policies and practices being used by DHS and ICE are being widely deployed against citizen and noncitizen alike.

"We saw that with the state assassination of Renee Goode and Alex Pretti. Those are, unfortunately, likely to not be the last state assassinations that take place of people who are trying to use the most powerful weapon against ICE—and that is a camera on your cell phone.”

His advice: Keep filming.

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Top Image: Hundreds of protestors marched through Dilley, Texas on Wednesday, demanding the release of the families and abolition of ICE. Image: Greg Harman