The controversy surrounding a recent ICE raid in a Massachusetts neighborhood has escalated dramatically following the release of harrowing new footage. The video, widely circulated online late Friday night, shows the 16-year-old daughter of an immigrant woman being violently thrown to the ground and restrained by ICE agents as she screamed in terror, her face pressed into the pavement while pleading for her mother.
The disturbing moment has ignited national outrage and added fuel to an already inflamed debate over ICE’s tactics under the Trump administration. The girl, whose name has not been released due to her age, can be heard shrieking as multiple agents swarm her. Witnesses say she was trying to reach the vehicle where her mother had just been forced inside, when agents intercepted her mid-run and slammed her to the ground.
“She screamed like someone was being murdered,” said one neighbor who filmed the video. “They treated her like a criminal, like she wasn’t even human.”
Online reaction has been swift and furious. One Reddit commenter, MambyPamby8, wrote: “This is honestly some Nazi WW2 era shit. It’s horrifying.” Another user, Own_Instance_357, drew direct parallels to the targeting of Jewish families in Nazi-occupied Europe: “It’s basically how Anne Frank’s family was targeted.”
Others questioned the mechanisms behind these raids. “Are these people on some list? Or are neighbors reporting them?” asked Duds215. Replies suggest a chilling mixture of both, with accusations that ICE has encouraged public tip-offs, often fueled by racism or paranoia. One user, Character_Contact_47, reported seeing “neighbors posting addresses of ‘suspicious’ families on ICE’s social media pages.”
The teen girl, now facing charges for allegedly kicking the vehicle during the altercation, has been labeled by some local officials as a “threat to law enforcement.” But critics say the real threat is the unchecked power ICE is wielding.
“The girl wasn’t a threat. She was a daughter watching her mother get taken,” said Ashley Spring, the Worcester School Committee candidate who was also arrested at the scene for trying to intervene. “This is what fascism looks like in America.”
Community activists in Worcester have condemned the incident as part of a wider pattern of ICE overreach and racially charged intimidation. With nearly a quarter of the local population being foreign-born, the city has become an unlikely battleground in a national immigration crackdown that increasingly targets not hardened criminals, but ordinary families.
And while ICE continues to defend its tactics as “standard procedure,” legal experts are raising questions about the agency’s apparent disregard for due process. No warrant has been produced for the mother’s arrest, and ICE has not released any justification for the physical restraint of a minor.
The video has prompted calls for an independent investigation and has reignited the demand to rein in ICE’s growing reach. “They’re just taking people now,” commented one user from Washington, D.C. “We’ve entered the ‘Goon Squad’ stage of fascism.”
