A federal judge appointed by President Trump says ICE agents lied under oath and fabricated records to cover up the violent, mistaken arrests of two men in the Bronx, one of them a U.S. citizen who needed stitches in his head.
In a 28-page ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown found that “ICE agents falsified official records trying to conceal their illegal actions” and said the agents’ sworn testimony bore “all the hallmarks of coordinated fabrication.”
What happened in the Bronx ICE arrests?
On May 6, masked ICE agents arrested two men in separate takedowns on Decatur and Hull avenues in the Bronx, both caught on video, the New York Daily News reported:
- Angel Almonte, a Dominican immigrant, was arrested without a warrant. ICE said it had mistaken him for someone else, but the man agents said they were looking for was five inches shorter and 80 pounds lighter.
- Jeury Concepcion, 19, a U.S. citizen born and raised in New York, was walking to a barbershop when an agent rushed him with a gun drawn. He was slammed to the ground and needed stitches. Brown called it “extremely violent.”
“I turned my back around. I got two guns in my head and everything. They throw me on the floor,” Concepcion told News 12 in May. “He ain’t ask me for no ID. I’m from New York. I was raised and born here.”
What did the judge find?
Brown found that three agents gave “evasive and apparently perjurious testimony,” especially their claim that they saw Almonte selling drugs, a claim that appeared nowhere in their paperwork before his bail hearing. He also found that after the arrest, an ICE supervisor searched agency databases five times, found nothing on Almonte, then added the information to the systems himself, issued a warrant after the fact, and searched again to “find” him.
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.
U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown
Brown ordered Almonte released in June. He has now ordered ICE to tell him within 21 days what discipline it will impose, and raised the possibility of sanctions and contempt.
The BeezLoop Take
This ruling is hard to dismiss as politics. Brown was appointed by Trump. He looked at the evidence and found agents who invented a drug-dealing story under oath and backfilled a database to justify an arrest they’d already made.
That matters far beyond two men in the Bronx. Immigration enforcement depends on courts trusting what agents swear to. If agents can fabricate records and the agency’s response is silence, every arrest becomes suspect, including the legitimate ones. And Concepcion is the clearest warning: a U.S. citizen, walking to a barbershop, bleeding from his head because someone decided he looked close enough.
The open question is what ICE does in the next 21 days. Will any of these agents face real discipline, or will the judge have to force it?
Related: Video shows Santa Ana police throwing a man to the street and punching him repeatedly.
Related: 31% of Latino voters say they now carry ID because of ICE.
Sources: New York Daily News via Yahoo · Mediaite · Law Commentary · CBS New York
