"ICE's violent enforcement actions often involve the needless destruction of people's personal property. The Fifth Amendment's takings clause makes such property destruction unconstitutional. Demanding damages for these harms may seem to miss the mark, in the sense that they do not address the features that make ICE's strategies so horrifying, specifically the physical violence against human beings. This is quite fair."
"From Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis to Maine, ICE agents are leaving a trail of destruction and fear. The most important harms they leave behind are broken lives, injuries, and deaths. There are already important efforts in the works to hold them to account via criminal investigations and civil actions. Yet these actions will be hard to win. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are wreaking another, second-string harm, this one involving the destruction of personal property."
ICE agents cause widespread destruction, fear, and grave human harms including broken lives, injuries, and deaths across multiple U.S. locations. Their enforcement tactics often needlessly destroy personal property. The Fifth Amendment's takings clause renders such property destruction unconstitutional and creates a legal basis to demand damages. Criminal investigations and civil actions for bodily harms exist but face high barriers and are difficult to win because of doctrines like qualified immunity. Pursuing property-damage claims can offer a clearer, practicable path to redress when claims for physical or dignitary injuries are blocked. The Minneapolis case of ChongLy "Scott" Thao illustrates both physical mistreatment and property-seizure harms.
Read at Slate Magazine
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