Power Grab/Fire anyone who can stop him
A report counts 412 incidents in which police and federal agents misused crowd-control weapons on immigration protesters
Physicians for Human Rights and UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center documented incidents from June 2025 to May 2026 in which agencies fired tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades on people protesting immigration enforcement.
What happened
On July 13, 2026, Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley published “Charting the Crackdown,” documenting 412 incidents of crowd-control weapon misuse against people protesting immigration enforcement. The weapons included tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets and stun grenades, fired by federal, state and local agencies.
The incidents run from June 2025, when raids in Los Angeles set off protests that spread nationwide, to May 2026, when data collection stopped. Physicians for Human Rights has documented crowd-control weapon injuries since the 1980s and catalogued the incidents with Berkeley researchers.
The authors found that agencies did not follow their own policies, guidelines or the law. They found agents targeted vulnerable and protected people, including medics and journalists, and harmed unarmed protesters exercising First Amendment rights. News coverage described blindings and traumatic brain injuries among the injuries documented.
Who benefited
No one benefited from the injuries; the agencies benefited from having no systematic record of them until outside researchers compiled one. The report gives oversight bodies and courts the evidence they lacked, and it names the agencies that failed to follow their own policies.
Who wanted something
The enforcement surge, including Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago and Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, put thousands of federal agents into protest settings with crowd-control weapons. DHS leadership defended agents’ use of force, and NSPM-7 directed law enforcement to treat protest-related offenses as domestic-terrorism priorities.
Who lost out
Protesters, medics and journalists were blinded and suffered brain injuries from weapons marketed as less lethal. The report found the force broke the agencies’ own rules. The 412 incidents are a floor, since data collection ended in May 2026.
Why it matters
A count of 412 misuse incidents in one year, compiled by medical researchers, is the clearest measure so far of the force used on immigration protesters. The report documents civil immigration enforcement equipped with military-style crowd-control weapons, and no internal restraint on how they were used.
Sources Physicians for Human Rights / UC Berkeley Human Rights Center (primary)The Guardian