After a violent ICE arrest in Minnesota, Alberto Castañeda Mondragón survived skull fractures and brain hemorrhages. Federal authorities have yet to open a formal probe.
Alberto Castañeda Mondragón’s memory was hazy after he said he was brutally beaten last month while in the custody of immigration agents. He couldn’t recall much of his past, but the violence of the January 8 arrest in Minnesota was seared into his battered brain.
The Mexican immigrant told The Associated Press this week that he remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pulling him from a friend’s car in front of a St. Paul shopping center, throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, and then beating him repeatedly, striking him repeatedly in the head with a steel baton.
Alberto remembers being taken to a detention center, where he says he was beaten again. Then came the emergency room and the excruciating pain caused by eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.
Castañeda Mondragón, 31, is one of an unknown number of immigration detainees who, despite avoiding deportation, have suffered permanent injuries after violent encounters with ICE. While the Trump administration insists that ICE limits its operations to immigrants with violent criminal histories, he has no criminal record.
Here’s what we know about the case, one of the allegations of excessive use of force that the federal government has so far refused to investigate.
The immigrant claims the attack was unprovoked.
ICE agents who arrested Castañeda Mondragón on January 8 told nurses that the man “intentionally hit his head against a brick wall,” a version that staff at Hennepin County Medical Center immediately doubted.
A CT scan showed fractures to the front, back, and both sides of his skull—injuries that, according to one doctor, were inconsistent with a fall.
ICE’s version of events changed while Castañeda Mondragón lay in critical condition at the hospital. At least one agent told staff that the man “was beaten,” according to court documents filed by an attorney seeking his release and according to the nurses who treated him.
“There was never a wall,” Castañeda Mondragón told the Associated Press, recalling that ICE agents struck him with the same metal bar they used to break the windows of the vehicle he was in. He later identified it as a telescopic baton commonly carried by law enforcement officers. Training materials and policies on the use of force by police across the United States state that this type of baton can be used to strike the arms, legs, and body. However, striking the head, neck, or spine is considered potentially lethal force.
