01/28/2026
CW: This post describes violent and harmful actions by federal immigration agents against disabled people.
One of AAPD’s core values is the fundamental belief that all disabled people deserve to be treated with dignity – meaning their civil, human, and constitutional rights must be fully honored and enforced. The extreme, violent tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) across the country pose a severe and unacceptable danger for disabled people, regardless of citizenship status.
The following stories are just a few examples of the profound harm ICE is inflicting on our community. There are many more. Each of these has been fact-checked by AAPD and corroborated by multiple nonpartisan media sources.
In Minnesota, an autistic U.S. citizen with a brain injury, Aliya Rahman, encountered an ICE roadblock while driving to a doctor’s appointment. She told them she was disabled and heading to the doctor, and ICE agents responded with immediate aggression: they broke her car window, cut her seatbelt, bound her arms, and physically carried her away. She was detained in federal custody until she lost consciousness and was later treated for injuries a doctor confirmed were consistent with assault.
In Texas, Wael Tarabishi, a disabled man with Pompe disease died after his primary caregiver and father, Maher, was taken into ICE custody last fall. Maher was not arrested for wrongdoing, but because his asylum was revoked when the attorney who represented him fraudulently practiced law without a license. Wael was hospitalized in the ICU after his father was detained. Ultimately Wael died. ICE would not let Maher say goodbye to his son or attend his funeral.
When a person’s disability makes it hard for them to hear, see, or understand ICE’s commands, ICE assumes that person is being noncompliant.
In New York City, ICE agents detained Carlos Chalco Chango, who is blind, after showing him an image of a target, and when he said he could not see it, immediately arrested him. While in detention, he was denied access to his cane and a text-to-audio app, a crucial assistive technology necessary for him to read legal documents.
In California, Javier Diaz Santana, a deaf, non-verbal DACA recipient, could not understand ICE’s commands. ICE took his phone away when he attempted to use it to communicate, and refused to remove his handcuffs so he could sign. Javier spent nearly a month in an immigration detention center in El Paso, and was denied access to an ASL interpreter.
This is unacceptable. Take action with the National Immigration Law Center and tell Congress to stop funding these horrific attacks on our communities: https://act.nilc.org/page/93101/action/1
AAPD has also collected resources from our partners and trusted sources of information. Please read them at https://www.aapd.com/aapd-resources-and-news-sources-amidst-ice-violence/.
ID: Various headlines of ICE violence against disabled people
