Laurie Eckman is 84 years old. In October 2025, she and her husband Richard, an 83-year-old Vietnam War veteran, joined a peaceful march to Portland's ICE facility. Federal officers launched chemical munitions into the crowd. A pepper ball hit Laurie in the head. She bled, went to the hospital, and was treated for a concussion. A few weeks earlier, on September 1, freelance videographer Hugo Rios was filming the same facility from the public sidewalk across the street, wearing a visible press vest, when agents pushed him and shot him with pepper balls anyway. Neither of them was doing anything ICE's own written use-of-force policy would call a threat. That policy says force has to be "objectively reasonable" and limited to the minimum necessary given the actual circumstances. Measured against what actually happened to two people who were, by every account, not endangering anyone, the written standard and the documented practice aren't close.
The Written Standard
Documented fact: ICE operates under DHS-wide use-of-force policy requiring that any force used be "objectively reasonable" given the totality of circumstances — the same general Fourth Amendment framework used across American law enforcement. Officers are directed to use the minimum force necessary, with the written policy specifically listing the presence of other officers, subjects, or bystanders as relevant to whether a given use of force was reasonable. That's the standard an 84-year-old woman standing in a crowd, and a credentialed journalist standing on a public sidewalk, should have been protected by.
What's Actually Been Documented
Documented fact: Human Rights Watch documented federal agents using what it characterized as excessive force against peaceful protesters, legal observers, street medics, and journalists in Illinois in October 2025, during Operation Midway Blitz near the Broadview ICE facility outside Chicago; a November 14, 2025 clash there led to 21 protester arrests. In Portland, the pattern repeated for months: tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets, and flashbang grenades deployed against crowds that consistently included bystanders and press, not just people posing any physical threat.
Portland's South Waterfront
Home to the ICE facility outside which an 84-year-old woman was hit in the head with a pepper ball during a peaceful march. Photo: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
What a Federal Judge Had to Order
Documented fact: U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon issued and then continued an order restricting agents' use of tear gas, pepper balls, and other crowd-control munitions near the Portland ICE facility unless officers face an imminent threat of physical harm, finding the government's justification for its prior use insufficiently supported. On the record: Kelly Simon, an attorney with the ACLU of Oregon who helped bring the case, explained why the lawsuit was necessary at all: "We are here to ask the court to protect protesters and journalists at the Portland ICE building from defendants' ongoing pattern of retaliation." A separate coalition representing journalists sued the federal government directly, arguing that using tear gas, pepper balls, and other riot-control weapons against reporters and peaceful protesters violated the First Amendment; that suit produced a preliminary injunction requiring federal officials to limit their use of those weapons and to wear visible identification — connecting directly back to the mask and identification questions covered in our piece on why ICE agents wear masks.
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An 84-year-old concussed by a pepper ball at a peaceful march, and a federal judge needed to order restraint — that's the gap between a written "objectively reasonable" standard and what actually happened. Solidly Anti-Authoritarian Stickers territory.
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The Legislative Response
Documented fact: In November 2025, Representatives Scott Peters, Dan Goldman, and Raja Krishnamoorthi introduced the Stop Excessive Force in Immigration Act, intended to create a stronger, more specific legal standard governing federal immigration agents' use of force than the general "objectively reasonable" framework currently in place — including body-camera requirements, limits on crowd-control munitions, and restrictions on masks during enforcement. It had not passed as of this writing.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL)
Krishnamoorthi co-introduced the Stop Excessive Force in Immigration Act after Human Rights Watch documented excessive force incidents in his home state. Photo: official congressional portrait, public domain, via unitedstates/images (GitHub).
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a court restricting tear gas mean the officers broke the law?
A restriction or injunction is a court limiting future conduct based on the evidence presented — a real judicial finding that the government's justification didn't hold up, but a different legal action from a criminal or civil finding against any individual officer.
Is "objectively reasonable" a meaningful legal standard?
It's the same general framework used across much of American law enforcement, so it isn't unique to ICE. Whether it's being applied consistently in practice is exactly the question the Eckmans' and Rios's experiences, and the resulting lawsuits, are testing directly.
Were journalists specifically targeted, or caught in broader crowd-control actions?
Hugo Rios was, by his own account, filming from a public sidewalk, visibly marked as press, when he was shot with pepper balls — a detail central to the journalists' First Amendment lawsuit that followed and the preliminary injunction it produced.
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Related Reading
Why Are ICE Agents Wearing Masks?: the same journalists' lawsuit that produced tear-gas limits also forced a ruling on officer identification.
When the Government's ICE Story Doesn't Match the Video: three specific incidents where the "objectively reasonable" standard was tested against video evidence after the fact.
Who Investigates ICE When ICE Gets It Wrong?: why it's increasingly federal judges, not internal DHS reviewers, doing the checking described above.
Sources: OPB, "After months of teargassing outside Portland ICE building, protesters take feds to court," Mar. 2026, detailing the accounts of Hugo Rios and Richard and Laurie Eckman; Courthouse News Service, "Portland protesters, journalists seek ban on tear gas at ICE facility," featuring ACLU of Oregon attorney Kelly Simon; Human Rights Watch, "United States: Federal Agents Use Excessive Force in Illinois," Oct. 23, 2025; Oregon Capital Chronicle, coverage of the federal court order restricting tear gas near the Portland ICE facility; WTTW News, reporting on the November 2025 Broadview ICE facility clash; press release, Reps. Peters, Goldman, and Krishnamoorthi, Stop Excessive Force in Immigration Act, Nov. 2025.
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