George Retes, a 26-year-old U.S. citizen and Army veteran, is speaking out five months after he says he was assaulted and wrongly detained by ICE on his way to work near Los Angeles. Retes is now the face of a new $250,000 ad campaign from Home of the Brave, a nonprofit highlighting what it calls the “catastrophic harm” of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
In the one-minute ad, The Veteran Who ICE Abducted — and Is Fighting Back, Retes recounts being surrounded by “hostile” immigration agents who shattered his car window, pepper sprayed him, pulled him from the vehicle, and held him in detention over a weekend. Nearly 200 U.S. citizens have been detained by ICE since Trump returned to office in January, according to ProPublica.
Retes, who served in Iraq, says DHS has repeatedly smeared him as violent — claims he flatly rejects, noting he was never charged with assault. DHS issued statements and social media posts accusing him of refusing to comply with law enforcement, but Retes says body-cam and surveillance footage released in the ad contradict those claims.
In a longer three-minute version of the video, Retes describes being tear-gassed, zip-tied, and pinned to the ground. While detained, he says he was placed on suicide watch, slept on a concrete bed under constant lighting, and was denied a shower despite chemical burns. The worst part, he says, was missing his daughter’s third birthday.
Retes is now working with the Institute for Justice to sue the Trump administration under the Federal Tort Claims Act. He was suspended from his job after the incident and later quit, saying the experience “left a bad taste.”
His message to national leaders is blunt: “Do your job. Make this country better.”
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