How many U.S. citizens have filed lawsuits against ICE for wrongful detention since 2020?
Executive summary
There is no definitive number in the provided reporting that counts how many U.S. citizens have filed lawsuits against ICE for wrongful detention since 2020; available sources document multiple individual suits and at least a handful of class-action or group suits but do not offer a comprehensive tally [1] [2] [3] [4]. Reporting and advocacy materials show a pattern of individual complaints, local lawsuits, and proposed class actions—enough to establish that the phenomenon is real and recurring, but the sources do not permit an authoritative, up-to-the-minute count [2] [5] [6].
1. What the question actually asks and why it’s hard to answer definitively
The user seeks a single numeric tally—how many U.S. citizens have filed wrongful-detention suits against ICE since 2020—but news stories, law-firm writeups, advocacy press releases, and court pages in the provided set report cases piecemeal rather than aggregating filings into a single dataset, so the sources do not provide the complete numerator required for a definitive count [7] [2] [4].
2. The documented, named cases and examples in the reporting
The reporting includes named individual lawsuits such as the high-profile Leonardo Garcia Venegas litigation reported by ABC News and discussed in legal commentary [3] [1], MALDEF’s FTCA claim on behalf of Job Garcia in Los Angeles [4], and references to other individuals in local and national advocacy materials—each of which demonstrates that U.S. citizens have filed suits or claims alleging wrongful arrest or detention by immigration officers [4] [5].
3. Class actions and systemic challenges flagged by advocates and the ACLU
Advocacy groups have pursued class or proposed class actions against ICE’s detainer practices and warrantless arrests—Gonzalez v. ICE is repeatedly cited as an ongoing class action example in ACLU materials, and immigrant-rights organizations have filed suits challenging warrantless arrests and courthouse arrests, signaling group litigation beyond single-plaintiff suits [2] [8] [6].
4. How lawyers and legal commentators frame the claims and obstacles to counting cases
Law firms and legal guides make clear that citizens can sue under the Federal Tort Claims Act or via constitutional claims, but courts and circuits impose doctrinal hurdles—including immunity doctrines and the FTCA’s discretionary-function exception—that shape who files suits and how cases are brought and reported, which complicates any effort to assemble a simple numerical tally from public reporting alone [7] [1] [9].
5. Why the available reporting cannot produce a reliable total since 2020
The sources supplied are a mix of case studies, advocacy press releases, law-firm guidance, and news articles that highlight select lawsuits and trends but none offers systematic data collection or an exhaustive docket review; therefore the materials demonstrate multiple documented suits but do not enumerate all filings nationwide since 2020, leaving the precise count indeterminate from these sources alone [2] [5] [6].
6. Bottom line and practical next steps for someone seeking a true count
Based on the provided reporting, multiple U.S. citizens have filed lawsuits or FTCA claims against ICE for wrongful detention, including individual suits and at least some class-action efforts, but the exact number since 2020 cannot be established from these sources; obtaining a reliable tally would require searching federal court dockets, FOIA requests to DHS/ICE for FTCA claims, and consultation of aggregator databases used by legal researchers—none of which is contained in the supplied materials [1] [2] [4].