🚨BREAKING: In New York, an ICE agent was caught on video walking across the street and pepper spraying a woman directly in the face… for film them. In the video, a woman is standing, with several other civilians, on the opposite side of the street. They aren’t blocking traffic, or interfering with an arrest. In fact, you can’t even see an arrest taking place. They’re simply standing there, filming ICE agents from a public place. Then, the ICE agent deliberately walks across the street, approaches the woman, raises his pepper spray canister just inches from her face, and sprays her directly in the eyes. People standing around her are seen running away to avoid getting sprayed, too Only AFTER spraying her do you hear the agent say, “Back up.” And then they turn around, like they didn’t just assault U.S. citizens with a chemical weapon, and walk away. This should piss off every American. The First Amendment protects your right to record law enforcement in public. Pepper spraying someone for peacefully recording… is retaliation. The Fourth Amendment also protects people from excessive force. Under the Constitution, officers can’t use force that isn’t objectively reasonable under the circumstances. If someone is standing on the other side of the street, posing no immediate threat, not resisting, and not interfering… it’s difficult to justify blasting them in the face with a chemical weapon. And even ICE’s own use-of-force standards require force to be reasonable, necessary, and proportional to the threat presented. Nothing in this video suggests that standard was met. This is exactly why people should be concerned about masked federal agents operating with little transparency, or accountability… If agents can walk up to U.S. citizens and assault them with a chemical weapon for recording… that means your constitutional rights exist at the discretion of whoever is holding the pepper spray. And that’s not how a constitutional republic is supposed to work.
