ICE agents are seen during a Jan. 9, 2026, enforcement operation at a home in Donna, Texas, where a federal lawsuit alleges U.S. citizens were detained and confronted at gunpoint during an immigration raid.CourtesyA group of Hispanic Texans are asking a federal judge to rule that ICE agents can't detain U.S. citizens or require those people to prove their citizenship in order to be freed from custody.In a complaint filed in the Southern District of Texas on Friday morning, the group of more than 30 people said that immigration authorities’ current practices violate their rights to due process and protection against unreasonable arrests.Article continues below this ad“ICE has ignored constitutional protections and created and encouraged an environment of seize first and sort it out later,” attorney Raed Gonzalez wrote. “Constitutional protections and limits are not even treated as an afterthought; they are ignored, trampled on, and forgotten.”The Department of Homeland Security didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the filing. DHS leaders, including Secretary Kristi Noem, have denied that citizens have been detained during ICE operations or said that examples of detained Americans were cases of people trying to interfere with legal arrests.Houston Chronicle LogoMake us a Preferred Source on Google to see more of us when you search.Add Preferred SourceThe complaint was announced during a news conference at the Houston Democratic Party’s Second Ward headquarters. The lawsuit doesn’t seek damages, but instead asks a judge to declare that any policies or practices that require U.S. citizens to carry proof of citizenship are unconstitutional.The lawsuit claims that ICE has stopped legal citizens while enforcing the White House’s immigration agenda.Article continues below this adIn one example, the lawsuit points to a Jan. 9 ICE raid in Donna, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border, where agents jumped a fence and held a man, Humberto Garcia, at gunpoint before tackling him. The agents also allegedly kicked a woman at the home and then entered the house without a judicial warrant to detain even more people, according to the complaint.The agents were there to arrest Garcia’s noncitizen parents, who were “in the process of obtaining lawful permanent resident status,” the lawsuit acknowledged.“In the process of doing so, they unnecessarily and improperly harmed and detained three U.S. citizens outside their own family home for hours,” the lawsuit said.The complaint also includes 21 Houston residents, as well as plaintiffs from Baytown, Pasadena, Jacinto City, Katy and South Houston. The lawsuit doesn’t describe any arrest that happened in Houston or Harris County.Not all of the people named as plaintiffs were detained or had to prove their citizenship, Gonzalez said.Article continues below this ad"No, they have not," Gonzalez said. "There's a large group of people that are just concerned 'I'm going to be next. This is going to happen to me.' A line needs to be drawn."None of the plaintiffs spoke at Friday's press conference. After the event, Gonzalez said he anticipated more people would join the lawsuit as news spread. Case targets Supreme Court rulingThe complaint appears to challenge parts of controversial Supreme Court decision that allowed federal agents to conduct wide-ranging immigration arrests in Los Angeles last year.The court, in a 6-3 vote in September, reversed a California federal judge's order that barred agents from stopping people based solely on their race, language, job or location.Article continues below this adJustice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that a person’s “apparent ethnicity,” speaking with an accent or presence at places like a bus stop or car wash could contribute to an agent’s reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country illegally.Critics decried Kavanaugh’s decision, saying it paved the way to allow police to use racial profiling to make arrests.The new lawsuit includes passages from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the same decision. The court’s decision “improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely,” Sotomayor said.The lawsuit joins other complaints alleging immigration agents are disregarding civil rights in communities across the country.Article continues below this adIn October, ProPublica reported on more than 170 cases where U.S. citizens were detained or arrested by immigration agents. Some of the people were held in custody more than a day, according to the report.The department denied ProPublica’s reporting in a statement.“We don’t arrest U.S. citizens for immigration enforcement,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said at the time. In November, Noem said "no American citizens have been arrested or detained."In December, Congressional Democrats released a report detailing the detentions of nearly two dozen citizens by ICE. The report accused the Trump administration of " seeking to build a nationwide paramilitary force with vast resources that lawlessly detains citizens based on its own whims."The lawsuit coincides with other efforts to rein in ICE. Ahead of a congressional fight over the Department of Homeland Security’s budget, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would demand “an explicit prohibition that DHS cannot detain or deport American citizens.”As of Friday morning, negotiations over the department’s budget had reportedly fizzled, threatening to shutdown its operations. The department oversees ICE, Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.Texas Rep. Gene Wu speaks Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, as lawmakers announced the filing of a lawsuit seeking to prevent ICE from detaining American citizens.Jason Fochtman/Houston ChronicleHouston-area Democratic leaders, including U.S. Reps. Sylvia Garcia, Al Green and Christian Menefee, all spoke during the lawsuit announcement and called for, among other things, Noem to be arrested, Trump to be impeached and for Congress to cut funding to ICE."ICE's lawlessness must end and it's going to be up to Congress to do something about it," Menefee said. "We will not be funding a DHS that allows ICE to terrorize our communities."Feb 6, 2026ReporterJohn Wayne Ferguson is a general assignment and breaking news reporter for the Houston Chronicle. A graduate of the University of New Hampshire, John joined the Chronicle in 2022. He was previously a reporter at The Galveston County Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @johnwferguson.