2020 to today
2020 to today
Section 702 searches, license plate cameras, data center deals, private equity in housing, deaths in ICE custody, and the Epstein files.
Key facts
- The FBI made 278,000 improper searches of Americans' communications under Section 702.
- Cities and counties sign nondisclosure agreements before voting on data centers.
- 269 of the 469 entries on the site fall in this period.
Timeline
31 events in Police, Courts & Prisons, oldest first
- 2022July 13, 2022Police, Courts & Prisons
Three Chicago men freed after 35 years; the fire could not have started as they confessed
The confession said a lit cigarette lit a pool of gasoline, which cannot happen.
- 2023April 5, 2023Police, Courts & Prisons
Farmington, New Mexico officers sent to a domestic violence call at 5308 Valley View Avenue knock at 5305 and shoot the homeowner, Robert Dotson, two seconds after he opens the door holding a handgun
The state declined charges in January 2024, a federal judge granted the officers qualified immunity in May 2025, and in 2026 the city's insurer paid his family $6 million with no admission of liability.
- June 27, 2023Police, Courts & Prisons
Inspector general: negligence, misconduct, and job performance failures in Epstein's death
No cellmate, no rounds, no working cameras.
- 2023Police, Courts & Prisons
Study: public defender offices carry 300 to 350 felonies per lawyer
The 1973 standard was 150, and even that leaves under 14 hours a case.
- 2024February 15, 2024Police, Courts & Prisons
344 deaths in federal prisons 2014 to 2021 that the rules were written to prevent
187 suicides; rounds not made in more than a third.
- July 25, 2024Police, Courts & Prisons
Federal Prison Oversight Act signed
Inspections and an ombudsman; cameras in 12 of 121 prisons by March 2025.
- 2025May 15, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
Chicago agrees to pay $48 million to the three men convicted on the impossible confession
The detective who took it had a documented pattern.
- May 21, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
GAO: inspectors rated 238 of 241 detention facilities acceptable while finding 5,493 deficiencies
The department needs to define goals and measures for its inspections.
- June 7, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
4,000 Guard and 700 Marines sent into Los Angeles
Found a serious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act on September 2.
- September 23, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
Two senators: ten people died in ICE custody in the first half of 2025, the highest since 2018
They ask the department for a plan to prevent further deaths.
- Fiscal year 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
97.7 percent of people convicted in federal court in 2025 pleaded guilty
1,563 of 66,662 went to trial.
- November 14, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
A citizen journalist is arrested at the Union City board of education after an argument with a police lieutenant
The report says he struck the officer; he says his video shows otherwise.
- November 20, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
Judge finds the Guard deployment to Washington unlawful
2,188 troops; the government given three weeks.
- December 23, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
Supreme Court refuses to let the Guard deploy to Chicago
Regular forces means the military; no authority shown.
- 2026January 3, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
A man dies while being restrained by ICE officers at Camp East Montana; the death is ruled a homicide
Asphyxia; the first such ruling for an ICE death linked to staff in at least 15 years.
- January 7, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
ICE agent kills Renee Good in Minneapolis
Three shots in under a second into a vehicle turning away. No charge.
- January 24, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Border Patrol agents kill Alex Pretti in Minneapolis
Ten shots in six seconds after his gun had been taken from him. No charge.
- January 28, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Chief judge: ICE violated 96 court orders in Minnesota in a month
Later 209. Criminal contempt threatened.
- February 14, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Homeland Security funding lapses for 75 days
Ended April 30 with the immigration agencies left out of the bill.
- April 6, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
3,767 people cleared of crimes they did not commit since 1989, more than 36,000 years lost
The known wrongful convictions, not counting the ones never proven.
- April 17, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
29 deaths in ICE custody since October, past the record of 28 set in 2004
The detention population had passed 65,000, most with no conviction.
- April 22, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
An Essex County grand jury indicts Leonard Filipowski on one count of third-degree aggravated assault on an officer
The grand jury heard the lieutenant and no one else.
- May 18, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Hennepin County charges an ICE agent with assault and a false report
The first charge from the Minneapolis operation. None for the two deaths.
- 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
DNA testing has cleared more than 600 people since 1989
Eyewitness misidentification was in 69 percent of the first 375.
- June 25, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Human Rights Watch counts 39 deaths in ICE custody in 2025 and 13 more by mid-2026
The system it counts had grown to record size.
- 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
At least 203 people sentenced to death since 1973 have been exonerated
About one for every eight people executed.
- August 26, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
A Coweta, Oklahoma officer takes a 69-year-old driver stopped for driving on the shoulder to the ground; he leaves with a fractured arm and a traffic citation
The chief calls it a trip and fall and says the force was within policy; the officer stays on duty while the department's training officer reviews it.
- September 15, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
The Union City case returns to Hudson County; a motion to dismiss is set for October 8
The judge: there's a conflict with the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office.
- September 20, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
An ICE officer shoots a DoorDash driver in the back in North Austin after a traffic stop and a chase; the officer who fired had no body camera on
His partner turned his camera off during the chase. The man was released from the hospital into immigration custody the same day with the bullet in his back.
- September 28, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
A federal complaint charges the man the ICE officer shot with assaulting a federal officer, a count that carries up to 20 years
Its only account from the officers of why the shot was fired is what the officer told his partner by phone. The next day the judge in his immigration detention case canceled the hearing on it because of the charge.
- September 30, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
A federal magistrate judge orders Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez held as a flight risk on a charge of assaulting the ICE officer who shot him; the agent who swore the complaint testifies no one on his team interviewed that officer
The judge found probable cause and said he was not a danger to the community. The same day ICE told its officers not to chase vehicles and to wear and activate body cameras at every vehicle stop.
Stories (9)
- 1986 to 2026Three Men Cleared After 35 Years in Prison for a 1986 Chicago Fire Built on Beaten ConfessionsIn 1986 a fire killed two brothers in a Chicago house, and three young men were convicted of setting it and sentenced to life. The case against them was confessions a police detective, Victor Switski, obtained, which the men said were beaten out of them and false. The confessions described starting the fire by throwing a lit cigarette into gasoline. In 2005 an episode of the television show MythBusters, and a later study by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, showed that a lit cigarette cannot ignite gasoline. One of the men saw the episode in prison in 2007 and called his lawyer. At the hearing that followed, five other men testified that the same detective had beaten confessions out of them in unrelated cases, and a fire expert testified there was no valid scientific evidence the fire was arson. The three were released on July 13, 2022, after more than 35 years, and the city later agreed to pay $48 million.Police, Courts & Prisons
- April 5, 2023 to September 2026Farmington, New Mexico Police Shoot Homeowner Dead After Knocking on the Wrong AddressLate on April 5, 2023, three Farmington, New Mexico police officers sent to a domestic violence call at 5308 Valley View Avenue knocked at 5305, the home of Robert Dotson, 52, and shot him two seconds after he opened the door holding a handgun. The state declined to charge them, a federal judge granted them qualified immunity, and in 2026 the city's insurer paid his family $6 million with no admission of liability.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 2014 to 2025344 Preventable Deaths in Federal Prisons, Broken Cameras, and the Death of Jeffrey EpsteinBetween 2014 and 2021, 344 people died in federal prisons by suicide, homicide, accident, or causes never determined. 187 of them killed themselves; more than half of those were alone in a cell, and in more than a third of the suicides the staff had not made the rounds or counts the rules required. Drugs and weapons that should not have been inside contributed to nearly one death in three. The Justice Department's inspector general found the same failures in the death of the most watched prisoner in the system, Jeffrey Epstein, in 2019: no cellmate as ordered, no rounds, cameras that did not work. Congress passed an oversight law in July 2024. As of March 2025, 12 of the bureau's 121 prisons had digital cameras.Police, Courts & Prisons
- June 2025 to April 2026Military Troops and Federal Agents Deployed to US Cities (2025–2026) and Two Fatal Shootings in MinneapolisIn June 2025 the president federalized 4,000 California Guard troops and sent 700 Marines into Los Angeles; a federal judge found in September that they had broken the law that bars the military from policing. Troops followed in Washington, where a judge found the deployment unlawful, and were ordered to Portland and Chicago, where the Supreme Court refused to let them go. In Minneapolis, during an operation of about 3,000 immigration agents, agents shot and killed two citizens in seventeen days: a mother of a six year old on January 7, 2026, and an intensive care nurse on January 24. The FBI took the evidence and refused it to the state. A federal judge counted 96 court orders the immigration agency had violated in the state in one month. Congress let the Department of Homeland Security go unfunded for 75 days over it.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1989 to 20263,760 Documented Wrongful Convictions Since 1989: Official Misconduct, Perjury, and 203 Death Row ExonerationsSince 1989 the United States has recorded more than 3,760 people convicted of crimes they did not commit and later cleared, who together lost more than 36,000 years in prison. Those are only the ones proven innocent. The National Registry of Exonerations finds that perjury or false accusation played a part in about 64 percent of the cases and official misconduct in about 61 percent, with forensic error, mistaken identification, and false confessions behind large shares of the rest. DNA testing has cleared more than 600 people. On death row, at least 203 people sentenced to die since 1973 have been exonerated, about one for every eight executed, and a peer-reviewed study estimated that at least 4.1 percent of everyone sentenced to death is innocent. Most states pay something for the lost years, the federal rate is $50,000 a year, and about half of exonerees receive nothing at all.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 2020 to 2026Record Deaths in ICE Detention (2025–2026), Unreported Fatalities, and a Texas Restraint HomicideImmigration and Customs Enforcement is required to report every death in its custody. Its own page lists 22 deaths in fiscal 2020, then 5, 3, 4, and 12 in the years that followed, and 16 in fiscal 2025, though the page stops at August 31, 2025 and shows nothing for fiscal 2026 even as the agency kept issuing death notices. Outside counts run higher: one news organization reported 29 deaths in the fiscal year that began in October 2025, past the previous record of 28 set in 2004. Over the same period the detention population rose from about 39,700 at the end of the Biden administration in January 2025 to more than 65,000 by July 2026, most of them people with no criminal conviction, and a July 2025 law set aside about $45 billion to expand it. A medical examiner ruled one 2026 death in Texas a homicide caused by asphyxia during a physical restraint, which reporters called the first such ruling for an ICE detainee death linked to staff in at least fifteen years.Police, Courts & Prisons
- August 26 to October 1, 2026Coweta, Oklahoma Traffic Stop: Police Officer Breaks 69-Year-Old Driver's Arm Over Driving on the ShoulderOn the morning of August 26, 2026 a Coweta, Oklahoma police officer, Matt Rice, stopped James Rogers, 69, near State Highway 51 for driving on the shoulder. Rogers got out of his car, the officer told him to get back in and then to put his hands on the hood of the patrol car, and about a minute into the officer's body camera recording the two men went to the ground. Rogers left with cuts to his face and a fractured upper left arm. He was not booked into jail and, according to the police chief, was given a traffic citation. The chief, Mike Bell, says Rogers resisted, that the fall was "a trip and fall type situation," and that the officer followed department policy. The family says video from a nearby business shows the officer slamming him to the pavement, wants the officer fired, and has hired a lawyer. The department's review is being done by its own training officer, and the officer has stayed on duty while it goes on.Police, Courts & Prisons
- November 2025 to October 2026Union City, New Jersey Police Arrest and Felony Indictment of Citizen Journalist "Leroy Truth"On November 14, 2025 a citizen journalist named Leonard Filipowski, who records his encounters with officials under the name Leroy Truth, was arrested at the Union City, New Jersey Board of Education building after an argument with a police lieutenant, Glen Gaston. The police report says he "forcefully struck Lt. Gaston in the upper body area causing him to fall backwards." Filipowski says "it didn't happen" and that his own video of the arrest shows the lieutenant grabbing him and both men going to the floor. A grand jury in Essex County indicted him on April 22, 2026 for third-degree aggravated assault on an officer, after hearing the lieutenant testify that he was elbowed in the chest and tore a hamstring, according to a recording of the presentation published on YouTube. The case was moved out of Hudson County because of a conflict with its prosecutor's office and later moved back. A judge was to rule on a motion to dismiss on October 8, 2026, but the ruling was put off until December, and Filipowski says his next hearing is December 11.Police, Courts & Prisons
- September 20 to October 7, 2026Austin, Texas Traffic Stop: ICE Officer With Body Camera Off Shoots Unarmed Driver in the BackOn September 20, 2026 an ICE officer shot Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan man who was delivering food for DoorDash, in the back in North Austin after a traffic stop over a deportation order and a car chase. The officer who fired had no body camera on, and the other officer turned his off during the chase, before the shot. The federal complaint's only account from the officers of why the shot was fired is what the officer who fired told his partner by phone afterward: that Garcés Pérez tried to hit him with his car. Garcés Pérez told the investigating agent that the officers' SUV struck his car and spun it around and that the officer then fired into it. He was charged with assaulting a federal officer, which carries up to 20 years. On September 30 a magistrate judge found probable cause for the charge and ordered him held as a flight risk, though not as a danger to the community, and the agent who swore the complaint testified that no one on his team had interviewed the officer who fired. The same day ICE told its officers not to chase vehicles and to wear and activate body cameras at every vehicle stop. The bullet was removed on October 1, eleven days after the shooting. Austin police, the Texas Rangers, and the Travis County district attorney are investigating the shooting, and as of October 2 the district attorney said DHS had given local investigators no footage or reports.Police, Courts & Prisons