These Are the Lawyers Fighting ICE
Bloomberg Investigates spent a year following a small group of attorneys in Oregon as they sued to free detainees swept up in Donald Trump’s deportation campaign.
Photo Illustration: Christian Capestany
US President Donald Trump campaigned for a second term promising an unprecedented deportation campaign. Over the past 15 months, he has delivered on that pledge through the use of masked agents inside courthouses and heavily armed paramilitaries on American streets. The administration has sharply increased the number of people detained for allegedly being in the US illegally, and generated thousands of claims of civil rights violations in the process. Three US citizens have been shot dead by federal agents and dozens of detainees have died in federal custody amid conditions that, in some cases, have been condemned as inhumane.
Into this maelstrom comes Innovation Law Lab, a small group of lawyers in Portland, Oregon, who have spent the past year litigating against the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the various agencies conducting raids, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Bloomberg Investigates followed Innovation Law Lab’s lawyers for much of 2025, witnessing up close their fight against the government, and the experiences of their clients as they are swept up in the administration’s crackdown.