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‘Raises serious concerns under both the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.‘
A recent report by the University of California Berkeley Human Rights Center and left-leaning Physicians for Human Rights alleges law and immigration enforcement in the U.S. engaged in “widespread misuse of crowd-control weapons” over the last year.
According to a “Charting the Crackdown” report press release, various federal agencies “used excessive force and wielded crowd-control weapons in dangerous ways against demonstrators protesting the dramatic escalation in immigration enforcement” between June 2025 and May 2026.
“By targeting vulnerable and protected people, and improperly using CCWs, law enforcement agents around the country did not adhere to their own policies, guidelines, or law, resulting in harm to unarmed protesters exercising their First Amendment right of free speech and assembly,” the report reads.
Of note, the “Charting the Crackdown” incident map uses the term “Suspected Misuse” as one of its search functions.
The Daily Californian reports the study “identified and verified 412 incidents” across the country that resulted in a total of 203 injuries. Ninety percent of the incidents occurred in Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Newark (NJ) and Portland (OR) where there were “widespread, robust protest movements.”
The total injury figure includes people (allegedly) hurt multiple times with “visible or self-reported injuries,” according to the press release.
With the exception of Los Angeles, 86 percent of the incidents were “directly attributable to the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies.”
“We documented over 100 cases of injuries caused when law enforcement agencies deployed crowd-control weapons in ways that violated manufacturer guidance, agency policies, widely accepted policing norms, or international use-of-force standards, raising serious concerns under constitutional and international human rights law,” said “Charting the Crackdown” lead author Rohini Haar (pictured), a UC Berkeley adjunct professor of epidemiology.
UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Faculty Director Alexa Koenig, who teaches courses on “the intersection of emerging technologies and human rights,” added “Law enforcement’s repeated use of dangerous crowd-control tactics against protesters, journalists, and other protected groups raises serious concerns under both the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.”
“Vulnerable or protected groups” accounted for just under half the reported incidents, according to the Daily Californian. Koenig told the paper the 412 total incident figure is probably “a gross undercount.”
“I think this is only the tip of the iceberg of what’s actually taking place in cities across the United States,” Koenig said.
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