A Minnesota man arrested and detained by ICE is speaking out after video of his detention went viral on social media, claiming the agents detained him after he refused to produce ID and after they found a gun he says he can legally carry.
The video, posted below, doesn't show the entire encounter between the man, who identifies himself as Gage Diego Garcia, and four ICE agents. Instead, it picks up as two agents try to get Garcia to put his hands on the back of a car (warning: a LOT of profanity from everyone involved).
🚨BREAKING: ICE agents in Minneapolis violently detained, threatened, and arrested a U.S. citizen for one reason only, he refused to prove his citizenship.
— Jesus Freakin Congress (@TheJFreakinC) January 13, 2026
In the video, agents immediately escalate to physical force. A man stands with his hands up, repeatedly saying, “I’m not… pic.twitter.com/3D8cQfGaat
As the ICE agents are patting Garcia down and removing his belongings from his pockets, one agent discovers a firearm.
“He has a gun on him! Wouldn’t you look at that," the agent says.
Garcia replies that it's a "fully registered firearm, because I'm a U.S. citizen."
The video ends after Garcia is placed in the back of an unmarked Jeep Wagoneer that, oddly enough, has a handicapped placard dangling from the rearview mirror.
In a subsequent video posted to TikTok, Garcia says he and a friend were hanging out in an alley talking when the ICE agents showed up and demanded to see ID. Rivera says he refused to do so since he had done nothing wrong.
"And then he got in my face and everything and I started blowing a whistle. He said I spit on him, that it was assault and some more, and they started grabbing me and that's when the video starts. That's what everybody's seen," Garcia said.
Garcia says he was taken to the Whipple Federal Building, where he was interviewed and detained for several hours before being released, apparently after his firearm and other possessions had been returned to him.
We don't have any video that shows the initial interaction between Garcia and the ICE agents, so at this point we have no idea if he spit on the agent either intentionally or by accident. Garcia would have been within his rights not to produce identification to ICE, but ICE also has the authority to detain someone if they have reasonable suspicion to believe the individual is in the country illegally. In fact, the National Immigrant Justice Center (hardly a right-wing anti-immigration outfit) states that if U.S. citizens or those with lawful immigration status are stopped by ICE they should "show your passport, legal permanent resident card, work permit, or other documentation of your status. If you are over the age of 18, you should carry your papers with you at all times."
Minnesota is not a "duty to inform" state, so Garcia was also under no obligation to inform the officers that he was legally carrying a gun before they discovered it during the pat down. While one ICE agent seemed to express surprise that Garcia was armed, it also doesn't appear that his gun caused agents to escalate their behavior.
On X, one user shared this video with a number of 2A organizations and advocates (including myself), wondering why no one was speaking up about "concealed carry permit holders being targeted," and specifically asking me if the cat got my tongue while "2A rights are being violated by the government!"
It does not appear from either the video or Garcia's own comments afterwards that he was targeted for carrying a concealed firearm. Quite the opposite. It looks like the ICE agents didn't realize he was carrying until they discovered the firearm while patting him down. It also appears that Garcia wasn't detained for possessing a gun, but for declining to produce ID that would allow ICE to verify his citizenship.
Garcia claims that while he was being questioned at the Whipple Federal Building one ICE agent asked why he was carrying. He says he responded that it was his Second Amendment right to do so, which is absolutely correct.
I'm not an attorney, but if any of Garcia's rights were violated during this encounter it was his Fourth Amendment rights. Was a failure to produce ID enough to generate reasonable cause to believe he was in the country illegally? That's the primary issue here, not Garcia's gun ownership.
I will say that no ICE agent (or any law enforcement agent, for that matter) should be shocked or surprised to see someone carrying a firearm in a country where that right is enshrined in the Constitution. Carrying a gun does not provide reasonable cause to believe that a crime is being committed, and it certainly doesn't indicate that someone is in this country illegally.
Still, I don't think this is anything close to a Philando Castile case or even a Breonna Taylor case. There are a lot of things that bother me about this video, but it only provides an incomplete picture of the entire interaction between Garcia and the ICE agents, so I can't make too many final judgments. I won't shy away from reporting on any incident where ICE or another agency does appear to target someone simply for exercising their constitutional rights or where someone's Second Amendment rights appear to be violated, but I don't see much evidence of that here.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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