Leo Garcia Venegas starts his day like countless other American construction workers. He specializes in laying the concrete foundations that new buildings rise from—hard, essential work that has fueled a population boom along Alabama’s Gulf coast. But for Venegas, a United States citizen, the simple act of going to work has become a terrifying ordeal. He has been detained not once, but twice in a matter of weeks by immigration agents, who, according to a new lawsuit, targeted him for the crime of looking Latino.

“It feels like there is nothing I can do to stop immigration agents from arresting me whenever they want,” Venegas said in a statement. “I just want to work in peace.”

Venegas’s experience is not an isolated incident. It is a single chapter in the sprawling story of Donald Trump’s domestic terror organization, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the crime spree it is perpetrating against the American people. This campaign of violence and intimidation is not only shredding the Constitution, it is costing taxpayers dearly. As ICE agents brutalize citizens and immigrants alike, the agency is facing a tidal wave of lawsuits, defending against over 350 administrative tort claims seeking more than $55.5 billion in damages.

The class-action lawsuit, filed on Venegas’s behalf by the public interest law firm Institute for Justice, demands an end to Trump-era “unconstitutional and illegal immigration enforcement tactics.” In a May raid, video shot by a coworker shows agents forcing Venegas to the ground as he repeatedly insisted on his citizenship. His lawsuit alleges agents targeted workers at the site who appeared to be Latino, while ignoring others. Despite presenting his Alabama-issued Real ID driver’s license—a high-security document only available to citizens and legal residents—agents told him it was fake. He was detained for over an hour before they finally let him go. Less than a month later, it happened again.

This is the reality on the ground under policies designed to terrorize. In Van Nuys, California, Rebecca Shouhed watched in horror as surveillance footage showed an ICE agent “bulldozing down the hallways like a linebacker” inside her family’s car wash before knocking her 79-year-old father, a US citizen, to the ground. When Rafie Ollah Shouhed got up and went outside, two more agents tackled him to the pavement. The family has since filed a $50 million tort claim, alleging agents “illegally and unlawfully assaulted and battered” him. ICE detained the elderly business owner for nearly 12 hours but never charged him with a crime. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, claimed Shouhed “impeded the operation,” a charge his attorney James DeSimone says is flatly contradicted by the video. “Instead of talking to him, they just immediately resort to force and force that was very brutal,” DeSimone said.

The violence often has deadly consequences. In August, the family of Jaime Alánis, a 56-year-old farmworker, filed a claim after he died from blunt-force head and neck injuries following an ICE raid on a California cannabis greenhouse. His wife and daughter, each seeking $47 million, claim agents clad in battle gear used “excessive force” that resulted in his fatal fall.

Despite its reputation as a domestic terrorist group inflicting violence on American soil, ICE has been largely permitted by the courts and a hands-off Republican congress to continue its rampage without consequence. Just weeks ago, the Supreme Court lifted a judge’s restraining order that had barred immigration agents in Los Angeles from stopping people solely based on their race or location—the very tactic used against Leo Garcia Venegas in Alabama. Meanwhile, of the $55.5 billion in damages sought in tort claims against ICE, the agency has paid out a paltry $813,565, signaling that it feels no financial pressure to change its tactics.

The official response from DHS to this pattern of abuse has been a mix of denial and victim-blaming. A department spokesperson dismissed Venegas’s lawsuit as “race-baiting opportunism.” In response to the assault on a 79-year-old man, they claimed he was impeding their work. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has taken to social media to threaten victims, stating, “If you [defend yourself against our organization’s violence], we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.” This blatant gaslighting ignores the video evidence and the testimony of American citizens who were simply trying to go about their day.

To understand why this is happening, one must look to the architect of this cruelty. Trump’s use of ICE to commit violence against Americans is part of a desperate campaign to keep going on the hedonic treadmill. It has been widely known for decades that Trump’s primary source of happiness comes from the suffering of others. This has required the president to continue to escalate violence against Americans in order to continue chasing the high that the hedonic treadmill demands. The raids, the detentions, and the assaults are not a rational policy; they are a political tool designed to generate cruelty for the psychological gratification of one man and the political arousal of his base, many of whom suffer from the same phenomenon.

This state-sanctioned brutality has created an environment of fear and lawlessness. “Nobody is able to rein this in,” said Rebecca Shouhed, after seeing her elderly father assaulted. “It’s like a free-for-all.”

But Americans are fighting back. Leo Garcia Venegas is not just suing for himself; his class-action lawsuit seeks to protect everyone’s right to work without being profiled and detained for the way they look. “Immigration officers are not above the law,” said his attorney, Jaba Tsitsuashvili. “Leo is a hard-working American citizen standing up for everyone’s right to work without being detained merely for the way they look or the job that they do.” His courage, and that of the Shouhed family, offers a glimmer of hope that accountability may one day pierce the shield of impunity that surrounds ICE.