ICE buys $100k worth of ‘non-lethal’ pepper ball rounds days after blinding protester with one

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent entity, has not confirmed what type of projectile it was, but witnesses said it was a pepper ball.

On January 13, ICE spent $98,666.25 on additional “less-lethal pepper ball projectiles for control crowd [sic] to support ICE – Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs at Fort Benning, GA,” contract data shows.

The Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs, according to ICE, “supports the mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement… by providing world class firearms and tactical training, equipment, support, and guidance to promote officer safety and effective execution of the ICE law enforcement mission.”

Each pepper ball round can cost anywhere from about $0.50 to roughly $4, depending on various factors, including order size.

Rummler, who endured a two-day hospital stay and six hours of surgery, was also hit with one count of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor. Jeri Rees, Rummler’s aunt, claimed officers on the scene delayed calling for emergency medical assistance and sneeringly told Rummler, “You’re going to lose your eye.”

A second protester at the same demonstration told the Los Angeles Times that he, too, was blinded in one eye by a projectile fired by federal agents. Both had joined hundreds of others on a march through the streets of Santa Ana, protesting against the January 7 “public execution” of Minneapolis poet and mother-of-three Renee Nicole Good. (DHS recently laid out some $160,000 on “parka jackets” to keep immigration officers and agents warm during the ongoing “urgent enforcement mission” in Minneapolis-Saint Paul,” according to a separate set of federal purchasing records.)

ICE did not respond to a request on Tuesday for more information about where the latest batch of pepper ball rounds will be deployed, and whether they will be used for training or distributed to officers in the field.

Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator at the watchdog nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, told The Independent that he does not know how the pepper balls will be utilized in this case, but that ICE’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs “definitely does play a role in equipping agents, not simply training them.”

In October, ICE agents in Chicago shot a Presbyterian minister in the head with a pepper ball while he was praying with demonstrators at a street protest.

The Rev. David Black – wearing clerical garb at the time – was “offering prayers and urging ICE officers stationed on the roof of the Broadview ICE facility to repent from their unnecessarily brutal enforcement of the immigration laws” before the officers fired at him, unprovoked, according to a lawsuit he subsequently filed against the agency.

The agents were laughing as they launched the chemical projectiles at Black, he told CNN.

That same month, another pastor was shot in the face at close range with a pepper ball round by an ICE agent at a protest in Northern California.

“He did not hesitate,” Rev. Jorge Bautista told United Church of Christ News. “He had already made a decision he was going to shoot me the moment he started approaching me. No warnings. No other forms of procedures first. It just felt like they had no procedures whatsoever.”

As ICE has ramped up its tactics, federal judges have begun to limit the way agents can respond to peaceful protesters.

Pepper ball rounds are marketed as non-lethal, although they have been responsible for dozens of deaths and thousands of serious injuries across the globe, according to Amnesty International. A 2017 peer-reviewed study by a group of U.S. physicians maintained that even purportedly non-lethal projectiles “have caused significant morbidity and mortality during the past 27 years, much of it from penetrative injuries and head, neck and torso trauma.”

“Given their inherent inaccuracy, potential for misuse and associated health consequences of severe injury, disability and death, [non-lethal rounds] do not appear to be appropriate weapons for use in crowd-control settings,” they wrote. “There is an urgent need to establish international guidelines on the use of crowd-control weapons to prevent unnecessary injuries and deaths.”

Although DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin described Rummler and the other Santa Ana protesters as a “mob,” and “violent rioters,” claiming they threw rocks, bottles, and fireworks at federal officers, local officials said the group didn’t throw anything more serious than a few orange traffic cones.

Rummler’s attorney, John Washington, said his client was lucky to be alive, calling the shooting a “completely unacceptable use of force,” according to the Associated Press.

“Any officers with just the most basic training would know you don't shoot someone ever in the face with this… let alone at point-blank range,” Washington said, “and that's because it is a lethal weapon when used like that, and it very nearly was.”