An 18-year-old college student was filming protests outside an immigration detention center in Los Angeles last month when an officer fired a projectile into his face, destroying his right eye and fracturing the bones in the socket.
Tucker Collins, whose damaged eye had to be surgically removed, has filed a federal civil rights complaint against Donald Trump’s administration, which faces an avalanche of lawsuits accusing federal agents of unconstitutional use of force after violent clashes with demonstrators across the country.
The complaint — which accuses federal agencies of assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violations of California’s Bane Act, which protects protesters from threats of violence — demands $100 million in monetary damages.
“DHS has been turned into a weapon of terror, with no purpose other than to scare and brutalize,” Collins said during a press conference announcing the complaint on Wednesday.
“I was recording when it happened. There was no warning,” he said. “One moment I was recording and the next thing I know, I can’t see. I’m on the floor, screaming in agony.”
Collins, a freshman studying astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California, was filming “No Kings” rallies on March 28 in downtown Los Angeles when he followed protests outside the city’s Metropolitan Detention Center.
Videos from the scene show Collins moving through the crowd with a camera before officers began firing crowd-control munitions.
“I was blind for a couple moments,” Collins said. “I tried to swallow the pain as fast as I could, and be as clear and level headed as fast as I could. I remember feeling blood on my face.”
Other footage shows protesters wrapping Collins’s face in bandages while blood streamed from his face. Officers continued to fire tear gas in the crowd.
“It started to creep into my lungs,” Collins said. “I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t know what was going on.”
Images shared with The Independent show Collins in surgery as doctors removed parts of his eye and pieces of the object that struck his face.
A federal tort complaint, which precedes a lawsuit to be filed in the coming weeks, alleges officers began firing less-lethal munitions into the crowd — striking Collins from roughly 20 to 30 feet away — without any warning.
As a result, Collins has “suffered catastrophic and permanent personal injuries, including the surgical removal of his right eye, permanent vision loss, physical pain, psychological and emotional injuries, a traumatic brain injury, and significant economic losses,” according to the complaint.
Collins still faces multiple surgeries and will need to add another semester to his college education to complete his degree, according to his attorney.
A spokesperson for Homeland Security did not respond to The Independent's request for comment about the complaint but stated that “the First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly — not rioting.”
“DHS is taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters,” a spokesperson said. “Our law enforcement has followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public, and federal property.
A group of “1,000 rioters” surrounded the area and “threw rocks, bottles and cement blocks at officers,” who issued seven warnings to the crowd before deploying “crowd control measures,” according to DHS.
“I’m in no way an agitator. I just had my camera,” Collins said Wednesday. “There’s no way I was a danger to anyone.”
After Trump surged officers into cities to support his efforts to arrest and deport thousands of people from the country, protesters have reported devastating injuries including permanent vision loss, fractured skulls and broken ribs after they were hit with projectiles like pepper balls or tackled and beaten in the street.
Lawsuits against DHS in the wake of protests and dragnet-like arrests have prompted federal courts to intervene and block officers from indiscriminately firing into crowds with tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets and other weapons.
Protesters have accused officers of deliberately provoking crowds before firing into them and deploying excessive force at close range — actions that a judge in Chicago said “shock the conscience.”
Another recent blistering order from a judge in Oregon who blocked agents from shooting into crowds after children inhaled tear gas said “our nation is now at a crossroads.”
“When something like this happens, it really affects the whole family,” Collins’s mother Joann Collins said. “He was just there to document history … and they took his eye for it.”
Collins’s attorney V. James DeSimone has also urged state and local law enforcement to open a criminal investigation.
“Stop shooting at people’s heads,” DeSimone said. “How many eyes have to be lost? How many concussions do we need to have? How many injuries? … It is time to stop.”
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