WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Tonight at midnight, the Department of Homeland Security will begin to shut down, except for essential operations.

Democrats here in Washington are refusing to fund the agency unless it changes how it conducts its immigration crackdown.

Part of the outcry has been the agency's treatment of U.S.

citizens.

Our Lisa Desjardins has more on that.

LISA DESJARDINS: William, there was an uproar last month following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration officers.

But videos from across the country have shown months of other violent interactions, including with U.S.

citizens.

We reached out and heard from three of them.

GEORGE RETES, U.S.

Citizen Detained By ICE: My name is George Retes.

I am -- I was born and raised here in Ventura, California, I'm 26 years old and I am an Iraq combat veteran.

ALIYA RAHMAN, U.S.

Citizen Detained By ICE: My name is Aliya Rahman.

I was born in Northern Wisconsin, grew up in Bangladesh.

I now live in Minneapolis.

GINA CHRIST, U.S.

Citizen Detained By CBP: My name is Gina Christ.

And I live in St.

Louis Park, Minnesota.

GEORGE RETES: I was going to work like normal.

I show up.

ICE is there.

There's kind of like a roadblock.

I get out.

I identify myself, that I'm a U.S.

citizen, that I'm just trying to get to work.

ALIYA RAHMAN: So I came upon a traffic jam that I pretty quickly realized was ICE.

GINA CHRIST: I was on my way to work, and I honestly thought I'm going to observe or I'm going to try to help slow something down.

GEORGE RETES: I'm trying to leave.

I'm getting ready to leave and they surround my car, start banging on it, start shouting these contradictory orders.

ALIYA RAHMAN: I was told: "Move.

I will break your effing window."

And I couldn't get a clear answer to where they wanted me to move to.

GINA CHRIST: There's people all around my car.

And so I have both hands up on either side of my face.

I have both hands up on either side of my face and I -- you cannot hear me.

(SHOUTING) ALIYA RAHMAN: Very quickly, I was pulled out of that car.

I fell twice, once right outside the car that you can see, and once behind the car face down.

GINA CHRIST: An ICE agent breaks my driver's side window, glass, reaches in, opens my door, pulls me out of the door, tells me to get on the ground, zip-ties me, and now gas, flashbangs, pepper spray.

GEORGE RETES: Even though I was giving them no reason, they still felt the need to -- one agent knelt my back and another agent knelt on my neck.

And during that time, I'm just pleading with them that I couldn't breathe.

ALIYA RAHMAN: I am disabled.

I am autistic.

I have a brain injury.

And when I hit that ground face first, I just experienced shooting pain through my neck, through my head.

My vision became blurry.

GINA CHRIST: There was no need.

They detoured to grab me.

They could have continued to drive.

Their cars were past my car.

They passed my car, jumped out of their cars, apprehended me and kept going.

ALIYA RAHMAN: What happened to me in detention was far worse than what happened to me on camera.

What happened to me in detention was a complete stripping of my rights.

GINA CHRIST: Once I was kind of detained, it was very like, do you have water?

Are you comfortable?

How's the heat?

It was a very schizophrenic experience.

And I spent an enormous amount of time, most of my time in my head, trying to figure out what was really, really going on.

GEORGE RETES: I was an isolation.

I was in basically this concrete cell.

I was stripped naked in like a hospital gown.

And they leave the lights on 24/7.

ALIYA RAHMAN: Nobody knew I was there.

I wasn't told where I was going.

I wasn't given a phone call.

And I'm going unconscious and I'm wondering, is this it?

They call us bodies.

Is this it for me?

Am I going to die?

GEORGE RETES: They just came out and they said that I was violent and that I assaulted agents.

Why lie when it's on video of everything that happened?

Why lie?

GINA CHRIST: I mean, this is insane.

This isn't anything that could minutely be referred to as a couple of bad apples, which is what we heard for years and years and years.

ALIYA RAHMAN: I want to live in a country where people who are enforcing the law treat people humanely.

LISA DESJARDINS: In response to our request, DHS sent a statement about all three of these cases.

Here are some key quotes.

The agency insisted: "If a U.S.

citizen is arrested, it is because they have obstructed or assaulted law enforcement."

In many cases, even after arrest, charges are never filed.

They were not filed in these cases.

The agency said there can be myriad reasons for that, but it did not provide any of those reasons.

William, some of the statements they sent us is contrary to the evidence that we have seen.

For example, the agency referred to Aliya Rahman as an agitator.

We know she was on her way to work.

There's no other evidence about her.

DHS added that George Retes, in their opinion, the veteran, they said he refused to move his car.

The video shows him moving his car.

I raise this because, as Tom Homan says he's de-escalating in Minnesota, right now, DHS is digging in on blaming Americans without evidence.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Lisa, you were at two of those hearings on Capitol Hill this week where ICE and CBP officials were asked about some of these things.

How did they respond?

LISA DESJARDINS: Well, the leaders of ICE and Customs and Border Protection did say some things, like pepper spraying inside of a car or using a canister as a weapon are wrong unless there's no other defense for an officer.

But they didn't admit any specific mistakes and they didn't address any idea of systemic problems here.

Specifically relevant to our story, the ICE director, Acting Director Todd Lyons, was asked about the detention of and the treatment of American citizens.

TODD LYONS, Acting Director, U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Under Title 8, no U.S.

citizen is subject to civil and racial enforcement and that just doesn't happen.

There are multiple safeguards in that way.

And if a U.S.

citizen is detained in the course of immigration investigation, they're quickly released.

We don't take action on American citizens.

LISA DESJARDINS: But the interviews we just said counter that.

That's just flatly not true.

We know that CBP has repeatedly act against American citizens.

And some of -- these are just a few of the stories.

There are more.

Aliya Rahman said her point is, if this is how U.S.

citizens like her were treated, what about people who are not citizens?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Right.

And another part of the issue here that people may not realize is that people who go to court with these cases, they don't have the same rights that we would expect?

Explain.

LISA DESJARDINS: This is because of federal law, a specific statute, in fact, about civil rights when they're violated.

Here, I want to take a look at this.

This is a section of code about who you can sue for civil rights violations.

It says: "Those acting under color of statute or ordinance," meaning law enforcement, "acting for the government."

But look at this.

It says "if that government is a state or territory."

So, William, it does not say the United States itself.

And because of this, courts have said there's a very narrow lane that you can use to sue officers of the United States.

This is not a hard fix.

It's something that people want to include in negotiations under way right now over DHS.

But talking to some experts, especially some experts from Cato, a man named Mike Fox, he told me he thinks that what Democrats are asking for actually may have less impact than changing this.

MIKE FOX, Cato Institute: If I tell you can't wear masks, but nothing happens when you do, what does that do?

That's why it's so fundamentally important that Congress add a component that allows you to sue for constitutional violations and then precludes the actors, the government agents, benefiting from immunity.

LISA DESJARDINS: Advocates are pushing for this to be part of the talks, but my reporting is, there's no evidence that it is.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Lisa Desjardins, thank you so much.

LISA DESJARDINS: You're welcome.