A Knee on His Neck, a Broken Vertebra: ICE Came to Kent Island and Left a Community Reeling
On the morning of August 21, witnesses on Kent Island watched federal agents pull a 21-year-old man from his car on Main Street in Stevensville, put a knee on his back, and pile on top of him while he called out for help. His brother Kevin, who was there, says he heard something break when an agent's knee came down on his neck. Óscar José Araujo-Mejía, who lives in nearby Queenstown, ended up with two fractured vertebrae and a head wound that took 29 stitches to close. Weeks later, his family says they still don't know exactly where he is being held.
If you heard about this at all, it probably got filed under "ICE arrest, Eastern Shore, isolated incident." It's not isolated and it's not distant. This is what enforcement looks like now on Kent Island, in a county a lot of people still describe as one of the safest places in Maryland to raise a family.
FIRST: WHAT COUNTS AS EXCESSIVE FORCE DURING AN IMMIGRATION ARREST?
Federal agents, like police officers, are allowed to use force to make an arrest, but the law says that force has to be proportional to the actual resistance or danger in front of them, and it has to stop once the person is under control. What isn't allowed, in theory, is continuing to escalate against someone who has already stopped moving.
WHAT HAPPENED
According to Kevin, Araujo-Mejía's brother and an eyewitness, Araujo-Mejía was driving to his job at a McDonald's around 9 a.m. on August 21 when several unmarked ICE vehicles began following him on Route 8 in Stevensville, on Kent Island. As he approached a stoplight, Kevin says he watched one of the trucks ram the passenger side of his brother's Chevy Spark. Maryland State Police say that impact caused Araujo-Mejía's car to run a red light at the intersection of Route 8 and Skipjack Parkway, striking a Toyota Highlander and then a Honda CR-V. Kevin says agents then surrounded the car in front of a Queenstown Bank branch on Main Street in Stevensville. Three agents pulled Araujo-Mejía from the car, "gushing blood all over," Kevin said, put a knee on his back, and then about three more officers jumped on top of him and struck him as he called out for help. "When agents put a knee on his neck I heard something break," Kevin said. Kevin also said he never saw agents present a warrant, and that no one asked Araujo-Mejía for his name before the pursuit began. "They just saw that he was Spanish and started following him," he said.
Araujo-Mejía was left with fractures to his C5 and C7 cervical vertebrae and a head laceration requiring 29 stitches. According to Kevin, ICE agents, not paramedics, drove him to the hospital in an ICE van rather than calling an ambulance. He was taken first to Anne Arundel Medical Center and was later transferred to the University of Maryland's Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore for spinal surgery; as of August 26, the most recent public update, he was listed in fair condition. Sheriff Gary Hofmann's office, which responded to the crash while on routine patrol nearby, says it was not told about the ICE operation in advance and was not involved in the pursuit or arrest itself.
ICE has told a very different story. A spokesperson confirmed agents arrested Araujo-Mejía, who has lived in the country for four years, said he entered the country illegally and had a history of traffic violations, though The Baltimore Banner could not verify any record of prior violations. ICE says what began as a traffic stop became a pursuit only after Araujo-Mejía fled and nearly struck an agent with his car, and the agency's statement labeled him an "illegal alien" from El Salvador while categorically denying that any force was used when agents removed him from the vehicle.
Since the crash, Kevin says he has spoken to his brother only once, briefly, by phone the evening of the crash, and that hospital staff have since cited custody restrictions to keep him from visiting. A Change.org petition organized in the weeks since says that after Araujo-Mejía left the trauma center, community members could no longer locate him in the federal system used to track people in immigration custody, and that his current location and condition remain unconfirmed. The petition is calling on ICE and DHS to disclose what happened during the pursuit and publicly confirm his whereabouts. Governor Moore has said he is "deeply concerned by reports that an individual suffered a broken neck during an ICE arrest."
This isn't an isolated incident, in Maryland or nationally. Days before the crash, DHS said it had quietly carried out one of the largest immigration enforcement operations in agency history across Maryland and Virginia, arresting more than 1,300 people in two weeks without regard to their criminal histories. Nationally, at least 26 people have died in ICE custody in 2026 as of early September, with roughly 52 deaths recorded since January 2025, the highest detention mortality rate in over two decades according to immigration and human rights groups tracking the numbers.
That's the backdrop for why Attorney General Anthony Brown joined 22 other state attorneys general this week in a Tenth Circuit amicus brief defending limits on warrantless ICE arrests, and why four Maryland residents and the advocacy group We Are CASA filed a federal lawsuit the same day, September 9, accusing DHS of a pattern of warrantless arrests that indiscriminately target people perceived to be Black or Brown immigrants. It's also the backdrop for Maryland's Community Trust Act, the state law limiting when local police can cooperate with ICE without a judicial warrant, which the Trump administration is still suing to overturn in federal court.
And it's the backdrop for a decision still being made a few miles from where Araujo-Mejía was arrested. Queen Anne's County Commissioner Chris Corchiarino and Sheriff Hofmann assembled a task force in July to study whether the county should formally partner with ICE through a 287(g) agreement, which would deputize local officers to carry out federal immigration enforcement themselves. The sheriff's office already has a dedicated ICE desk and has made at least one transfer of a detained person to immigration officials. On July 30, an ICE agent gave a briefing on enforcement protocols to the Queen Anne's County Republican Central Committee. The task force's work is ongoing.
WHAT SUPPORTERS OF INDEPENDENT OVERSIGHT SAY
Brown, CASA, and Araujo-Mejía's family and advocates argue that cases like this are exactly why the warrant requirement and independent oversight exist, and why they need to be enforced, not treated as optional. "Congress established specific legal requirements that ICE must meet before making a warrantless arrest, and those requirements are not optional," Brown said of the amicus brief. Advocates point to the rising national death toll in ICE custody, and to cases like Araujo-Mejía's where a person effectively disappears from public tracking systems after an arrest, as evidence that self-policing by the agency isn't working and that outside courts, state attorneys general, and independent investigators need real power to check what happens during and after an arrest.
WHAT ICE AND COUNTY OFFICIALS SAY
ICE's own account of the Araujo-Mejía arrest denies any force was used and places full responsibility on his driving. The Trump administration's Department of Justice argues separately, in its case against the Community Trust Act, that Maryland cannot pass laws obstructing federal immigration enforcement under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, and that restrictions on sharing immigration status information conflict with existing federal statutes. Queen Anne's County officials weighing a 287(g) agreement describe their goal as full compliance with federal law, not an escalation; Corchiarino and Hofmann have said the county intends to fully comply with federal mandates and that many elements of the program are already effectively in place given the county's existing cooperation with ICE.
WHAT WE DON'T KNOW YET
Araujo-Mejía's current location, medical condition, and legal status have not been publicly confirmed since he was listed in fair condition on August 26. No agency has said whether an investigation into the use of force is happening or planned. The Community Trust Act's fate in federal court is undecided, as is the sheriffs' separate lawsuit against it, the CASA lawsuit's request for an injunction, and the Tenth Circuit case Brown joined. Queen Anne's County hasn't voted on whether to actually sign a 287(g) agreement; the task force is still studying it.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
- Sign and share the Change.org petition calling on ICE and DHS to confirm Araujo-Mejía's whereabouts and open an independent investigation, and share verified reporting rather than secondhand claims as this story develops.
- If you live in Queen Anne's County, watch for the 287(g) task force's public updates and commissioner meetings and show up. This decision is still being made, not finalized.
- Contact your state legislators and the Attorney General's office if you want them to publicly address what happened in Stevensville and press for accountability, not just litigation over the broader legal question.
