What Do Tear Gas and ICE Raids Do to People?

Summary

Science Vs — What Do Tear Gas and ICE Raids Do to People?

Podcast: Science Vs
Host: Spotify Studios (Guest Host: Rose Rimler)
Date: January 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode investigates the health and societal impacts of two controversial forms of state action: the use of tear gas during protests and the effects of large-scale ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids. Anchored in the real-time context of protests and ICE operations in Minneapolis, the team explores what the scientific research reveals—what’s known, what isn’t, and what ripple effects reach beyond the immediate moments of chaos.
The episode features testimony from people on the ground, interviews with researchers, and an evidence-based analysis of these tools of law enforcement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Context: ICE Raids and Protests in Minneapolis

• ICE, assisted by Border Patrol, launches the "largest immigration operation ever" in Minneapolis. Reports emerge of extreme enforcement methods, including detaining children, using family members to lure people out, and federal agents killing protesters ([00:00]–[03:03]).
• Community reactions include organized marches, widespread protests, and public documentation of enforcement actions. Law enforcement response has included violent crackdowns, use of tear gas, and lethal force.

Notable Quote:

"We just had a huge economic shutdown. A bunch of people showed up downtown, and then the next day, they murdered a man."
— T (Protester), [02:08]

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2. Tear Gas: What It Is, How It’s Used, and Immediate Effects

• History & Legal Status:
  • Tear gas is prohibited in war yet permitted in domestic policing in the US ([08:13]–[08:52]).
  • Its ubiquity in modern policing is traced back to repurposed military stock after arms-control treaties.
• Composition:
  • Tear gas is a misnomer; most agents are solid chemicals (like CS, CN, OC) aerosolized for deployment ([10:05]).
• On-the-Ground Accounts:
  • Protesters describe significant physical distress: vomiting, retching, eyes burning, face and skin irritation, transient blindness ([06:14]–[14:12]).
  • Exposures can last several minutes, sometimes requiring help to recover sight.

Notable Quotes:

"You're puking and throwing up? ...My whole face was covered in mucus."
— T (Protester), [06:19]

"It felt sticky...like dust or whatever in my eyes. A physical thing. Like it was scratchy."
— T (Protester), [12:56]

• Expert Explanation—How It Hurts Us:
  • Tear gas binds to pain and heat receptors (nociceptors), triggering powerful burning and inflammation responses ([15:41]–[17:19]).
  • Effects can be lethal in enclosed spaces, especially for vulnerable populations like infants.

Notable Quote:

"If you are left too long in an enclosed space with tear gas, you can die."
— Dr. Jennifer Brown, [18:01]

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3. The Science: Immediate and Long-Term Health Impacts

• Acute Effects:
  • Tearing, coughing, vomiting, skin burns, and rashes.
  • In severe or direct exposures, possible blindness, respiratory distress.
• Unanswered Questions & Gaps:
  • Most research is from young, healthy people (often military trainees), not representative of the public ([18:42]).
  • Types, concentrations, and mixtures of chemicals used are often undisclosed ([13:41]–[14:51], [22:02]).
• Long-Term & Systemic Effects:
  • Survey studies (e.g., Portland, 2020): significant percentage of protesters report gastrointestinal issues, delayed symptoms ("almost 30%...experienced GI stuff" [20:30]).
  • Reports of disrupted menstrual cycles and breast tenderness in people exposed ([21:22]).
  • Additional chemicals in tear gas mixtures are known or suspected carcinogens and toxins ([22:02]).
  • Cases of miscarriage following exposure, especially in areas of prolonged unrest ([22:49]).
• Mental and Public Health:
  • PTSD and other mental health issues compound the direct physical effects.

Notable Quote:

"Spraying a chemical we don't know that much about on a broad swath of the population...Pretty risky."
— Rose Rimler, [23:33]

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4. How to Protect Against Tear Gas

• Protection tips:
  • Wear tight-fitting goggles, gas masks, and cover exposed skin ([24:53]).
  • CDC recommends disposing of exposed clothing to avoid further contamination.

Memorable Moment:

"There's no, like, Narcan for tear gas."
— Blythe Turrell, [24:53]

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5. ICE Raids: The Science Behind Community Impact

• Immediate Trauma:
  • Witnessing raids can have lasting psychological effects on both undocumented and documented residents ([28:43]–[30:26]).
• Research Findings:
  • Bill Lopez’s studies found spikes in fear, anxiety, and reported health declines after raids take place—even among U.S. citizens ([29:21]–[31:00]).
  • Major ICE operations in Iowa (2008) correlated with a measurable drop in birth weight for Latino infants, indicating community-wide health effects extended to the next generation ([31:38]).

Notable Quotes:

"Enforcement literally makes its way into the bodies of the next generation who aren't even born yet and who don't even have a concept of citizenship status."
— Bill Lopez, [31:53]

"Infants born to Latino women had a 24% higher chance of being born with a low birth weight after the raid compared to beforehand."
— Meryl Horn, [32:23]

• Healthcare Avoidance & Physical Health:
  • ICE presence drives people away from seeking medical care—including necessary prenatal care ([32:44]–[33:19]).
• Family Separation & Lasting Trauma:
  • Proximity to enforcement and violence, especially for children, amplifies long-term psychological harm, including anxiety and PTSD ([35:10]).
• Societal Ripple Effects:
  • Community-wide stress, not limited to those directly targeted. E.g., after Hong Kong unrest, depression in the general population jumped from 2% to 11% ([37:00]).

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6. Do ICE Raids Make Communities Safer?

• Evidence Contradicts the Rationale:
  • Study after study shows immigrants (including the undocumented) are less likely to commit crimes than citizens ([37:23]).
  • Most recent ICE raids target non-criminals or those with minor offenses ([37:56]).
  • Paradoxically, raids make communities less safe: people become less likely to report crimes, including domestic violence, fearing law enforcement collaboration ([39:02]).

Notable Quote:

"The man in green and the man in blue are the same thing."
— Bill Lopez, [39:02]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Tear Gas as a War Crime vs. Domestic Tool —
  "See, we can't use it on enemies in wartime, but cool to use it against our own people in peacetime."
  — Rose Rimler, [08:45]
• On Lack of Scientific Certainty —
  "We have some data on how much it takes to kill animals... but there's a ton that we don't know about what it does to people."
  — Blythe Turrell, [18:42]
• On ICE Raids and Children —
  "I'm shocked that they arrested five year olds. I'm shocked."
  — Bill Lopez, [33:38]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Protest & Enforcement Context: [00:00]–[03:03]
• Personal Protester Testimony: [01:49]; [06:14]; [10:46]; [13:41]
• Tear Gas—What It Is and How It Works: [07:11]–[12:18]
• Expert Scientific Explanations: [13:04]–[14:51]; [15:41]–[17:19]
• Long-Term Effects & Research Gaps: [18:42]–[23:39]
• Protecting Yourself From Tear Gas: [24:53]
• ICE Raid Effects: Personal Accounts & Scientific Findings: [27:57]–[37:23]
• Crime & Safety Discussion: [37:23]–[39:26]

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Conclusion

The episode delivers an unsettling portrait of how tear gas and ICE raids, justified as tools to ensure order and safety, can inflict significant and sometimes little-understood harm on individuals and entire communities. From immediate respiratory and neurological trauma to ripples that affect infants not yet born, the science reviewed in this episode questions the safety, efficacy, and ethics of these practices. The Science Vs team underscores how much is still unknown—and how critical it is to scrutinize the real human costs behind news headlines.

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For further reading and the complete list of citations, visit the show transcript linked in the episode notes.

Transcript

[Rose Rimler]

Hi, I'm Rose Rimler filling in for Wendy Zuckerman. And you're listening to Science versus Today. We're talking about tear gas and we're talking about ICE raids and what they do to people according to science. And we're talking about this stuff because of what's going on in Minneapolis in the US Right now. A few weeks ago, the US government sent in a bunch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the city. They called it, quote unquote, the largest immigration operation ever. There's Border Patrol agents involved too. And we're hearing about all kinds of people being detained in all kinds of ways.

[Blythe Turrell]

New video shows a grandfather walked out.

[Jennifer Brown]

Of his home wearing just a blanket, shorts and slippers during our bitter cold blast. His family says he's a US citizen. A local school district whose sounding alarms they say about four of their students taken into ICE custody. The family's attorney and school officials say.

[T (Protester)]

ICE used a five year old boy.

[Jennifer Brown]

To knock on the door of his.

[T (Protester)]

Own home to lure out other family members.

[Rose Rimler]

And for weeks Minnesotans have been pushing back. They're organizing marches and protests, taking video of what these agents are doing. And federal agents have cracked down violently on all of this. There's reports and video of them using tear gas and smoke on crowds, images of agents spraying people directly in the eyes with this stuff. And they've shot three people in Minneapolis so far, killing two of them. The government has said that the people they've killed pose some kind of threat to their agents, though the evidence and videos from the scene don't back that up. We talked to some folks who have been there, including this guy that we're going to call T, who's lived in Minneapolis for more than a decade. We talked to him on the 24th, the day that agents killed a protester named Alex Preddy.

[T (Protester)]

I woke up to a bunch of honking and helicopter noises outside of my apartment. So looked at my, just looked at my phone and saw all the updates.

[Rose Rimler]

This man was killed just a few blocks away from where T lives. It was the day after a big general strike in Minneapolis.

[T (Protester)]

We just, we just had a huge economic shutdown last yesterday. Everything was shut down. A bunch of people showed up downtown and then next, the next day, they, they murdered a man. Like, I don't know what we're supposed to do anymore.

[Rose Rimler]

T told us about what he's witnessed in the city these past few weeks. He's joined several protests and he has seen things escalate.

[T (Protester)]

I hate to use the term that people always use. Oh, it's a war zone. It's a war zone. But like it really felt like that. It's really jarring to, you know, walk around your community and seeing people screaming, blowing their whistles and then just clouds of tear gas, you know, and then, you know, they're shooting people too. Like it does honestly feel like it does honestly feel like a dystopian war zone.

[Rose Rimler]

So today we're going to talk about what's happening there. We're going to dive into some science around tear gas, which scientists are looking at because it's not just Minneapolis. The stuff is being used on people.

[Blythe Turrell]

All over the world.

[Rose Rimler]

And we're starting to find out more about what it might be doing to us, like what the long term effects could be. Plus we'll talk about immigration raids themselves and what they can do to people in the community. That is all coming up after the break.

[Jennifer Brown]

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[Blythe Turrell]

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[Meryl Horn]

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[Rose Rimler]

Welcome back. This is Rose Rimler and today we're talking about the stuff that people are getting exposed to amid this huge influx of ICE agents. In Minneapolis. And I'm here for this part of the episode with our editor, Blythe Turrell. Hi, Blythe.

[Blythe Turrell]

Hey, Rose. So I think we should probably say out of the gate that in the U.S. you know, we've all got the right to protest. We've got the right to peacefully assemble. It's in the constitution. And people are allowed to film stuff that's going on in public, like what police officers or ICE agents or other federal agents are doing, as long as you don't interfere with what they're up to.

[Rose Rimler]

Right.

[Blythe Turrell]

So the Department of Homeland Security has said it is protecting its agents from rioters, although reports are that things are generally peaceful. But what we've been seeing happening in Minneapolis is a lot of force, a lot of, like, hardcore responses from these agents. Right. There's lots of reports of ICE using tear gas against people who are protesting or who are just, like, observing, taking video and stuff. And we also heard that from T, who is one of the protesters we talked to, who you heard from at the beginning of the show. They.

[T (Protester)]

They definitely unloaded a lot of tear gas out there.

[Blythe Turrell]

Were you exposed to it?

[T (Protester)]

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I was puking and throwing up all over myself.

[Blythe Turrell]

You're puking and throwing up?

[T (Protester)]

A lot of people were retching. There were. There were people out there that were prepared for it. They had gas masks and stuff. Obviously they were handling it better. But there were also people just like, yeah, straight up. We were all just coughing and puking and my whole face was covered in mucus.

[Blythe Turrell]

So, yeah, I mean, tear gas, it turns out, can do a lot of messed up stuff, which is the first thing we're gonna kind of talk about. And this has come up on this show before. Actually, we talked about it back in 2020. It was the height of COVID and people were protesting after a police officer murdered George Floyd, who's a black man, also in Minneapolis.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, also in Minneapolis. Right. That's interesting.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. And that is actually also when this scientist that we're starting with got interested in tear gas.

[Jennifer Brown]

So my name is Jennifer Brown. I have a PhD in neuroscience and a law degree from the University of Minnesota.

[Blythe Turrell]

So Jennifer was actually getting her PhD in Minneapolis at the time. Hmm. And she and her, like, neuroscience nerd grad friends, they were watching these protests around George Floyd's death. And, you know, they were seeing these, like, clouds of tear gas enveloping protesters, and they decided that they wanted to do something.

[Jennifer Brown]

And talking amongst ourselves, we said, well, we're. We're PhD candidates. We know how to research, we know how to write. What do we know about tear gas? It started as a conversation among friends.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. So, Rose, like many conversations among friends, this led to them doing a bunch of research and looking at academic papers. And you know, what they wanted to find out was, yeah, what do we know about tear gas? And one thing that caught their attention pretty early on is just a little bit about the history of this stuff. Because, you know, tear gas has been around kind of in some form for more than a century.

[Jennifer Brown]

So it was first documented in war in World War I. I think people, most people remember their high school history classes talking about mustard gas in the trenches and how terrible that was. Everyone in the global community pretty quickly realized that escalating chemical warfare was a really bad idea for everybody. And so there's a convention against the use of chemical weapons in war. Has a lot of. Of signatories. The US Is one of them. So the US it is illegal to use tear gas and other chemical weapons in war. However, there is an exception for domestic policing.

[Rose Rimler]

See, we can't use it on enemies in wartime, but cool to use it against our own people in peacetime.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. That's the system that we have.

[Rose Rimler]

No notes.

[Blythe Turrell]

Continue. No notes. Right. And I mean, look, I asked Jennifer about that too, right? I mean, what did you think when you saw that piece of it?

[Jennifer Brown]

Horrified. But then I said, why?

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. And Jennifer actually told me that after the US and all these countries agreed not to use these types of chemicals in war, it wasn't like everyone just like, dumped out all of their chemicals, you know, these various things that they might use as weapons, as these types of weapons. Right. It's not like everybody just tossed it, but these chemicals that we had started being marketed as like non lethal or less lethal options for stuff like crowd control. And then they started getting sold to places like police departments.

[Rose Rimler]

You know, sometimes it's okay to waste stuff. You don't have to repurpose every little thing.

[Blythe Turrell]

Right. Just accept the sunk cost of the development of an item. Yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of where that's sort of like the, or, you know, the, the origin story of some of this stuff. And now I want to talk a little bit about what, like what this tear gas is. You know, what we have out there in the streets today, what it can actually do to you.

[Jennifer Brown]

Tear gas is an umbrella term. Most of these chemicals, first off, are not gases. They are chemicals that exist in solid form that are then aerosolized and made into a form that can Be widely dispersed and sprayed. And to do that, you usually mix them with a lot of other chemicals or you put some kind of accelerant. You have to get it from a solid form into a gas form somehow.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. So like she said, solid stuff sort of squish into canisters, can then get fired out into crowds and released as this aerosol. We talked to another protester about this in Minneapolis. We're going to call her A. And she told us what it's like to sort of see these canisters kind of all around you in the street.

[Jennifer Brown]

They're just launching tear gas at us left and right on the streets with no warning. You can just be standing there protesting silently, peacefully. However, they're just running up and throwing whatever they have.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah, I mean, and A actually sent me some photos where it's just like this. You can see sort of this massive cloud just kind of hovering between buildings. And some of that could be smoke. Like, there's also reports of, like, just smoke and not tear gas. But there's obviously, like, all of this stuff in the air. And I asked her, like, you know, if they can get away from it.

[Jennifer Brown]

You were in a cloud. There was no running. The wind was going everywhere. You weren't running to get out of it. And thank God a few of those businesses were open and helping people and, like, escorting inside, because you weren't outrunning it in a reasonable amount of time. It was several city blocks wide.

[Blythe Turrell]

Mm.

[Rose Rimler]

It's very scary.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah, totally. And I also asked Jennifer a little bit more, just about, like, how it feels exactly. If I get hit with tear gas, what happens?

[Jennifer Brown]

Yes. So do you cook with hot peppers ever? Mcchilli jalapeno. Have you ever forgotten to wash your hands after you cut a pepper and accidentally touch your eyes or your nose? And all of a sudden you feel this burning, itching, eye running, snot dripping down your face, sensation.

[Blythe Turrell]

Maybe. Maybe, Jennifer, maybe.

[Jennifer Brown]

Maybe we've all done this. Maybe that is a similar type of reaction as what it would feel like to be exposed to tear gas. Because the chemicals, again, the broad umbrella of tear gas, are activating the same receptors, the pain receptors in your body as that chemical that's in the jalapeno, just capsaicin.

[Blythe Turrell]

So, yeah, I mean, of course getting exposed to tear gas feels worse than that. Like, stronger. It's also not only that. T. The other protester we talked to, the one we heard from at the top, he said that you can also kind of feel, like, this grittiness when it hits You.

[T (Protester)]

It felt sticky. I don't know, like, felt like there was like dust or whatever in my eyes. A physical thing. Like it was scratchy.

[Blythe Turrell]

And so to go into sort of more of what's inside this grit, this powder, there are a bunch of different chemicals that can be used in tear gas, like active chemicals. So one common one is known as cs. There's one that's called cn, something called OC in pepper spray.

[Rose Rimler]

So these are the ingredients that make your eyes hurt?

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah, this is like the stuff that can cause that peppery feeling that Jennifer was talking about in the tearing up. But one thing that is tricky is that Jennifer said that it's really tough to know exactly what's getting used on people. And when I talked to T on Saturday, here's what he told me.

[T (Protester)]

Whatever they're using today is really bad. Really? So.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah, it feels worse.

[T (Protester)]

Yeah.

[Blythe Turrell]

Like, how so?

[T (Protester)]

I mean, just like the. I mean, the blindness straight up, couldn't see. Like, I've been tear gassed before and. And been able to, like, you know, squint and whatever. All this stuff, I genuinely couldn't see. And it was. I was SC That I was losing my visibility.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah, I mean, I asked him for how long. He said it was like seven or eight minutes before he could see again.

[Rose Rimler]

That's a long time.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. He had to have people help him, sort of pouring water in his eyes and stuff. And we don't really know if it was, like, worse for him that time because the chemical was stronger or the chemical was different. It's possible that he was like, closer to it or was like exposed in a different way. You know, we don't know. And we did reach out to ICE to ask them, like, what they're using on the ground and didn't hear back from them. But basically, we know this stuff can cause, you know, the symptoms we're talking about, the tearing up, the coughing, even maybe vomiting. You know, there's reports it can affect your heart, your lungs. And T told us that where it hits his skin, it can feel like it's burning almost. And A told us that it almost.

[Jennifer Brown]

Feels like a rash when it gets on your skin. Right. It's almost like an allergic reaction. It stings, it burns. It's not just tear gas. It's. It's like a light acid almost being thrown at you. And that's not even the worst part, when it gets in your lungs and your eyes.

[Rose Rimler]

And then there was a photo, several photos of people getting tear gas directly in the eyes. Like the canisters being sprayed into their face. Do we know anything about that?

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah, I mean, not a ton. So, you know, you can sort of intuit, right, that, like, you're getting sprayed super close, there's a ton of it in your eyes. Like, you could intuit that bad effects would be worse, but. Yeah, but I don't think we just have a ton of research, scientific research on that that we know for sure. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about, like, the actual mechanism of why this causes pain in our body.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. So the stuff, when it gets sprayed, these chemicals, they can bind to these proteins on our body in places like our eyes and our skin, and that can then send a message to our brain that's interpreted as pain and particularly that, you know, can be interpreted as heat and pain. I talked about some of these details with Carly Tadas. She is a neuroscientist, and she's also one of Jennifer's co authors.

[Meryl Horn]

When we're talking physiologically.

[Rose Rimler]

So when you're exposed to tear gas.

[Meryl Horn]

What it is activating is your nociceptors. Essentially, your nociceptors are the receptors that.

[Rose Rimler]

Are in your skin, and they're also in your organs, and they communicate to your brain that either damage has occurred or might occur.

[Blythe Turrell]

So they're like little warning, little alarm bells are going off.

[Meryl Horn]

Yes, exactly.

[Rose Rimler]

They're little alarm bells. And so nociceptors are really responsive to a lot of different modalities.

[Blythe Turrell]

So they can basically take in a bunch of different types of sensations.

[Meryl Horn]

Exactly.

[Rose Rimler]

And they communicate it to your brain.

[Meryl Horn]

So that you kind of know, right, that I've cut myself, which is different.

[Rose Rimler]

From walking into a door frame, which is different from burning myself on a stove.

[Blythe Turrell]

And it turns out that the receptor, this particular receptor, we've got a bunch of them in our nose and in our throat and the places where we're often encountering tear gas. So it can get really bad. It can also cause a bunch of inflammation, like this big immune response in your body. Here is Jennifer talking about that.

[Jennifer Brown]

So that's causing swelling in your throat, in your nose. What happens when those things swell, they shut and you can't breathe, and you have people coughing and coughing.

[Blythe Turrell]

There have also been reports of people being in, like, really tight spaces with this stuff, with this tear gas, even babies. There was a story about a family. They said they were in their car and that agents rolled a tear gas canister under the car and it went off and it, like, filled up their car. They had multiple kids in there, including a Six month old baby. Yeah. And the baby was having trouble breathing. They had to give cpr. They had to go to the hospital. Oh, my God. So I asked Jennifer about that.

[Jennifer Brown]

These are not meant to be used in enclosed spaces because there will be no air, good air left to breathe. So deaths have been reported. If you are left too long in an enclosed space with tear gas, you can die.

[Blythe Turrell]

But this, like, speaks to one of the other things that Jennifer pointed out about tear gas. So there's a lot of science that we just don't have. And that's partly because a lot of the studies of, like, tear gas effects on people are from people in the military who are exposed as a part of training. So, like, that's likely to be a particular group of people. Young, healthy, probably predominantly dudes. Mm.

[Rose Rimler]

Not six month old babies.

[Blythe Turrell]

Right. In fact, I mean, there's just so much we don't know about this stuff. Like, we have some data on how much it takes to kill animals in the lab with these chemicals, but there's a ton that we don't know about, like what it does to people. Which is actually the main focus of one of the papers that Jennifer and her colleagues ended up writing. It's about whether tear gas can affect you over the long term. Because there's this idea that you get tear gassed, it feels terrible, you have these awful symptoms in the moment, but a few hours later, you know, you, like, start to feel better, you recover from that stuff. Right. But some research is suggesting that, you know, that's not always true. I mean, for one thing, people get hit with these canisters, leading to injuries, blindness, even death. And then from the gas, there are reports of ongoing respiratory problems, neurological problems. And then after these events, people report mental health issues, ptsd. Sure.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Blythe Turrell]

Which makes sense. Right. Like, it's not just the tear gas. If you're experiencing tear gas, there's probably a lot of other things going on that are gonna potentially contribute to mental health issues. Right. But one of the things that caught my eye here is that we're actually starting to see more and more reports of health stuff that, like, you might not expect. So, for example, researchers did a big survey of people in Portland, Oregon, after the 2020 protests. I don't know if you remember, there were like weeks and weeks of protests in Portland after George Floyd's murder. Yeah. And so a bunch of people reported symptoms that showed up hours or even days later. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that a lot of people reported gastrointestinal stuff like diarrhea or cramping. So about, like, almost 30% of the people who said that they had some delayed issues, some delayed effects, they experienced GI stuff.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay.

[Blythe Turrell]

And so I asked Jennifer, like, what could explain this? And she said, we don't really know, but.

[Jennifer Brown]

Oh, right. You're causing a massive immune response, inflammatory response, I should say, through all parts of your body. If you're, you know, it's in your tear gas is in your mouth, and you don't flush your mouth out and then spit the water out and you're swallowing it, trying to get it out. I don't know.

[Rose Rimler]

I mean, yeah, it's diffused not just in the air, but in the body. So I guess it could affect all kinds of systems.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. So, yeah, that was one thing that was strange, the, like, gastro stuff that was coming up. But there was this other symptom Rose that I found even more surprising. So a lot of people in this study and some other observational sort of survey studies like this have reported that they were. Menstruation was all messed up after they got tear gas.

[Rose Rimler]

Hmm.

[Blythe Turrell]

That big survey out of Oregon I was just Talking about, about 900 people reported menstrual problems or breast tenderness after they were exposed.

[Rose Rimler]

Hmm.

[Blythe Turrell]

They were reporting stuff like cramping, spotting, more bleeding, longer bleeding. And there was another paper, also a survey that asked people with uteruses if they had menstrual or breast symptoms after being exposed. And that paper found that more than 80% of them said they had.

[Rose Rimler]

Wow.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. I mean, and we know a lot of stuff affects menstruation, Right. Like stress can affect it. But there could be other stuff happening, too. As Jennifer mentioned, there's a bunch of other junk in tear gas, which, like, makes the mechanism question even harder to answer.

[Jennifer Brown]

The chemicals that activate those receptors are not the only things that are in tear gas. Right. I mentioned you have to add a whole bunch of other stuff to it in order to make it into a gas. There are so many other nasty chemicals in there that have been known to cause cancer, that are known to be toxic. You have smoke also often being deployed in addition to tear gas at a lot of these protests. It's really hard for people to know what exactly they've been exposed to. Unless you can find a canister that was thrown near you and know that this is what it was and try and do your own research. So it's. So, you know, it's hard to say, you know, this is the mechanism of action. Mechanism of action of What. What chemical specifically? What part of the chemical? Don't know.

[Blythe Turrell]

There's also reports of miscarriage, like, from Palestinian women after Israeli forces used tear gas on or near them.

[Rose Rimler]

Oh.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, to summarize, I would say there's obvious, like, direct effects of tear gas. We see them. Those are, like, becoming more and more known to us. Right. But it is interesting to me that there's so many clues that whatever these chemicals are, they can be affecting, like, other parts of our body. And there's just so much that we don't know about it. Yeah. As we're, like, putting it as, it's sort of like being poofed out all over the place, right? Mm. Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

Spraying a chemical we don't know that much about on a broad swath of the population.

[Blythe Turrell]

Mm.

[Rose Rimler]

Pretty risky.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. And again, I mean, we reached out to ice, the Department of Homeland Security, to ask about these, like, safety concerns and questions, if this stuff is safe. We didn't hear back. But what is clear is that even though people are reporting these awful experiences with tear gas, so far, for a lot of folks, it's like, not stopping them from going out on the streets. The people we talked to in Minneapolis basically all had plans to go back out, so we did look around at what you can do and whether you can protect yourself from tear gas. Okay. And basically, what people told us, you know, wear really good goggles, something that's, like, really tight over your face. Right. They suggested wearing gas masks. People also suggested covering yourself, like, from head to toe, making sure you're covering all parts of your exposed skin. This is the rash stuff. Right. Because it, like, has. When it contacts your skin. Yeah. It can cause that irritation. And there's also some CDC recommendations on this, actually. And they say to throw your clothes away if you've been exposed to tear gas, and they actually say to cut them off so you're not, like, pulling your shirt over your head or whatever and, like, getting the stuff in your eyes even more.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Blythe Turrell]

That's smart. So bottom line, like, you can. There's things you can do to protect yourself. Right. That might help, but, you know, there's no, like, antidote. Right. There's no, like. One of the scientists told me there's no, like, Narcan for tear gas. Mm. But for you, Rose, where does this leave you on. In the land of tear gas?

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. It's worse than I thought it was.

[Blythe Turrell]

Yeah. You know, I actually told one of the protesters some of the science about menstruation, and she was like, great, thanks. That's like another thing for me to Google when I'm awake in the middle of the night. So I also am sorry. Yeah. But to me it's like, okay, well, figuring out what we know, what we don't know is important.

[Rose Rimler]

Well, thanks, Blythe. Next after the break, we're going to hear from Meryl. She's been doing research into the effects that these ICE raids have on the people that are being targeted. So that's coming up after the break.

[Blythe Turrell]

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[T (Protester)]

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[Meryl Horn]

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[Rose Rimler]

Used Babbel, you would Babbel's conversation based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases.

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Things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at Babbel.com Spotify spelled B A B-B-E-L.com Spotify rules and restrictions may apply. Hi, welcome back. It's Rose Rimler here and we just talked about the effects that tear gas might be having on people. But there are a lot of other things happening that are freaking people out. So next we're gonna talk about the ICE raids themselves. And for that we're gonna hear from senior producer Meryl Horn.

[Meryl Horn]

Hey, Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

Hey, Meryl.

[Meryl Horn]

Yeah, the ICE raids, right? This is the thing that supposedly started everything, these immigration raids. The government said it was sending in ICE to deport people who were undocumented. We heard about this from T as well, the protester that we heard from earlier in the show.

[T (Protester)]

I've literally watched them abduct people over in my neighborhood that, like, they're. They're pulling people out of their homes. I watched about two blocks away from my apartment. I heard a bunch of whistles and honking. So I walked out and literally saw them, like, pull up. They went into somebody's home, and they picked up. I don't know. I don't know his name, but they picked him up and put him in a van and drove away.

[Meryl Horn]

And so hearing about this, it made me curious to find out more about the ICE raids, like, what effects are they having on people? How widespread are those effects? And there's actually way more science on this than I was expecting there was. So I talked about this with Bill Lopez. He's a clinical associate professor at the University of Michigan, and he studied the kind of aftermath of, like, what happens after one of these raids. And the way he got into this work was that several years ago, he was already doing a study on the health of a community when an ICE raid happened. It was just miles away from his house in Michigan.

[Bill Lopez]

So we happened to be doing a survey of the Latino community at the same time. And the raid happened right in the middle.

[Meryl Horn]

12 people were detained. And after the raid, he found that something called immigration enforcement stress went up, which is basically the fear of being deported, maybe not that surprising. But then also people said that after the raid, their health got worse overall. And he also did these in depth interviews, which really showed the kind of depths of the effects on people. So he told me the story of this woman who had gone with her husband that day to pick up their car from the mechanic.

[Bill Lopez]

They drove in one car together. They pay for the work on their car. They leave in two cars, right? And as the husband is driving away, he's detained by Immigration Enforcement, by ice, and he's later taken to detention. And she is watching him because he pulled out in front of her. So she is witnessing this. Right, and being undocumented herself. She couldn't do anything about it. She couldn't approach the car or she would be arrested as well.

[Meryl Horn]

And then Bill interviewed her later about how this experience stuck with her.

[Bill Lopez]

She actually described the day by saying, fue un dia comun y corriente, meaning it was a day just like any other Right. In which her husband was detained. And you never know when this intense climactic event is going to take place. Right. So it's not only the level of violence, but it's the suddenness and unexpectedness of this violence. And the third layer, it's the possibility that that violence can happen any day of your life.

[Meryl Horn]

And other research has found that, you know, ICE raids aren't just impacting undocumented people. One study said that US Citizens were more likely to report feeling anxious or depressed if they knew someone who was detained or dep. And it's not just mental health that's affected. Studies are finding that it can affect physical health, too. And then Bill told me about this study. It was about a raid that happened in Iowa in 2008 at a meat processing plant. And it was huge. ICE deployed 900 agents, and almost 300 people were deported. And what this researcher did, she looked at babies born after this raid in.

[Bill Lopez]

Iowa, and what she did is look at birth weight of infants before the raid and after the raid. And what she found is that after the raid, the average birth weight of Latino infants went down, but not of white infants.

[Blythe Turrell]

Oh, my gosh.

[Bill Lopez]

Right. So this what we see. And those were not just from undocumented women. Those were from. Those were just regional birth rate records. Right. Enforcement literally makes its way into the bodies of the next generation who aren't even born yet and who don't even have a concept of citizenship status. Right.

[Blythe Turrell]

Whoa.

[Rose Rimler]

So it was like the. The parents were stressed enough that I was making the babies born less healthy, and that was only affecting the Latino community.

[Meryl Horn]

Yeah. Infants born to Latino women had a 24% higher chance of being born with a low birth weight after the raid compared to beforehand. I asked Bill about this, and do we know what the mechanism there would be? Is this from stress?

[Bill Lopez]

Yeah. So we know the mechanism is twofold. Right. One is certainly stress hormones in the mother's body.

[Meryl Horn]

Another thing going on could be that people are less likely to get medical care, like prenatal care, if they're worried about being deported. So, like, there was one study that surveyed healthcare providers, and almost half of them said that they had seen negative effects of ICE enforcement on their immigrant patients. One said, quote, fear of getting deported keeps all of these folks away. Also, even folks with green cards are afraid of losing their insurance now and have stopped getting necessary treatments, unquote.

[Rose Rimler]

Plus, there's reports of ICE agents in hospitals. Right, We've heard about that.

[Meryl Horn]

So there's good reason to be afraid, actually.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Meryl Horn]

And you know, a lot of the work that we've been talking about here is just looking at like one individual ICE raid. But what's happening in Minnesota is on a whole other level. Of course, I talked about that with Bill who said that even though he's been in this field for 15 years, what's happening now caught him off guard.

[Bill Lopez]

Ice is arresting literal children. And is a 17 year old a child? Absolutely. I would still be angry. Is a five year old perhaps a different level of cruelty? I would argue, yes. I'm not trying to differentiate which age of a child is worse. It's abhorrent. I am saying they're shock. I'm shocked that they arrested five year olds. I'm shocked.

[Meryl Horn]

Technically, that boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, the five year old was detained, not arrested. But yeah, you probably saw, you know, his photo was making the rounds last week. It's that kid with like the hat and the Spider man backpack. ICE said that his dad abandoned him and ran from the officers. His family says that they begged agents to let them keep the child. And there's reports that he and his father were seeking asylum in the US and are now being detained at an ICE facility in Texas.

[Bill Lopez]

What we see now does seem to be agents with no. Oh goodness. We seem to see agents with like no moral compass whatsoever. I'll rephrase that. But it's just embarrassing. It's embarrassing. What we seem to see now is agents that are unaccountable to their actions and engage in a level of violence and cruelty on a scale that I've certainly not seen before.

[Meryl Horn]

And there can be long term mental health effects from this, which can vary based on like, what exactly people are.

[Bill Lopez]

Exposed to, among other things. Two things matter, that is proximity to the removal and the violence. How violence the removal is. The mental health outcomes are most severe when you're right next to your parent and you witness it. And depending on the level of the violence. Right. So as we're seeing in Minnesota right now, the use of tear gas, the threatening with weapons will have worst outcomes, understandably, than requesting that someone leaves without weapons drawn.

[Meryl Horn]

And scientists have actually been able to study this. Like in one paper, a group of Researchers found about 70 adults who had all been exposed to immigration enforcement in some way when they were kids. So maybe a member of their family or someone else in the community had been deported. And then they did these like in depth interviews with them, sometimes for hours as adults, and had them fill out surveys. And it found that a lot of them had anxiety as adults and that the effect was stronger if they were exposed to an event that was more severe. And then we also have lots of studies just generally showing that being exposed to violence, like police violence, is really bad for your mental health. And while a lot of this research focuses on the people who are, like, really affected by ICE activity, we also have evidence that the ripple out effects from a prolonged upheaval, like what's happening in Minnesota, might be huge. So, like, moving away from the U.S. there was a study on Hong Kong that looked at the social unrest there in 2019, all the protests and the violence and how that affected people's mental health and the general population there. So not specifically protesters. And they found that someone's risk for depression went from about 2% to 11% after the protests.

[Rose Rimler]

So just the general population got more depressed?

[Meryl Horn]

Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

Not just, like, people directly involved.

[Blythe Turrell]

Mm.

[Meryl Horn]

And then finally, I talked to Bill about, like, the supposed reason for all of this. So there's this claim that the raids are making the US Safer because the goal is to deport violent criminals. What does the evidence show? Like, do these raids make communities safer?

[Bill Lopez]

So evidence is pretty clear that immigrants and undocumented immigrants are far less likely to engage in criminal activity than citizens. Right?

[Meryl Horn]

Less likely.

[Bill Lopez]

Less likely. At a baseline, communities with more immigrants are going to have lower crime rates. Just kind of at a baseline.

[Meryl Horn]

And how come?

[Bill Lopez]

For many reasons. Right. Including that immigrants have more tenuous status in the US and, you know, there's more legal repercussions for less serious crimes. So there tends to be less crimes. Right?

[Meryl Horn]

Yeah. So we cover this in our old immigration episode.

[Rose Rimler]

We talked about this on the show.

[Meryl Horn]

Before, a few years ago. Yeah. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes compared to other people in the general population. And there was an analysis recently from the Cato Institute, that libertarian think tank that analyzed a bunch of deportation data that was FOIA, and it found that ICE is arresting 1100% more non criminals on the streets in the summer of last year compared with about, like, 10 years ago. So the vast majority of ICE arrests happening today are basically people with either nonviolent criminal convictions or people with no criminal record at all. And then there's also some evidence that what's happening right now will actually make people less safe. For example, when ICE starts working with local cops, undocumented people are less likely to report crimes, which the authors of that study said can undermine public safety. And we also see that domestic violence calls also drop in places with a relatively high Latinx population, which means that when that type of like violence is happening, people might be less likely to call for help.

[Bill Lopez]

I would say that when people do not trust ice, which is obviously appropriate for any number of reasons, they will not trust the police and they will not trust any other government service in that community. The man is a man is a man. The man in green and the man in blue are the same thing.

[Meryl Horn]

So yeah, it does seem like people are generally less healthy and less safe when ICE raids happen.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks Meryl.

[Meryl Horn]

Thanks Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

That's Science Versus. This week we have 117 citations and if you want to see all those citations, you can click on the link to our transcript. You'll find that in our show Notes. This episode was produced by Blythe Turrell, Meryl Horne, Michelle Deng, Aketti Foster Keys and me, Rose Rimler. Weny Zuckerman is our Executive producer. We're edited by Blythe Turrell Fact Checking by Michelle Deng and Niketti Foster Keys Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka so Wiley, Emma Munger and Peter Leonard. Special thanks to all the Minnesotans who took the time to speak to us about what going on there, including photographer Matt Gundrum. Thanks also to the other researchers we spoke to, including Dr. Margo Moinester and Professor Joanna Drebbe. Thanks to Paul Schreiber, Nimra Azmi, Whitney Potter and Jack Weinstein. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. You can listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications and we'll factcha soon.

[Blythe Turrell]

Sam.