Ohio Immigrant Alliance "Worst of the Worst" report: 152 DHS agents and contractors accused of abuse

Case

On Aug. 18, 2026, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance (OIA) published a compiled list of 152 current and former ICE, CBP and related DHS employees and contractors accused of sexual or physical abuse, most of them sex offenses. The list mixes convictions with arrests, charges, accusations and civil settlements, and has no denominator, so it documents cases but not rates. All figures here are OIA's, checked against its published spreadsheet.

What the report claims (per OIA)
On Aug. 18, 2026, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance released a report and spreadsheet listing 152 current and former ICE, CBP and related DHS employees and contractors accused of sexual or physical abuse.
Per OIA's spreadsheet, 131 of the 152 cases are flagged as sex offenses, 85 as involving an underage victim, 69 as job-related and 19 as family-related. The Author's tally of the spreadsheet matches these four counts.
By state, the spreadsheet lists Texas 47, Arizona 30 and California 20, which also matches the report.
The 152 grew out of an earlier OIA report of July 22, 2026 that documented 59 agents charged with sexual and violent crimes, 25 of them from 2025-2026.
Coverage of the report says CBP accounts for 121 of the 152 cases (79.6%), and that 63.5% of CBP cases involve underage victims versus 50% of ICE cases.
OIA says its list was out of date within days, as new arrests of agents were reported after publication.

What the spreadsheet actually shows
The Author's tally of the spreadsheet's "Status of Case" column: about 92 rows involve a conviction or guilty plea (including 2 later overturned or acquitted on appeal), about 36 are charged or arrested with no outcome recorded, about 14 are accused-only or civil settlements with no criminal charge, 8 ended in acquittal, dismissal or dropped charges, and 2 are unknown.
Because the "Sex Offense?" flag is independent of case status, the share described as sex offenses is not a share convicted of sex offenses.
Years of most recent action run from 1982 to 2026, so many entries are decades old. Roughly 20 are dated 2026 and about 14 are dated 2025.
Agency labels in the spreadsheet (119 CBP, 20 ICE, 6 ICE contractors, 2 ICE HSI, plus INS, DOD and other one-offs) do not map cleanly onto the report's headline CBP/ICE split.

Independent checks and responses
Spectrum News independently verified, using court records and releases from federal and state agencies, that 39 of the employees were charged or sentenced for crimes.
Spectrum News reported that ICE's media office did not reply to its request for comment on the report and that DHS gave no direct response.
In response to the July report, a DHS spokesperson said: "We take allegations regarding misconduct seriously and cherish the public's trust."

Limits of the data
The list is a count of cases, not a rate: it gives no total headcount of DHS employees for comparison, so it cannot show whether abuse is more or less common than in other workforces.
The report is internally inconsistent in places, for example giving different contractor counts in different passages, and the spreadsheet's Notes column is misaligned in several rows.
This entry names no one who has been only charged or accused. Named cases will be added only where court records confirm a conviction.

Perspectives

Critic — Lynn Tramonte, Ohio Immigrant Alliance (report author)
Better vetting and accountability are needed, but the larger point is structural: civil immigration enforcement should be a desk job like the IRS, not one done with guns, jails and deportation, which attract the wrong people.

Critic — Lilian Serrano, Southern Border Communities Coalition
In nearly half the documented cases the offenses were tied to official duties, so this is not a few bad actors. Agencies should not investigate themselves; communities need independent investigations.

Editorial read — The Author
The cases that end in convictions are serious on their own, and the pattern of job-related offenses is worth scrutiny. But the headline framing blends convictions with accusations and old cases, and without a denominator it cannot support claims about rates. Treat it as a lead for case-by-case verification, not a verdict on the workforce. Neither DHS nor ICE has directly answered the report's findings.

Note
The list has no denominator, so it cannot show whether abuse is more common among DHS agents than in other workforces; DHS and ICE have given only general statements in response.

Sources
[1] Ohio Immigrant Alliance, "Worst of the Worst" report page (https://ohioimmigrant.org/blog/2026/8/18/worst-of-the-worst) · 2026-08-18
[2] OIA, Worst of the Worst report (PDF) (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/68460a37f903140728c2ab29/t/6a849ded4d8d3725c3778514/1787076086492/AUG+18+Worst+of+the+Worst+Report+FINAL.pdf) · 2026-08-18
[3] OIA, Updated List of Criminal DHS Agents (spreadsheet, 8/17/2026) · 2026-08-17
[4] Spectrum News (https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2026/08/19/152-ice--border-patrol-agents-accused-of-criminal-activity) · 2026-08-19
[5] Mother Jones (https://motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/report-ice-abuse-women-children-ohio) · 2026-07
[6] Davis Vanguard (https://davisvanguard.org/2026/09/ice-border-patrol-sexual-offenses/) · 2026-09-10

Connections

Same context — Claims of immunity from law for Trump and federal agents
Both concern whether federal agents are held to the same law as civilians; the Southern Border Communities Coalition's Serrano frames the report as an independent-investigation question.

Same context — DHS "hunt them down" messaging and enforcement harms to U.S. citizens
Both concern enforcement culture and harms at DHS; the report's authors argue the culture of the agencies is part of the problem.

Related — ICE agent conduct, vetting and accountability during the 2025-2026 hiring surge
That entry compiles accusations of abuse against DHS agents and contractors; this is a separate, newly reported incident, and nothing indicates Gonzalez appears on that list.