15 minutes from start to finish: How traffic stops turn into ICE busts in Texas

From KUT News:

Early in the morning of July 31, 2025, Gabriel Martinez-Segura and four other men got into a white Chevrolet van and headed to a construction job in East Austin.

At around 7:08 a.m., just after they crossed over the Longhorn Dam, their van caught the attention of Texas Highway Patrol Trooper Ricky Cotto. He later said it looked like their front license plate was not in the right place.

Within 15 minutes of Cotto noticing the misplaced plate, all five occupants of the van were in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Now, The Texas Newsroom has obtained body and dash cam videos from that morning on Town Creek Drive, and is sharing them for the first time.

The records shed light on the tactics, language and technology used by police in Texas to quickly sweep people into deportation proceedings.

They also reveal that Texas Department of Public Safety special agents broke state police rules by wearing face-concealing masks during the operation.

Experts who have reviewed the images say they raise questions about the erosion of trust between officers and the general public amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

They also highlight the quick and nearly invisible way the vast majority of people are detained and deported in places like Texas, where state and local law enforcement officials often partner with federal immigration agents.

“We might not have the big kind of [ICE] occupations that we see in Minneapolis, Chicago, LA, but we are doing that type of disappearance at a much larger scale,” says Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council. “You just don’t know it because it’s happening quietly.”

In response to questions from The Texas Newsroom about DPS agents wearing masks, the Texas Department of Public Safety says “each agent will be counseled, and their chain of command will be making it clear face coverings should not be worn on duty unless for reasons outlined in the attached policy.”

A Department spokesman declined a request for an interview with Officer Cotto, who did not wear a mask during the operation.

The Town Creek Drive operation involved federal agents and officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety, not the Austin Police Department. But the videos are coming out as APD announces new policies over how to manage local officers’ interactions with ICE and Austin City Council considers new rules prohibiting all law enforcement officers from using face coverings.

For Austinites, these images serve as a reminder that, regardless of city policy, state police have been empowered to enforce immigration law anywhere in Texas, including in cities that oppose those policies.

In fact, in the months since these arrests, Texas DPS officers have been given greater powers to make immigration apprehensions, even in the absence of federal agents.

“I stopped them for an improperly placed license plate, OK?” Officer Cotto tells an onlooker in the recordings after the five men have been taken away by ICE agents. “I got nothing to do with the other stuff.”

The videos tell a more complicated story.

‘Jackpot’: what the tapes show

On the morning of the arrests, State Trooper Cotto, who is a member of a state police “strike team” that works with ICE, was observing southbound traffic from a center turn lane on Pleasant Valley Road.

The video begins right before the white van passes. The trooper follows it for about a minute and a half before activating his lights on Town Creek Drive. The van pulls over next to the work site.

Soon after, Cotto approaches the car and informs the driver in imperfect Spanish that his license plate was on the wrong part of his vehicle.

Segura, the driver, responds that he does not have a license, but hands over an ID card. He says he and his companions were heading to the job site in a company van.

Cotto suggests that Segura may get away with a warning, an “aviso,” for the plates and receive a ticket, a “multa,” for the license violation. But, after returning to his SUV and checking something on a cell phone, the trooper gets on his radio to request backup.

Over the next several minutes, Cotto again indicates to Segura that he is proceeding with a routine traffic stop, asking for his insurance. But on returning to his SUV, he helps plan the men’s arrests over his police radio.

Cotto was working that day as part of a joint DPS/Homeland Security strike team, according to DPS. These teams were created at the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott in January 2025 to support ICE and Homeland Security operations across the state.

“It’s hard to see who is in the back, but I think there’s about five in there and they are definitely spooked,” he says over the radio. “The vehicle is accessible to the fence that leads into the work site. So when we come up we’re going to have to block it.”

Within about six minutes of first asking for Segura’s license, more officers are arriving at the scene. But, standing with Segura outside of the van, Cotto continues to focus on the traffic violation.

“So. You didn’t know … las placas [license plates] belong inside the exterior of the vehicle. That’s why you’re being pulled over. That’s aviso [warning], OK?” he says.

As Cotto heads back to his SUV, a man wearing a black ski mask with a vest that appears to say “DPS Special Agent” can be seen approaching Segura from behind.

“This was the driver, and there’s like three, there’s like four people inside of there,” Cotto tells him.

An ICE agent with a “HSI police” vest — Homeland Security Investigations — comes into view on the other side of the van, with one of the passengers in handcuffs.

Agents start handcuffing Segura, who offers no resistance. It has been less than a minute since Cotto was instructing him on the proper placement of license plates. Less than 15 minutes since Cotto first saw the van.

The remainder of the videos show agents from DPS and ICE dealing with paperwork, talking over the operation, celebrating the successful arrests and interacting with the public.

Cotto mostly remains in his SUV writing up the traffic warning, while federal agents and DPS officers, masked and unmasked, remove men from the van and handcuff them.

Some of the officers are state troopers. Others have vests that identify them as Texas DPS agents and federal agents from ICE and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

At 7:29 a.m. Cotto gets out of his car and hands the warning for the improperly placed license plate to an ICE agent. Soon after, another masked officer with a “state police” vest asks for a physical copy of the traffic warning for ICE. Cotto says he had already passed on the paper.

“Improperly placed plate!” says Cotto.

“That’ll do it every time,” responds the masked agent.

“You better know traffic law,” Cotto says. “When I saw a jackpot like that I was like: ‘I need some resources here.’”

He is less candid when questioned by onlookers.

Just before the video ends, a bystander wearing the hard hat and vest of a construction worker asks Cotto where the other workers were taken.

“I stopped them for an improperly placed license plate, OK? That plate has to be on the outside,” says the state trooper.

“And they got taken by ICE?” the man asks. “Did you call ICE to take them?”

“Hey, sir, they’re already here! I don’t have to call ICE. They’re already here,” responds Cotto. “We do traffic stops on folks and they decide they want to talk to people. There’s nothing we can do about that.

“All you gotta do when people are driving around is make sure they don’t have any traffic violations,” Cotto adds. “Highway patrol don’t stop anybody except for traffic violations.

“That’s it. That’s it. I ain’t got nothing to do with the other stuff.”

The statement seems to contradict a version of events provided to the Texas Newsroom by the Texas Department of Public Safety, which affirms that the trooper was assigned to a Homeland Security strike team.

“On July 31, 2025, just after 7 a.m., a DPS Trooper assigned to a strike team alongside Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) conducted a traffic stop on a white Chevrolet van for a license plate violation near Town Creek Drive and East Riverside in Austin,” DPS wrote. “During the stop, the Trooper was unable to verify the identity of the driver through DPS databases, so they contacted HSI for assistance, which is standard procedure.”

Homeland Security Investigations is the main investigative division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Masks and trust

In the email responding to questions about the operation from The Texas Newsroom, state DPS press secretary Sheridan Nolan wrote that the arrests on Town Creek Drive last year were part of a state and federal partnership that is “making our state safer.”

The Department referred questions about the men detained by federal agents to the Department of Homeland Security, which has not provided answers.

The Texas Newsroom shared records of the Town Creek Drive arrests with two experts in policing and immigration law.

They said the videos illustrated the speed and relative quietness with which such apprehensions can take place.

Nearly a quarter of all immigrant apprehensions in the second Trump term have happened in Texas, more than any other state, said Kristin Etter with the Texas Immigration Law Council, which seeks to protect the rights of immigrants and refugees.

In Texas, “immigration enforcement is happening all around you,” Etter said. “It’s happening quietly and it’s happening under the guise of traffic code violations or other types of stops that don’t look out of the ordinary to everyday Texans.”

Experts said the operation was instructive, in part, for how typical it was.

Close coordination between officers, communication over cell phone, the speedy response of federal agents, the preoccupation with filing paperwork, and the agents’ celebratory tone after the arrests were all hallmarks of textbook cross-agency partnerships, they said.

“What comes to mind is, for example, fugitive task forces,” said Ian Adams, a professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, and a former police officer. “It’s very, very normal for police agencies, state agencies and federal partners to work within the same investigation but with different skills and goals.”

In this case, the goal was to arrest people suspected of immigration violations, Adams said.

“This is what we saw for years at the border,” Etter said. “We now see it in the interior and also across the country.”

Both Etter and Adams said some of the tactics used in the videos might surprise members of the public, even if they are considered standard practice by police.

For example, the use of a traffic stop as a pretext to arrest people for other reasons is “very normal,” Adams said.

So, too, was Officer Cotto continuing to behave as though he was engaged in routine traffic enforcement, even after he had called in backup for the arrests.

“All law enforcement … officers are allowed to use trickery, lies and deceit to gain cooperation, confessions, admissions,” Etter said. “We have reviewed some of the ICE training manuals, for example. They’re specifically trained on how to use ruses, deception.”

What struck both experts as unusual was the use of masks by agents whose vests identified them as state police.

“That is really quite concerning,” Adams said. “Regular use of masks in policing is not normal.”

“When the police start believing that policing needs to be hidden … it sort of attacks the trust that the community can have,” he added.

Use of masks by the police “is something that we see happen in other countries’ paramilitary forces,” Etter said. “It’s something that I don’t think Texas wants or Texans should have to get used to.”

When asked in an email about the agents’ use of masks during the Town Creek Drive operation, DPS spokesperson Nolan wrote that while state troopers and Texas Rangers do not have a written policy on the use of identity-concealing masks, it is not DPS practice “to conceal identities.”

But, Nolan continued, there are policies on the use of masks by DPS Criminal Investigations Division special agents, some of whom wore masks while participating in the Town Creek Drive operation.

That policy, provided by the Department, says that officers “shall NOT wear masks.” It does allow medical face coverings to prevent the spread of disease and it allows protective gear for officers investigating drug labs.

The five men who were pulled over that day were detained on suspicion of being in the U.S. without authorization. Arrest documents list Mexico as the place of birth for four of the men; records for the fifth do not list a place of birth.

The whereabouts of the five men detained that day remain unclear.

The Texas Newsroom repeatedly requested the information from ICE but did not receive an answer.

The Mexican consulate in Austin and local immigrant advocacy groups said they had no information.

But there is some indication the men may have been removed from the country.

ICE arrest records obtained through public information requests by the Deportation Data Project show that five men with Mexican citizenship were booked into an ICE holding room in Austin at 10 a.m. on the same morning as the Town Creek Drive operation.

While the records do not include names, these five men were the only people with Mexican citizenship who were booked that day in Austin after “non-custodial” arrests, meaning they were not taken by ICE out of a county jail or a prison.

One of the five was also 21 years old, the same age listed for Gabriel Martinez-Segura on his traffic citation.

Records show that all five men were ultimately deported.

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