ICE vehicle pursuit in Newark causes multi-vehicle crash, injuring three children

On the night of February 25, 2026, ICE agents pursuing a fleeing van during a targeted operation in Newark, New Jersey, caused a multi-vehicle crash that sent three children to University Hospital with injuries. The agents were trying to arrest a man whom DHS said was subject to a 2017 final order of removal; he was taken into custody after the collision.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka condemned the pursuit as reckless, noting that New Jersey law bars law-enforcement vehicle chases absent an immediate threat and that the roads were still being cleared from a snowstorm. The chase wound through a dense residential neighborhood to make a single arrest on a years-old civil removal order, and the harm fell on bystanders who had nothing to do with it.

Immigration enforcement is supposed to operate within the same legal limits that bind all policing, including rules that restrict high-speed pursuits to situations of immediate danger. This entry records how an aggressive enforcement tactic — a vehicle chase that a sitting mayor called reckless and that contravened state pursuit-restriction norms — endangered the public, hospitalizing three uninvolved children.