Does a video show ICE agents raiding a man's home without a warrant after he shouted about ICE's treatment of his neighbor, saying they "ain't supposed to smack him like that"? No, that's not true: The video shared in January 2026 with claims it showed ICE agents was recorded by Nick Pettit from the porch of his Columbus, Ohio, home in April 2019. Columbus Police SWAT officers, not federal agents, approached Pettit and arrested him for an unrelated outstanding warrant. Pettit was later awarded $20,000 by the city of Columbus to settle a lawsuit the ACLU filed for him.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) shared by the @jayinkyiv account on X on January 26, 2026, under a caption that read:
Going to jail for filming ICE raiding your neighbor's home is what FREEDOM, American Eagles, and MAGA is all about.
And we thought Russians were slaves.
This is what the first frame of the video at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
The Vatnik Soup X account also shared the video (archived here) on January 26, 2026, with the caption:
Imagine JD Vance preaching Europe about freedom of speech while this is happening:
Imagine JD Vance preaching Europe about freedom of speech while this is happening: pic.twitter.com/PqrrW6mHGq
-- Vatnik Soup (@P_Kallioniemi) January 26, 2026
The man behind the camera is heard shouting at approximately 10 armed and masked officers on the street in front of his house, as they appear to be taking a man into custody. He said:
Hey, you ain't supposed to smack him like that. The f--k is wrong with you? Hell, no. Man, I'm on my property. I ain't got to listen to you. You come. Hey, you ain't got a search warrant. You can't come over here. Man, hey, look, I got you on camera right now. I'm on my private property.
Several officers are seen approaching his porch and one is heard saying "You're under arrest" before the video ends.
Although many social media users shared the claim as fact that this was a warrantless ICE raid in January 2026, it is a well-documented incident from six years earlier.
Columbus TV station WBNS aired this news report (archived here) about the video in September 2019. Editors blurred the video but it is obvious that it is the same incident.
A YouTube channel included the unblurred video (archived here) in a report from 2019.
The American Civil Liberties Union represented Pettit in a lawsuit against the city, which they said in a 2021 news release (archived here) was settled with a $20,000 payment to Pettit.
COLUMBUS - As a result of litigation brought by the ACLU of Ohio, the City of Columbus agreed to pay a settlement amount of $20,000 to Nick Pettit, a Columbus resident arrested in 2019 for filming abuses by a Columbus Police SWAT team that was serving a search warrant on his street. Police roughed up and arrested Mr. Pettit for recording them and calling them out on their mistreatment of his neighbors -- which included smacking a teenager on the face.
The ACLU of Ohio argued that the Columbus Police violated Mr. Pettit's constitutional rights to record and speak to the police.
