One of the most emotionally powerful stories used to attack President Trump’s immigration crackdown just collided with a police report.
For months, Martin Soto’s supporters said federal immigration agents took the New Jersey father off the street after he left home to buy diapers for his infant son. Activists turned that account into a rallying cry, and Soto later became a leading figure in the anti-ICE hunger strike at Delaney Hall.
But a newly surfaced Kearny Police Department report tells a very different story about why Soto was first taken into custody.
Investigative reporter Jennie Taer broke the reversal in a post Friday night:
SCOOP: The illegal immigrant who claimed to have been nabbed by ICE while buying diapers — and whose sob story fueled an anti-ICE hunger strike in the Delaney Hall detention center — was actually taken into ICE custody after being arrested for a violent domestic assault,…
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) July 24, 2026
The Daily Wire reported that Kearny police arrested Soto on February 1 after an unnamed woman accused him of striking her in the face with open and closed hands, leaving scratches and cuts on her face and neck. The report also alleges that he covered the woman’s mouth to stop her from screaming.
According to the outlet, ICE took custody of Soto the following day. That is a crucial distinction from the claim that immigration agents simply grabbed an innocent father during a diaper run.
Soto has been accused, not convicted, and the identity of the alleged victim has not been independently confirmed. Those facts matter.
So does the fact that the police report was missing from the version of the story repeatedly presented to the public.
Hours later, Taer posted the police-report pages behind the story:
SCOOP: The man who became the face of the Delaney Hall hunger strike after his wife claimed ICE arrested him "while buying diapers for his kids" was actually arrested by local police that day on a domestic assault charge.
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) July 25, 2026
Martin Soto allegedly "purposely" caused "bodily injury"… pic.twitter.com/ZHAH6mMe6K
Weeks earlier, the story being promoted to the public looked very different.
In a first-person account republished by The Real News, Soto’s wife said ICE abducted him after he went out to buy diapers. She portrayed him as a loving family man and said he had harmed no one.
That account helped make Soto a sympathetic face of the Delaney Hall protests. He participated in a hunger strike over conditions at the detention center, while his wife rallied outside and accused officials of retaliating against him.
A fundraising campaign for the family had collected more than $67,000, according to The Daily Wire.
The police report does not settle every dispute over Delaney Hall, and it does not determine Soto’s guilt. It does, however, change the central story Americans were told about the night his detention began.
This was never just a private family account. Activists and sympathetic media outlets used it to portray immigration enforcement as a kidnapping and to turn Soto into a moral symbol of resistance to the Trump administration.
The pattern is painfully familiar: an emotionally irresistible claim races around the internet, headlines harden it into accepted fact, donations pour in, and the documents arrive only after the narrative has done its work.
Soto deserves due process. The American public deserves the full record before anyone is elevated into the next anti-ICE poster child.
President Trump’s immigration agenda is being fought in courtrooms, in Congress, and through carefully selected stories designed to move public opinion. This one now comes with a police report the original version left out.
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