A federal agent aims a weapon at protesters on March 28, 2026, in downtown Los Angeles

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On March 28, 18-year-old University of Southern California student Tucker Collins documented a protest outside the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center.

“I didn’t even see any of the officers who had their weapons out,” Collins told Truthout. “[I was] standing back from the crowd and, you know, focused on trying to frame up the crowd, and then the next thing I know, I can’t see anything.”

A federal agent shooting from behind a fence struck Collins in his right eye with a .68 caliber FN 303 projectile, destroying Collins’s eyeball and fracturing his orbital bone.

While often mislabeled as common pepper balls, FN 303 projectiles carry more than just the chemical irritants found in typical paintball-style rounds. They have a hard plastic casing and a metal front payload, adding weight and kinetic energy to “temporarily disable” targets with “a sufficiently dissuasive level of pain,” according to their manufacturer.

“Less-lethal” weapons are broadly defined by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as weapons or instruments that are “designed or intended to be used in a manner that is not likely to cause death or serious bodily injury.” Such weapons include pepper balls, rubber bullets, tear gas, and more. While many of these weapons have the capacity to kill, they are often referred to as “less-than-lethal,” according to DHS.

Despite their “less-lethal” designation, FN 303 projectiles have proven deadly. A Boston police officer killed Victoria Snelgrove in 2004 by shooting her in the eye with an FN 303 round.

In January 2026, federal agents shot two people in the eye with FN 303 rounds in Santa Ana, California, at least one of which was at point-blank range and reportedly left the individual with a piece of metal near his carotid artery.

In spite of the risks, officers continue to use them.

Under Customs and Border Protection’s 2021 use-of-force policy, firing FN 303 projectiles within 10 feet of a target is only authorized when deadly force is considered “reasonable and necessary,” such as when an individual is determined to pose an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to an officer or another person. The updated overarching policy from DHS also considers “uses of impact weapons to strike the neck or head” deadly force.

“The first thing that’s clear is that there’s a lot of it,” Reynhout told Truthout. “I’d say the biggest alarming trend of misuse that we’ve seen is people getting shot in the face. This is something that is not necessarily new.”

Critics argue against the use of these weapons altogether because of the potential deadly risks, as well as officers using them to suppress free speech and the right to protest.

Collins says he was shot while standing among many other people filming. He believes such individuals are targeted because they’re filming federal agents committing illegal acts, including shooting him.

“They shot at me with no cause or justification,” Collins said. “And they have no need to be using these weapons anyways, especially in this scenario where there was no imminent threat to them.”

Following the attack on Collins, federal agents continued firing pepper balls and tear gas in waves from behind a fence and into the crowd. They nearly hit more individuals in the face and struck journalists (including me) and protesters.

No Sign of Slowing Down

Both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have dramatically increased weapons spending since Donald Trump took office for his second term, according to a report from the office of California Sen. Adam Schiff. DHS is reportedly spending upward of $50 million on “less-lethal” weaponry.

Reynhout and other researchers with Physicians for Human Rights recently released a report on how U.S. law enforcement escalated the use of certain weapons to crack down on immigration protests. Notably, they highlight the use of inherently indiscriminate scattershot munitions that send multiple small projectiles in different directions — these munitions are included in the DHS purchasing spree.

“Their deployment against crowds cannot be rationalized as crowd-control under any reasonable interpretation of international standards and cannot be considered legal, even under existing frameworks that already inadequately regulate less-lethal munitions,” the report states.

Reynhout said previous Physicians for Human Rights research on crowd-control weapons indicated that 82 percent of all injuries reported between 2016 and 2021 came from metal birdshot projectiles, which he says are very similar to the rubber-ball scattershot munitions DHS is purchasing.

The report also highlights federal agents using powder blast dispersion munitions, also known as “muzzle blast” munitions, in the most dangerous way possible. These munitions, also included in the DHS purchasing contract, discharge a cloud of tear gas or pepper irritant from a grenade launcher. While they aren’t technically considered a projectile, materials such as wadding and other debris can leave the muzzle and exceed speeds of 200mph, according to the PHR report.

These muzzle blast munitions appear to have been shot through the fence at protesters in Los Angeles in the hour following Collins’s injury.

“I think a troubling sign is that this has become the new norm, I would say, for how law enforcement deals with mass assemblies,” Reynhout said. “It’s just, ‘Let’s just throw more money at the problem and hope it goes away.’”

The PHR report offers multiple recommendations, from prohibiting the use of scattershot kinetic impact projectiles to limiting or restricting the use of powder blast munitions and certain chemical obscurants — most importantly, banning the use of HC smoke, a highly hazardous chemical obscurant used by DHS as recently as January 2026 in Portland, Oregon.

Crowd-control weapons are commonly referred to as “less-than-lethal,” or even “non-lethal,” and the Physicians for Human Rights report concludes that this creates a pattern of risk where such weapons are subject to fewer regulations. The report adds that this may also lead to law enforcement using these weapons without exhausting deescalation techniques, something critics have pointed out at protests around the country.

Whether it’s indiscriminate crowd-control weapons or more targeted munitions that can be deadly, both DHS officers and police departments around the country have demonstrated a willingness to utilize them broadly, even if it means suppressing free speech or injuring people in their line of fire.

“I do think about that day often, just in the events of it, just of what could have happened,” Collins said. “I’m enraged, but I’m not surprised. This is not the first time something like this has happened, nor will it be the last. I think it’s one of the most threatening things to us as a nation: the increasing force and authoritarianism that this administration is using to essentially terrorize its own citizens.”

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Original Article: https://truthout.org/articles/us-is-terrorizing-its-own-citizens-with-less-lethal-weapons-victim-says/