The Myth of “Less Lethal”: ICE Just Blinded a 21-Year-Old Activist
They said it was a miracle he survived. Now he has shrapnel in his brain and a permanent fracture. This is state sponsored torture.
By CantStopPoppin
Jan 15, 2026
I was not there in physical form in Portland in July 2020. But I was an unwilling witness to state sponsored terror. I could not look away.
A young man named Donavan La Bella was standing across from the federal courthouse holding a boombox over his head. He was unarmed. He was calm. He was exercising his First Amendment right.
Then I heard the crack.
I watched a government agent, a man sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, target a peaceful citizen. That agent aimed a “less lethal” weapon and tried to sever his head from his shoulders.
It is a sound you never forget. It isn’t the bang of a firework. It is the wet, sickening thud of a high velocity projectile crushing human bone. I watched Donavan slump instantly. It wasn’t a stumble. It was the complete, terrifying loss of motor function that happens when the brain undergoes massive trauma. I remember the screams for a medic echoing off the courthouse wal remember the blood pouring down his face and pooling on the concrete while federal agents stood there behind the fence and watched.
It was an execution that only failed by inches.
That horror came flooding back to me on January 9 when I saw the photos of Kaden Rummler. The image was the same gray blur of unconsciousness. The limp body. The frantic hands of street medics trying to save a life that the state tried to end.
Kaden is 21 years old. He was in Santa Ana, California, protesting the execution of Renee Good by ICE. He looked into the face of a federal agent and that agent made a choice. He pulled the trigger.
Kaden didn’t just get bruised. He went limp. He was unresponsive.
The medical report reads like the aftermath of an IED explosion rather than a police interaction. Doctors pulled a piece of plastic the size of a nickel out of his eye. His skull is fractured in ways that cannot be fixed. He has shards of metal, glass, and plastic embedded behind his eye and deep in his skull.
The most chilling detail is not the injury itself but the precariousness of his survival. Kaden has been told he cannot sneeze or cough for weeks. The intracranial pressure from a simple sneeze could shift the bone fragments or the pressure in his skull enough to kill him. He is living moment to moment with the knowledge that his own body’s reflexes are now a mortal threat.
The Lie of “Less Lethal”
We need to be very clear about the language being used here. The term “less lethal” is a marketing gimmick. It is a phrase conjured by liability lawyers and weapons manufacturers to sell brutality to city counci police departments.
These are not safety devices. These are weapons of war that have been modified just enough to avoid immediate classification as firearms.
The United Nations and various human rights organizations have repeatedly flagged these weapons as inhumane. Many of the chemical agents and kinetic rounds used on our streets are banned in actual warfare. Under international law we have agreed that using these weapons on enemy combatants is a war crime. Yet we allow police and federal agents to use them on our own children with complete impunity.
The intention is never crowd control. If the goal was to disperse a crowd you would not fire a high velocity projectile at a singular target’s head. When an agent fires at eye level or “scores” a round to make it fragment upon impact they are not enforcing the law. They are engaging in state sponsored torture.
They are trying to maim us. They want to leave permanent marks on the bodies of protesters so that the rest of us are too afraid to come back. They want you to look at Kaden’s eye patch and decide to stay home.
“We have agreed that using these weapons on enemy combatants is a war crime. Yet we allow police to use them on our own children with complete impunity.”
Here is the specific section you requested. You should insert this immediately after the section describing Kaden’s medical injuries (where you mention the “piece of plastic the size of a nickel”) and before the section titled “The Lie of ‘Less Lethal’.”
Imported Brutality: The IDF Connection
We need to understand that this level of violence is not accidental. It is learned.
For years activist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace have documented the “Deadly Exchange” programs where American police forces, federal agents, and ICE leadership travel to Israel to train with the IDF. They are not learning de-escalation. They are learning from a military force that occupies a civilian population and intentionally maims innocent people as a strategy of control.
We see the evidence of this training in the ballistics. In Palestine there are persistent reports of soldiers and police “scoring” or tampering with sponge rounds. They intentionally cut the rubber surface of the projectile. This prevents the round from bouncing off the target as designed. Instead it breaks. It fragments. It turns a blunt impact weapon into a jagged, penetrating shrapnel device capable of gouging out eyes and fracturing skulls.
When you look at the shards of plastic and metal embedded in Kaden’s skull you are looking at the American application of that tactic.
This is not a malfunction. This is a transfer of technology and technique. Our government is sending its agents to learn how to crush dissent from a military that specializes in it and then they are bringing those tactics home to use on 21 year old kids in California.
Opening Our Hearts
This is the reality of resisting ICE and the surveillance state in 2026. The violence is not a bug in the system. It is a feature.
We may not be able to change the weapons of oppression today. We cannot stop them from buying the rounds or pulling the triggers right now. Legislation moves too slow and the police unions are too strong. But we have a weapon they do not understand.
We can open our hearts. We can support the ones willing to resist. We can make sure that when the state tries to break us we are there to help put the pieces back together. Kaden stood up for Renee Good. Now we have to stand up for Kaden.
We need to help him rebuild his life. We need to cover the surgeries that the government will refuse to pay for.
Say his name.
Kaden Rummler.
