Two pet dogs were left locked in an apartment without food or water for around a week after ICE agents detained their owner and told no one the animals were inside, PunchUp reports.
The dogs had watched federal agents take their owner away in Oklahoma last January, when the agency fell under then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, 54, who has admitted to shooting one of her own dogs dead. The agents left without alerting animal control, leaving the pets trapped as the days passed with nothing to eat or drink.
The rescue came only after a neighbor noticed and an apartment manager called for help, the animal welfare field officer who responded told PunchUp, the new reader-supported investigations Substack. The officer, who posted footage of the rescue online as “Animal Welfare Guy” but asked that his name and city stay anonymous, said he remains angry about what he found.
“ICE deported the owners and then left, with the animals locked in the apartment for about a week,” he told PunchUp. He said neighbors witnessed the detention, and the apartment manager reported the dogs to his team rather than to ICE.
Inside, the apartment had been wrecked. The officer said the pair had chewed up furniture and dug through the trash searching for anything to eat, and were likely starving and severely stressed after watching their owner be taken away.
He found both dogs cowering in the back bedroom, barking and trembling. Neither showed any aggression. He looped a catch pole loosely over each one, walked them to kennels in his truck, and brought them to a shelter where, he said, 85 to 90 percent of the animals his team takes in get adopted or sent to no-kill rescues.
The officer told PunchUp that law enforcement is supposed to call animal control when arresting someone with pets. That call never came. As Axios reported, DHS said last summer that “ICE does NOT impound property,” and offered no protocol for animals left behind.
The vacuum is appearing wherever ICE operates. St. Paul Animal Services logged a 38 percent jump in stray, seized, and surrendered cats and dogs in January 2026 compared with a year earlier, tracking with Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities, as The Week reported. In Los Angeles, dog surrenders more than tripled in a single week last June.
There is grim irony in the episode that unfolded under Noem, whom President Donald Trump fired in March after 14 months in charge, PunchUp reports. Noem wrote in her memoir, No Going Back, about marching her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, Cricket, to a gravel pit and shooting her. “I hated that dog,” she wrote.
The animal welfare officer was clear that his complaint isn’t political, noting he had once criticized county sheriffs just as hard for refusing to help an injured horse. Of Noem’s confession, he said: “It [the dog] very well may have needed it, but it shouldn’t have happened like that.”
The Daily Beast contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment, including to ask whether it has a policy to ensure the safety of pets left behind when it detains people.
A spokesperson told the Beast it was unable to identify the case, but said ICE gave those it detained “every opportunity to arrange care for their pets after their arrest. They are afforded the opportunity to reach out to a neighbor or family member who can care for the pet.”
It added that people in the country illegally “have the option to leave freely with their pets by self-deporting using the CBP Home app,” and that “by choosing to self-deport, illegal aliens can ensure they get to keep their pets.”
