Dem Fundraising Platform Hosting Donations For Illegal Immigrant Accused Of Domestic Violence

The Democratic fundraising platform for nonprofits, ActBlue Charities, is processing donations for an organization that fought for the release of an illegal immigrant whose tale of being wrongly detained by federal agents imploded amid revelations of a violent domestic assault.

ActBlue Charities and ActBlue Express appear to be processing donations for Cosecha, a group organizing anti-ICE protests across the country. Cosecha is listed as the sponsor on a petition that received more than 12,000 signatures to “free Martin Soto.” The organization promoted the since-debunked narrative that Soto, an illegal immigrant, was “kidnapped by ICE while getting diapers.”

“In 2026, our fight is urgent. The attacks are louder. The systems of detention, deportation, and exploitation are more violent. But so is our resistance,” the fundraising page reads.

Soto, 31, became the leader of the hunger strike that began at the end of May in ICE’s Delaney Hall detention center in Newark. Soto’s account unraveled this week after a police report obtained by The Daily Wire showed that he was arrested by the Kearny Police Department for a violent domestic assault on February 1, the day Cosecha and others said he was nabbed by ICE. ICE picked Soto up the next day from the Hudson County Correctional Center, federal law enforcement sources said.

A police report recently obtained by @realDailyWire has blown up the narrative that the Delaney Hall hunger strike leader was an innocent man who was nabbed by ICE while buying diapers for his baby.

This story is very reminiscent of the “Maryland man” narrative the media and… pic.twitter.com/khFRzJTXQy

— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) July 28, 2026

During the alleged assault, Soto “purposely” caused “bodily injury” to an unnamed female victim “specifically by using his hands, both opened and closed to strike” her “in her face, causing minor scratches and cuts to her face and neck,” according to the police report.

Soto then “placed a hand over” her “mouth so she could not scream for help,” the report stated.

The Daily Wire could not immediately confirm the identity of the assault victim.

When a donor gives to an organization like Cosecha, ActBlue Charities takes the donation as the “merchant” before giving the donation to the nonprofit group, which pays the Democratic fundraising arm a processing fee. ActBlue Charities exploits a tax “loophole” that allows it to move donations without publicly disclosing them, according to Capital Research Center.

“Every year both of ActBlue’s nonprofit wings report spending zero, or nearly zero, dollars on charitable grantmaking despite taking in millions of dollars from donors for the explicit purpose of regranting it to other organizations,” Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher for Capital Research Center, wrote in April. “They do this by abusing a loophole in the tax code which allows them to list the donations as a liability in escrow rather than a grant since, they claim, they are merely processing a payment, not making a grant.”

ActBlue Charities and Civics reported a combined $8.6 million in “Escrow or custodial account liability” in 2024 as ActBlue Charities disclosed $57,500 in grants to only two organizations, according to Thayer.

“This allows ActBlue to avoid disclosing the names of the vast majority of the organizations it is giving money to, even though donor-advised funds, which do functionally the same thing, have to disclose all of the money they disburse as a grant,” Thayer added.

ActBlue did not respond to a request for comment.

In its petition to free Soto from ICE detention, Cosecha wrote that the Peruvian national “does not need to be in prison to pursue his immigration case,” adding that “Martin needs to be outside, with his wife and children.”

Soto’s wife, Gabriela, championed her husband’s sob story and led protests outside Delaney Hall during the hunger strike. She maintained that ICE “abducted” her husband who she said “committed no harm.”

She also launched a GoFundMe page for her husband that has raised more than $67,000.

Gabriela Soto did not respond to a request for comment.

Media outlets ran with Soto’s victim narrative and published headlines like “Father picked up by ICE while buying diapers for his kids” and “Kearny Mom Barely Scraping By Weeks After ICE Took Husband During Diaper Run.”

“This is the pattern: a sympathetic claim built to go viral, while the facts sit unread in a file. Delaney Hall was inspected and cleared, its officers branded jailers of the innocent on stories that collapse the moment you check the record,” Scott Mechkowski, a visiting fellow for deportation studies at the Oversight Project, recently told The Daily Wire.

Gabriela Soto maintained that on February 1 she “suddenly got a phone call from a number listed as ‘prison/jail'” shortly after “Martin stepped out to get diapers” for the couple’s 11-month-old son.

At that time, her husband was still in local custody after having been arrested for the domestic incident by local police in Kearny.

“My heart dropped,” she wrote in a column published in June. “When I answered, I was terrified about what had happened. As soon as the call ended, I raced over to Delaney Hall to get some answers.”

“A guard there told me Martin was in ‘good hands’ and once he was processed, he would be able to see me during visiting hours. I was relieved to hear he was safe, but when I started hearing about the conditions inside Delaney — rotten food, medical neglect, and more — I began to doubt the guard’s words,” she wrote.

Cosecha did not respond to a request for comment.

Soto’s hunger strike carried on for weeks as detainees refused the facility’s meals while filling up on commissary snacks, including sushi and clams, to protest what they called poor conditions inside the detention center, The Daily Wire reported.