About one in every 20 U.S. workers is unauthorized, and former President Trump has threatened to enact mass deportations of those workers and their families if he is elected again. When and how ICE agents use deadly force has long been shrouded in secrecy, The Trace reports. Last year, a federal oversight agency found that ICE had failed to document its use-of-force incidents thoroughly. There have been 59 shootings by ICE officers from 2015 to 2021 that took place across 26 states and two U.S. territories, including two that were self-inflicted. At least 24 people were injured in the shootings. Twenty-three were killed. This first comprehensive look at ICE shootings shows that several incidents went unexamined and others appear to have violated the agency’s own policies. The use-of-force logs obtained are selectively redacted. They include the location and the date of the shooting and list injuries and deaths. They don’t include agent or victim names or narrative details.
Many of the shootings posed considerable risks to bystanders. ICE agents shot people in public places, including traffic intersections and strip-mall parking lots. They fired their weapons at moving vehicles. In at least a dozen cases, evidence suggests that the shooting victims were unarmed. This full list of incidents has never been publicly reported by ICE. ICE has also refused to release its current use-of-force policy. ICE agents are assigned to either civil immigration enforcement — detaining and deporting unauthorized immigrants — or criminal investigations. The latter are led by Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE that partners with other law enforcement agencies to investigate cross-border crimes ranging from drugs and weapons smuggling to financial crimes. A large proportion of the shootings involved HSI agents, and some occurred during risky operations like undercover drug busts or multiagency raids targeting human-trafficking operations. Yet in over half of the shootings identified, ICE agents never made an arrest. In at least seven cases, the person shot by an ICE officer was not the target of the enforcement action. Eleven shootings occurred while officers were off-duty.
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