Since United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Goode in Minneapolis, Minnesota, another ICE agent shot According to the Department of Homeland Security, a Latino man in the leg.
Goodes’ killing and subsequent shooting has sparked a wave of calls and questions about whether ICE officers could be prosecuted. But the shooting in Minnesota is not an outlier, and the history of ICE shootings shows that it is impossible to hold officers accountable.
I know, because I investigated the agency’s practices, obtaining documents revealing how it operates and how its officers are trained to protect themselves from scrutiny and lawsuits. my Investigation of 2024 I looked at six years of firings informed by records obtained from the agency in a lawsuit. According to US outlet The Trace, which tracks gun violence in the country, ICE agents fired the shots At least 12 People this and last year. From 2015 to 2021, ICE agents discharged firearms at least 59 times, injuring 24 people and killing 23 others.
Is it possible for an ICE agent to face criminal charges by a federal or state agency? slender. None of the shootings I investigated resulted in charges against an ICE agent, even in cases where someone was killed.
Considered protected law enforcement documents, the agency’s use-of-force and firearms training documents are not made public, nor are the agency’s use-of-force policies. Information about how agents operate in the field has largely escaped scrutiny, but I Obtained the documents It highlighted what training some ICE agents received from 2007 to 2010.
Although the documents are now out of date, they provide only a glimpse into what law enforcement training ICE agents receive — in addition to what is available on the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s website — including use-of-force training for ICE agents.
Agents are taught not to expose themselves to ‘unnecessary risk’
According to a chapter from 2016, which is still available FLETCOfficers are allowed to respond with force to threats of violence, and not just violence.
The chapter describes the following as a myth: “Deadly force should only be used as a last resort.” Establishing that policy and law are not the same thing, the chapter continues, “The law requires officers to use objectively reasonable force, not minimum force.”
Giving a warning before shooting or using minimal force or any other form of force, the training said, “may create unnecessary danger to the officer”.
In the unpublished set of quizzes with more than 100 questions, a multiple-choice question asked of an officer in training asks which actions can be taken along the use of force continuum — a guideline detailing the stages of escalation law enforcement must apply before using deadly force.
Answer: “Nothing, deadly force can be initiated immediately.”
De-escalation is not a priority
None of the papers I reviewed mentioned de-escalation.
The Department of Homeland Security, the federal body in charge of ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, and other federal law enforcement agencies has a use of force policy that was revised in 2023. Executive order Issued by the Joe Biden administration.
This policy, which is the most recent, outlines mandatory training on de-escalation as part of annual training on each agency’s respective use-of-force policies. The annual training is also meant to cover “relevant legal updates” and “prudence in the use of deadly force and less than lethal force.”
The policy states that training must be recorded, but it is not clear whether officers actually received this annual training, before and after the policy revision.
Following a 2016 shooting in which an ICE agent shot and permanently injured a Mexican man in Laurel, Mississippi, 2020 testimony in a civil lawsuit brought against an ICE agent revealed that the agent only “vaguely” remembered his use-of-force training.
As recently amended by ICE in 2023, the use of force policy is not available to the public and does not require any legislation. The Version Its website has been almost completely revamped. But legal representatives in the lawsuit against DHS and ICE intercepted the protest and obtained and produced a copy Available on their website.
This secrecy, criminal justice experts say, is a way for ICE agents to avoid scrutiny for not having policies to ensure or review their own rules.
“Public access to the full version of ICE’s use of force policy is essential to understanding when agents are permitted to use violence in US cities, and it is equally important to understand when individual agents are potentially violating agency policy,” said Cesar Cuauhtemoc García Hernández, professor of civil rights and civil liberties law at The Ohio State University, in an email.
“Without full policy access, it is impossible for ordinary people in a democracy to exercise their responsibilities – decide whether they agree with the expectations of ICE officials, then lobby politicians and vote for candidates who embrace their vision of proper law enforcement behavior,” he added.
Greta Goodwin, author of a 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office – a nonpartisan research arm of the US Congress – found that ICE’s use of force documentation does not always detail when or how agents violated policy in use-of-force incidents.
That documentation is critical to improving training, Goodwin said. In researching the report, Goodwin said one of the goals was to better understand how DHS tracks the use of force training.
“We also wanted to know what was documented in terms of training, because if ICE was documenting who took the training and when, use-of-force incidents as opposed to training, that could help make decisions about changes in training or better targeting.”
The lack of proper internal documentation, Goodwin explained, is a major impediment to DHS corrections agents’ field actions.
Avoidance of lawsuits
Training documents emphasize teaching potential agents how to get out of a lawsuit if they are faced with it.
I found at least four different examples in which lessons, quizzes, podcast transcripts, or training lessons emphasize the Fourth Amendment rights of the US Constitution, which protect people from unnecessary search and seizure, instruct an officer how to act so they don’t violate them, or explain how they can defend themselves.
In a podcast, the legal coach said an agent could be sued for a tort violation, which is a negligent or intentional harm.
Referring to civil wrongdoing, “when the alleged negligent or intentional tort occurs, as long as the employee is within the scope of employment (working as a federal agent), they are exempt from the suit.”
ICE agents, like all federal agents, also enjoy qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that protects them from legal liability for these lawsuits.
“The law gives all law enforcement officers, including ICE, broad latitude in the use of force to carry out their duties,” said Hernandez, a law professor at Ohio State University.
“The reality is that it is extremely difficult to hold an individual agent or agency liable in court.”
What next?
In the past year alone, the Department of Homeland Security has doubled its workforce at ICE, bringing the agency from a total of 10,000 officers and agents to 22,000, with more hiring plans underway.
How and if they are training is unknown.
A NBC Investigates Sources with inside information found that the race to hire new agents at large used AI tools that improperly processed applications and sent new agents into the field without proper training.
In Minneapolis, mass protests and clashes with immigration agents are still ongoing, with at least 3,000 federal immigration forces massed in the city. Videos show ICE agents knocking on doors and pulling people out of cars.
Residents have reported that they are afraid to leave their homes, and local efforts have also stepped up to buy groceries for their neighbors.
Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have defended ICE agents despite widespread criticism. And US President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Sedition Act, a federal law that would allow him to deploy troops in the state. Sources told ABC News earlier this week 1,500 soldiers Be on standby for possible deployment.
Conor Gaffney, a consultant at Protect Democracy, a non-profit advocacy group that threatens democratic norms and institutions and defeats the “authoritarian threat”, told Al Jazeera that keeping policies secret while ICE continues its street operations undermines community trust, an essential element of public safety.
“Keeping use-of-force policies secret clearly runs counter to transparency and accountability, which are fundamental principles of modern, community-focused policing,” Gaffney told Al Jazeera.
Protect Democracy is part of a coalition of legal organizations challenging ICE’s treatment of protesters Chicago headlines clubs in Noem. In an excerpt from Hearing An ICE field officer who trains ICE, and Customs and Border Protection agents on use of force, crowd control and how to use less-lethal munitions, said the ICE agents did not have protest control training.
“Most ICE and CBP agents receive very little training in crowd control tactics and use of force, and supervisory agents provided by the government as witnesses have no knowledge of the content of those trainings,” Gaffney said.