The fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Goode in Minneapolis on Wednesday was the second in four months by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
It’s arguably the biggest point yet, with Donald Trump’s second administration calling for ICE and other agencies to adopt a more aggressive crackdown strategy.
Take a look at the history of ICE and some of the major developments and controversies surrounding the agency in the first year of Trump’s second term.
The expansion of ICE for more than 20 years
ICE was created after the Homeland Security Act was enacted in 2002 as the United States sought to deal with the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Individuals from four countries have entered the United States since 2000 and received training for the 9/11 hijackings.
Responsibilities and functions previously performed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) under the Labor Division were revised and ICE was established in 2011. Under the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, it focuses on removing unauthorized persons in the United States and stopping cross-border immigration.
The US then and now has an enormous number of unauthorized people within its borders – a total currently estimated at around 12 million by various immigration ideologies. President Ronald Reagan In 1986, when amnesties were granted to some million refugees, such a move has not been seen since.
Both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations have used ICE—Barack Obama has been dubbed “the executive in chief” by some critics. But in the year From the first moments of his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump focused on illegal immigration in an unprecedented way.
Talking to CBC Front burner Over the years, “we’ve seen a real shift from the service side of the immigration bureaucracy to the enforcement side of the immigration bureaucracy,” says American historian Adam Goodman on the 2025 podcast.
Front burner27:41What exactly is ICE?
In his first administration, Trump has used executive orders and his platform to pressure some local and state law enforcement agencies, which have begun to limit their cooperation with ICE in some cases over the years.
After announcing his return to politics last year, Trump and some of his closest advisers — including Stephen Miller — have expressed a desire to deport a million a year.
Trump’s first-year budget allocated more than $170 billion over four years to Border and Interior Enforcement Services, including $75 billion for more immigration detention, including construction of more prisons for ICE. as if A critical analysis of the administrationThe liberal Brennan Center for Justice said ICE’s budget for 2025, nearly $29 billion, was nearly triple last year’s budget.
ICE tactics and arrests
Much attention has been focused in the past year on ICE agents wearing masks and not identifying themselves.
Todd Lyons, who has served as ICE director since last March and is still unconfirmed by the Senate, has said in multiple interviews that sometimes it can happen to prevent overcrowding of officers.
“I’m not a fan of the mask. But if that’s a tool for ICE men and women to protect themselves and their families, I will,” he told CBS. Face the nation In July.
More seriously, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have employed chemical agents and flares in some cases. in a raid on a Chicago apartment building targeting gang members; Agents flew from a Black Hawk helicopter.
Lyons said ICE is focused on detaining the most serious criminals for eventual deportation, but anyone who is in the U.S. without permission is subject to arrest based on the administration’s priorities.
US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is aimed at criminal illegal immigrants, but many US citizens and legal immigrants are being deported. For National, CBC’s Terence McKenna talks to people pulled over by ICE agents and asks: Is America becoming a police state?
Mike Fox, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, criticized that approach in an interview with CBC News in September.
“If you really focus on the worst offenders, the[eviction]numbers will be much lower,” he said. “It’s much easier to stand outside Home Depot and gather people.”
Cato is one of several think tanks and civil rights groups to point out that statistics provided by the federal government show that people arrested by ICE do not have criminal records after entering the United States.
Lyons pointed out that the data does not take into account the criminal record in the countries of origin.
Among those arrested were dozens of Canadian citizens. Given the administration’s goals, it’s an unsurprising development — given the influx of visas in the U.S., Canadians top the list every year.
As progressive organizations and some Democrats fret, the courts have not significantly impeded the way ICE goes about its business. Now they call it “Kavanaugh stops”. Since a Controversial Supreme Court order In September.
“To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot create a reasonable doubt under this Court’s case law regarding an immigration stop, but it can be a “reasonable circumstance” when considered in conjunction with other major considerations. Judge Brett Cavanaugh wrote.
A shooting, not an indictment.
Goode’s killing is the second fatal shooting by an ICE officer in four months. Well, an American citizen, he wasn’t the target of any immigration and it’s unclear what agents were doing in the Minneapolis neighborhood.
ICE agents shot Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, a 38-year-old cook from Mexico, on September 12 during a traffic stop in suburban Chicago. The FBI and DHS have not released any information about previous shootings.
In the past eight months, three other people — two in California and one in Virginia — have died in accidents while fleeing ICE raids.
Meanwhile, the gunman who carried out a shooting attack on an ICE facility in Dallas last year killed an inmate instead of the federal agents he was allegedly targeting. There were also non-fatal shootings near an immigration center and a US Border Patrol facility in Texas last summer.
Prior to this year, ICE-related shootings were rare but unprecedented, according to The Trace, which works for gun-related news. It is an unheard charge.
Court records obtained from lawsuits filed by shooting victims show that between 2015 and 2021, there were 59 shootings by ICE officers in 26 US states, resulting in 23 deaths.
“There is no evidence that any ICE agent has been charged,” The Trace reported.
As he says Reuters legal analysisfederal agents are generally immune from government prosecution if they are performing their official duties. At the federal level, a prosecutor must meet the challenge of proving that they did not believe the officer was at risk of death or serious injury.
In terms of civil litigation, ICE agents, like police officers, enjoy qualified immunity for on-the-job shootings. Some Democrats want to change that.
It also means that Trump has liberally used his power to grant pardons or pardons to individuals accused or convicted of crimes. Throughout his decade as a politician, Trump has favored tougher law enforcement tactics, with the exception of a 2021 Capitol upset.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said in a CBS interview on Wednesday that he wants the investigation into Goode’s death to come to a conclusion, as the president himself and other officials have sought to quickly push a narrative that exonerates the unidentified officer and questions the victim’s actions leading up to the shooting.
DHS Secretary Kristi Nome said Thursday that the shooting was in response to “an act of domestic terrorism.”