The Pattern of Impunity for ICE Shootings, in Data and Cases

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last Wednesday morning, Good became at least the 25th person killed by an ICE officer shooting since 2015.

In the days following Ross’ multiple gunshots fired at Good from the front and side of her vehicle, visual investigations by major outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post have pieced together the seconds-long incident using dozens of clips captured from different vantage points. Their work reveals clear contradictions between the official narrative pushed by the White House and Department of Homeland Security (which claims Ross acted in self-defense) and the actual sequence of events caught on camera.

Yet similar discrepancies between official claims and evidence in past ICE shootings have never resulted in criminal indictments. In fact, there is no public record of any criminal indictment ever stemming from an ICE shooting at all.

I spent four years probing ICE shootings that took place between 2015 and 2021, spanning three separate U.S. presidential administrations. I filed a lawsuit against ICE to obtain full incident logs for all of these shootings—a legal battle that took two years to resolve. I then cross-referenced those logs with media coverage, civil litigation records, more than 40 interviews with subject-matter experts, shooting survivors, victims’ family members, and legal counsel, and 20 additional Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for law enforcement investigation records across the country, to map what happened in each case and identify broader patterns in these shootings.

Excluding Good’s killing, my analysis found that at least 19 ICE shootings involved moving vehicles, which are linked to at least 10 deaths and six injuries. Task forces that include ICE agents have killed at least three other U.S. citizens. Agents have opened fire in public spaces with bystanders present 22 times. And in at least seven separate cases, the person shot by an ICE officer was not even the target of the enforcement operation that led to the shooting.

The Unchallenged Self-Defense Narrative

For decades, the self-defense assertion put forward by ICE, its agents, and their legal teams after a shooting has proven nearly impossible to disprove. In a 2024 email to me, ICE spokesperson Mike Alvarez stated that an agent’s use of deadly force is considered justified when it is “objectively reasonable and necessary.”

“Positioning a law enforcement officer directly in front of a moving vehicle to block a suspect from escaping is an extremely dangerous tactic that often violates official policy,” Mike German, a former federal law enforcement agent, explained to WIRED. “Even so, that violation is unlikely to change how a prosecutor assesses whether the officer reasonably believed they faced an immediate life-threatening situation when they pulled the trigger, which is what justifies the use of deadly force.”

This “reasonableness standard” is the metric state, local, and federal bodies use to decide whether to bring criminal charges against an officer, and it is evaluated through the lens of a law enforcement professional’s perspective, not that of an ordinary member of the public, German explained.

“Prosecutors and judges almost always defer to law enforcement agents who are involved in shootings,” German said. “Typically, an agent’s own subjective belief that deadly force was required to protect themselves or other people from serious bodily harm is enough to avoid criminal charges entirely, or to avoid a conviction if charges are somehow filed.”

Per the ICE logs I obtained, suspects were reported to have weapons in a number of cases, particularly during operations run by Homeland Security Investigations. But in three separate incidents, ICE official records classified the suspect’s own body—described as “hands/feet/body”—as a weapon. And in at least a dozen cases, I uncovered evidence confirming the shooting victims were completely unarmed.

Federal investigations of officer-involved shootings run by the Department of Justice almost never lead to criminal charges, and the outcomes of these probes are almost never released to the public, German noted. “At the end of the day, these shooting investigations very rarely find that an agent broke the law or violated agency policy,” he said.

Beyond the unchallenged self-defense claim, ICE agents—like all federal law enforcement officers—enjoy broad protection from civil lawsuits via qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that shields officers from civil claims over constitutional violations committed while on duty. In recent years, two U.S. Supreme Court cases involving shootings and physical harm by immigration agents—Mesa v. Hernandez (2020) and Egbert v. Boule (2022)—have further cemented the reality that private citizens almost never have the right to sue federal agents for harm caused in the line of duty.

Blocked Local Investigation, Delayed Federal Probes

Determining whether criminal charges are warranted falls to state or local law enforcement (most often a state attorney general’s office) and/or a federal investigating body like the FBI. Under U.S. policy, both federal and local entities can pursue separate prosecutions at the same time, and neither is required to defer to the other.

But just one day after Ross killed Good, Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) “reluctantly” withdrew from the joint investigation with the FBI. The U.S. Attorney’s Office had announced the FBI would act as the sole investigator, and would no longer give BCA access to case files, crime scene evidence, or investigative interview records.

Even so, pushing BCA out of the joint probe does not bar the Minnesota Attorney General or the Hennepin County Attorney’s office from running their own independent homicide investigation. At a January 9 press conference, both offices asked local residents and witnesses to submit evidence through the Hennepin County Attorney’s public evidence portal. County Attorney Mary Moriarty noted the office had already received hundreds of calls and emails from community members demanding an independent probe. On the office’s social media channels, however, officials did not confirm they would open an independent investigation, only stating the office “stands ready” to assist the FBI’s work.

Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz urged local residents to document ICE activity to help hold agents accountable. “Carry your phone with you at all times. If you see ICE in your neighborhood, pull that phone out and record,” Walz said in a Wednesday address. “Help us build a database of harm against Minnesotans—not just to leave a public record for the future, but to gather evidence that can be used for future prosecution.” The Hennepin County Attorney’s office did not respond to WIRED’s email inquiry asking whether it plans to open an independent investigation.

Local agencies stepping back or being locked out of investigations is not a new development. Past shootings have gone without complete investigation due to repeated disputes over jurisdiction between state and federal authorities. For example, in a February 2018 shooting in Dumfries, Virginia, an ICE agent assigned to a U.S. Marshals fugitive task force killed an unarmed man, shooting him in the back as he fled arrest. The commonwealth’s attorney’s office launched an investigation but ended it before completion, claiming it lacked jurisdiction over federal agents. Even though the office never reached an indictment decision, it issued an opinion stating the federal agent was immune from state prosecution.

Just like the Good case in Minneapolis, the investigation was left solely in the FBI’s hands, and the commonwealth’s attorney confirmed it turned over all collected evidence to the bureau. When WIRED asked the FBI whether that investigation was ever completed, the agency neither confirmed nor denied it ever conducted the probe.

FBI investigations into ICE shootings have a well-documented history of being delayed for years. In September 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee, a deportation agent shot a man twice through his truck window as the man pulled out of a grocery store parking lot around 7 a.m. local time. An ICE spokesperson told reporters the driver had driven his vehicle directly toward agents. But video obtained by a local TV station showed the truck was still parked when ICE agents arrived, and the agent raised his hand—holding a gun—before chasing the truck as it pulled away.

The FBI was assigned to investigate the agent’s claim that the driver had assaulted him. The driver, who surrendered to the FBI and was later taken into ICE custody, was eventually released from detention. The outcome of the FBI’s probe, which was the only investigation into the incident, was never made public.

“The problem is that these federal shooting investigations often drag on for years, and almost never release a public report when they do wrap up,” German said. “Over time, that delay fades public demand for accountability.”

State and local agencies have repeatedly cleared agents of wrongdoing even when agents actively obstructed investigations, a pattern I found in three separate incidents across Arizona and California between 2015 and 2021. In 2018 in Scottsdale, Arizona, an ICE investigator shot a man multiple times—firing the final bullet after the man had already fallen to the ground. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office found the agent violated protocol by leaving the scene instead of giving an immediate statement (he only gave a statement six days after the shooting). His decision to fire also violated other agency rules, and prosecutors acknowledged his conduct “justify[ed] further investigatory steps”—but still cleared him of any wrongdoing.

In 2016 in Chula Vista, California, an ICE agent advised a colleague who had killed a 22-year-old (shooting him four times in 10 seconds) not cooperate with the local investigation, according to a transcript of a body-wire recording obtained by the victim’s family and released as part of a civil suit. “Don’t worry about it,” he told the shooter. “Remember … no statements. None of that shit.”

The attorney who represented the family in the ultimately dismissed civil suit said agents were questioned briefly, but the Chula Vista Police Department’s final report included no details of the actual investigation. Lawyers for the involved agents did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment on the case.

Hidden Oversight, Secret Policies

If an ICE shooting is suspected to be criminal, the DHS Inspector General’s Office may review the case. But ICE’s own Office of Professional Responsibility is required to investigate every shooting for potential policy violations, per a 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report examining DHS use-of-force policies. However, the office has no authority to issue discipline on its own, and only makes disciplinary recommendations when it finds wrongdoing.

Any disciplinary recommendations are sent back to the agent’s direct supervisor, who has full authority to decide whether to implement any punishment. Even when discipline is ordered, agents can appeal the decision, and it can take years for any penalty to actually take effect—if it ever does.

Gretta Goodwin, the lead author of the GAO report, found ICE’s data collection processes have no clear pathway for formal review. In a 2023 interview, Goodwin explained that in many use-of-force reviews, ICE documented the incident itself but never recorded whether the shooting complied with agency policy.

“They wrote down that it happened, but as far as we could tell, they did no follow up,” Goodwin said.

When it comes to outcomes, Goodwin said she saw a small number of disciplinary actions but had no way to know how common they are. “We did see that people were reprimanded, suspended,” she said. “I don’t know if anyone got fired.”

The GAO’s 2023 review of DHS use-of-force practices was ordered by a 2022 Executive Order on federal law enforcement police reform. For more than a decade before the order, ICE operated under an interim 2004 use-of-force policy, which the DHS Inspector General’s Office labeled as outdated and failing to incorporate critical lessons learned from decades of shootings.

ICE confirmed it drafted a new policy on use of firearms and use of force in 2023, the most recent set of guidelines released following the executive order. But when I requested a full copy of the new policy in 2024, ICE refused to release it, telling me in an email the policies “had not been published for public view.” ICE later released a heavily redacted copy that cut all content except for the policy’s opening “purpose” section.

Just like its use-of-force policies, the outcomes of ICE’s internal investigations are never released to the public. ICE did not respond to WIRED’s multiple queries asking whether the policy has been updated since 2023, whether it would release an unredacted full copy, or to confirm the total number of people killed by ICE shootings since 2015.

Political Protection for Agents

In the wake of Good’s killing, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Good was involved in “domestic terrorism.” But J. Wells Dixon, senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, calls the claim “baseless,” and says the allegation has no legitimate standing in any criminal investigation or prosecution.

“The Constitution applies to and limits the use of all state and federal criminal laws, regardless of what administration officials claim,” Dixon told WIRED.

Dixon argues that “Secretary Noem obviously lied when she claimed Renee Good was a ‘domestic terrorist’ in order to denigrate her and falsely suggest that she somehow deserved to be murdered by an unmarked ICE agent.”

The second Trump administration has ongoing plans to shield ICE agents from accountability. Recent reporting from Zeteo found President Trump instructed administration officials as early as 2024 to protect ICE agents—including 12,000 new recruits—who are accused of criminal misconduct.

During a January 8 White House press briefing, Vice President JD Vance claimed ICE agents have “absolute immunity,” a newly coined term with no basis in existing U.S. law.