An investigation is ongoing after federal agents shot a man in the elbow and a deputy US marshal was hit in the hand by a ricochet bullet during an immigration enforcement operation in south Los Angeles, police said.

The Los Angeles police department said the incident was reported shortly before 9am and involved a federal agent being shot.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement given to Fox News said the deputy marshal and a man suspected of illegal entry into the US were shot and injured during what the DHS called a “targeted traffic stop”.

During the operation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents surrounded and boxed in a man in his vehicle. Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS assistant secretary, said the man used his vehicle to ram the federal agents’ vehicles in an attempt to flee. Officers then fired “defensive shots”.

The man was shot in the elbow. The deputy marshal was struck in the hand by a ricochet bullet, the DHS said. Both were taken to the hospital.

McLaughlin said the injuries were “the consequences of conduct and rhetoric by sanctuary politicians and activists who urge illegal aliens to resist arrest”.

The homeland security department has said that violence against officers is on the rise, and has blamed activists for the increase. Donald Trump said in an executive memo last month that there has been “a more than 1,000% increase in attacks on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers since January 21 2025, compared to the same period last year”. But the agency has not released data to verify those claims, or explained how it catalogues incidents.

Immigration activists say federal immigration enforcement agents are deploying increasingly violent tactics.

News of the shooting comes amid growing concern about the sometimes violent tactics of Ice raids and arrests. During an enforcement operation in August in a Los Angeles suburb, a 52-year-old man from Guatemala was killed as he fled officers and was struck by a vehicle.

In July, a California farmworker died during a raid when he fell off a roof at his workplace.

In August in San Bernardino, outside of LA, a federal agent fired at a moving car during an immigration stop after the occupant declined to roll down his window.

And earlier this month, during Trump’s federal crackdown in Chicago, border patrol agents shot a woman, who survived and was charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.