US immigration agents linked to 16 shootings under Trump’s crackdown

Federal immigration agents have been involved in a sharp rise in shootings in recent months, coinciding with the Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement efforts.

Under Trump’s crackdown, immigration officers have been connected to 16 shootings, according to data compiled by the Trace, a non-profit newsroom focused on gun violence in the US.

The newsroom relied on Gun Violence Archive data and media reports to document incidents in which federal agents either shot someone or held individuals at gunpoint during immigration enforcement operations carried out under Donald Trump’s crackdown. As of 9 January, it identified 29 incidents overall, including the 16 shootings. Since July, when the first shooting occurred under the administration, immigration agents have killed four people and injured seven more.

Chart showing Immigration agents connected to 16 shootings since the start of Trump’s second term

The figures probably underestimate the true number of incidents, since shootings involving immigration agents are not consistently made public, the Trace cautioned.

Beyond shootings with firearms, 13 cases in which immigration agents used less-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets or pepper balls were also documented. Ten of those incidents took place during protests. Among those injured were two pastors who were shot with pepper balls while leading prayers at demonstrations in California and Illinois.

The most recent shooting occurred on Wednesday in Minneapolis, where federal agents fatally shot a woman during a large-scale immigration enforcement action. Ilhan Omar, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, said the victim was “a legal observer” of ICE activity after a surge of agents was deployed to the city amid allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

US federal agents then shot two people outside a hospital in Portland just a day after the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis.

The Portland police bureau (PPB) said in a statement on Thursday that two people were in the hospital after a shooting involving federal agents, adding that their condition was not known. Police sources told the Oregonian one of the people was shot in the leg and the other in the chest.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that US border patrol agents had stopped a vehicle to search for a man they suspected of being an undocumented immigrant connected to a Venezuelan gang. The statement said the agents fired when the driver of the vehicle tried to run them over, with similar claims about a “weaponized vehicle” being made about the Minneapolis shooting.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Tuesday that it had initiated an extraordinary enforcement operation in the Minneapolis area, with approximately 2,000 agents and officers expected to participate. The DHS said the crackdown was tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

Trump’s immigration crackdown began in Los Angeles in June and later expanded to Washington DC, Chicago, Memphis, Portland, Charlotte, and most recently New Orleans and Minneapolis.

At the same time, detention levels have surged. In less than a year, the Trump administration has increased the population held in ICE detention facilities by nearly 50%. The DHS currently holds nearly 69,000 people. Overall, the administration has arrested and deported more than 352,000 individuals each.

This push for large-scale detention and deportation has led to severe overcrowding, with most facilities operating beyond their contracted capacity.

The first year of Trump’s second term has been deadlier than 2020, when deaths in detention facilities spiked amid the unchecked Covid-19 pandemic, according to the American Immigration Council. The organization attributes the rising death toll this year to a combination of factors, including overcrowding, poor detention conditions, medical neglect, escalating mental health crises and gun violence.

In addition to the 16 shootings involving ICE agents, 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025. That figure makes 2025 the deadliest year for the agency in more than 20 years and matches the previous record high set in 2004, as the administration moved to detain an unprecedented number of people.