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In the weeks since United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement cause Jonathan Ross changeable and killed Renee Nicole Good successful Minneapolis, Minnesota, different ICE cause shot a Latino antheral successful the leg, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Good’s sidesplitting and the consequent shooting person ignited a question of calls and queries astir whether ICE officers tin beryllium prosecuted. But the shootings successful Minnesota are not outliers, and the past of ICE shootings shows that holding officers to relationship has been adjacent to impossible.
I know, due to the fact that I investigated the agency’s practices, obtaining documents that uncover however it operates and however its officers are trained to shield themselves from scrutiny and lawsuits. My 2024 investigation looked astatine six years of shootings informed by logs I obtained from the bureau successful a lawsuit. According to The Trace, a US outlet tracking weapon unit successful the country, ICE agents changeable at slightest 12 radical this and past year. From 2015 to 2021, ICE agents discharged a firearm astatine slightest 59 times, injuring 24 radical and sidesplitting 23 others.
The likelihood of an ICE cause facing transgression charges by either national oregon authorities agencies? Slim. None of the shootings I examined resulted successful an ICE cause being indicted, adjacent successful cases wherever idiosyncratic was killed.
Considered protected instrumentality enforcement documents, the agency’s grooming documents connected usage of unit and firearms are not made public, nor are the agency’s usage of unit policies. What informs however agents run successful the tract has mostly been spared from scrutiny, but I obtained documents that shed a airy connected what grooming immoderate ICE agents received from 2007 to 2010.
Though the documents whitethorn present beryllium outdated, they connection the lone penetration – isolated from what small is disposable connected the website of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, wherever ICE agents person instrumentality enforcement grooming – into what comprises use-of-force grooming for ICE agents.
Federal agents detain residents aft a raid aft a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cause fatally changeable Renee Nicole Good connected January 7 during an migration raid successful Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, connected January 21, 2026 [Leah Millis/Reuters]Agents are taught not to enactment themselves astatine ‘unnecessary risk’
According to 1 acquisition successful 2016, which is inactive disposable connected FLETC, officers are allowed to respond with unit to the menace of unit and not conscionable unit itself.
The acquisition describes the pursuing arsenic a myth: “Deadly unit tin lone beryllium utilized arsenic a past resort.” Establishing that argumentation and instrumentality are not the same, the acquisition goes connected to say, “The instrumentality requires officers to usage objectively tenable force, not the minimal force.”
Giving a informing oregon utilizing minimal unit oregon each different forms of unit earlier shooting, the grooming said, could “create an unnecessary hazard for the officer”.
In an undated acceptable of quizzes with much than 100 questions, 1 multiple-choice question posed to an serviceman successful grooming asks what actions from the Use of Force Continuum – guidelines detailing stages of escalating unit instrumentality enforcement tin usage – they would person to use earlier utilizing deadly force.
The answer: “None, deadly unit tin beryllium initiated immediately.”
An ICE grooming quiz asks officers astir usage of deadly force. The close reply suggests that officers tin usage it “immediately” [Courtesy Lila Hassan/ Al Jazeera]De-escalation not a priority
None of the documents I reviewed mentioned de-escalation.
The Department of Homeland Security, the national assemblage successful complaint of ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, and different national instrumentality enforcement bodies, has a Use of Force argumentation that was amended successful 2023 pursuing an Executive Order issued by the Joe Biden administration.
This policy, which is the astir recent, outlines mandatory grooming connected de-escalation arsenic portion of an yearly grooming connected each agency’s respective use-of-force policies. The yearly grooming is besides meant to see “related ineligible updates” and “discretion successful utilizing deadly unit and little than lethal force”.
The argumentation states that the grooming indispensable beryllium recorded, but whether oregon not the officers had really received this yearly training, some earlier and aft the amendment of the policy, is unclear.
Following a 2016 shooting successful which an ICE cause changeable and permanently injured a Mexican antheral successful Laurel, Mississippi, a civilian suit brought against the ICE cause revealed successful a 2020 deposition that the cause lone “vaguely” remembered his use-of-force training.
ICE does not marque its Use of Force policy, astir precocious amended successful 2023, disposable to the public, and nary instrumentality requires it. The version connected its website is astir wholly redacted. But ineligible representatives successful a suit against DHS and ICE cracking down connected protests, obtained and made a transcript of it available connected their website.
This secrecy, accidental transgression justness experts, is simply a mode for ICE agents to evade scrutiny for lacking policies to guarantee oregon reappraisal that the unit abides by its ain rules.
“Public entree of a implicit mentation of ICE’s use-of-force argumentation is indispensable to knowing erstwhile agents are permitted to usage unit wrong US cities and arsenic important to knowing erstwhile idiosyncratic agents are perchance acting successful usurpation of bureau policy,” Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez, a instrumentality prof of civilian rights and civilian liberties astatine Ohio State University, told Al Jazeera implicit email.
“Without entree to the implicit policy, it is adjacent to intolerable for mean radical to transportation retired their work successful a ideology – determine whether they hold with ICE’s expectations of its officers, past lobby politicians and ballot for candidates who clasp their imaginativeness of due instrumentality enforcement conduct,” helium added.
Gretta Goodwin, the writer of a 2023 study by the Government Accountability Office – a nonpartisan probe limb of the US Congress – recovered that ICE’s usage of unit documentation did not ever item erstwhile oregon however agents violated argumentation successful instances of usage of force.
That documentation is captious to amended training, Goodwin said. While researching the report, Goodwin said 1 of the objectives was to amended recognize however DHS tracks usage of unit training.
“We besides wanted to cognize what was documented successful narration to the training, due to the fact that if ICE were documenting who took the grooming and when, past erstwhile use-of-force incidents happened that were antagonistic to the training, it mightiness assistance them determine to marque modifications oregon amended people the training.”
The deficiency of due interior documentation, Goodwin explained, is simply a immense obstruction to DHS improving agents’ actions successful the field.
Federal agents clash with protestors extracurricular an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) installation successful Minneapolis, Minnesota, during a objection implicit the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good connected January 15, 2026 [Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images]Evading lawsuits
The grooming documents besides uncover an accent connected teaching prospective agents however to get retired from nether lawsuits if they were to look them.
I recovered astatine slightest 4 antithetic instances successful which the lessons, quizzes, podcast transcripts oregon grooming lessons stressed the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment rights, which support radical from unwarranted searches and seizures, indicating to the serviceman however to run truthful that they bash not interruption them oregon however to articulate truthful that they tin support themselves.
In 1 podcast, a ineligible teacher said an cause mightiness person to look a suit for a usurpation of a tort, which is simply a harm committed either negligently oregon intentionally.
“As agelong arsenic the worker was wrong the scope of employment [working arsenic a national agent] erstwhile the alleged negligent oregon intentional tort happened,” referring to a civilian wrong, “they get to measurement retired of that lawsuit.”
ICE agents, similar each national agents, besides bask qualified immunity, a ineligible doctrine that protects them from the ineligible liability of these lawsuits.
“The instrumentality gives each instrumentality enforcement officers, including ICE, wide latitude to usage unit successful carrying retired their duties,” said Hernandez, the instrumentality prof astatine Ohio State University.
“The world is that it is exceedingly hard to clasp idiosyncratic agents oregon the bureau itself accountable successful court.”
Federal migration officers apprehension a protester extracurricular Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building successful Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, connected January 15, 2026 [Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images]What next?
In the past twelvemonth alone, the Department of Homeland Security much than doubled its workforce wrong ICE, bringing the bureau from a full of 10,000 officers and agents to 22,000, with much recruiting plans nether way.
How and whether they are receiving grooming remains unknown.
An NBC investigation based connected sources with insider cognition recovered that the contention to employment caller agents astatine standard entailed utilizing AI tools that improperly processed applications and sent caller agents into the tract without due training.
In Minneapolis, ample protests and clashes with migration agents are inactive nether way, with astatine slightest 3,000 national migration forces mobilised successful the city. Videos person captured ICE agents banging down doors of homes and dragging radical retired of cars.
Residents person reported that they are acrophobic to permission their homes and section efforts person adjacent stepped up for radical to bash market buying for their neighbours.
Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem person defended ICE agents contempt wide criticised conduct. And US President Donald Trump has threatened to enact the Insurrection Act, a national instrumentality that would let him to deploy the subject to the state. Earlier this week, sources told ABC News that 1,500 soldiers stay connected standby for imaginable deployment.
Conor Gaffney, counsel astatine Protect Democracy, a nonprofit advocacy radical tackling threats to antiauthoritarian norms and institutions and defeating “the authoritarian threat”, told Al Jazeera that keeping policies concealed portion ICE continues its thoroughfare operations undermines the spot of the community, an indispensable constituent of nationalist safety.
“Keeping use-of-force policies concealed evidently runs antagonistic to transparency and accountability, which are basal principles of modern, community-oriented policing,” Gaffney told Al Jazeera.
Protect Democracy is portion of a conjugation of ineligible organisations challenging ICE’s behaviour with protesters successful Chicago Headline Club v Noem. In a transcript from the hearing of an ICE tract serviceman who testified astir grooming that ICE, and Customs and Border Protection agents person connected usage of force, assemblage control, and however to usage less-lethal munitions, the tract serviceman said ICE agents did not person protestation power training.
“Most ICE and CBP agents person precise small grooming connected assemblage power tactics and usage of force, and the supervisory agents the authorities provided arsenic witnesses knew thing astir the contented of those trainings,” Gaffney said.
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