US immigration agents linked to spike in shootings under Trump administration 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 14 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 7 January, it identified 28 incidents overall, including the 14 shootings.

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 Wednesday in Minneapolis, where federal agents fatally shot a woman during a large-scale immigration enforcement action. Representative 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.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Tuesday that it had initiated an extraordinary enforcement operation in the Minneapolis area, with approximately 2,000 agents and officers expected to participate. 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%. DHS currently holds more than 65,000 people. Overall, the administration has arrested more than 328,000 individuals and deported nearly 327,000.

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 14 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.