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Federal agents spray demonstrators at close range with irritants after the killing of Renee Good by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7, 2026, in Minneapolis. Since July 2025, there have been at least 17 open-fire incidents involving federal immigration agents, according to data compiled by The Trace, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news outlet investigating gun violence. (Photo by Nicole Neri\/Minnesota Reformer)<\/p>\n
As a growing number of encounters between civilians and Department of Homeland Security agents \u2014 including the widely scrutinized fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis \u2014 are scrutinized in court records and on social media, federal officials are returning to a familiar response: self-defense.<\/p>\n
In more than a handful of recent encounters, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, has said its agents acted in self-defense during violent encounters, even as eyewitness testimony and video footage raised questions about whether those accounts fully matched what happened.<\/p>\n
And in a ruling for a recent civil lawsuit, a U.S. district judge said federal immigration officials were not forthcoming about enforcement efforts, citing discrepancies between official DHS statements and video evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re now in a situation in which official sources in the Trump administration are really tying themselves quite strongly to a particular narrative, regardless of what the widely disseminated videos suggest,\u201d said C\u00e9sar Cuauht\u00e9moc Garc\u00eda Hern\u00e1ndez, a law professor at Ohio State University.<\/p>\n
The cases come amid an aggressive expansion of federal immigration enforcement and increasing<\/a> scenes of violent and intimidating arrest tactics. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has sharply increased the hiring of immigration agents, broadened enforcement operations and accelerated deportations, as protests have spread across major cities.<\/p>\n The use of force, paired with conflicting official statements and evidence, has raised questions about whether federal immigration officials can be held accountable and highlighted the steep hurdles victims of excessive force might face in seeking legal recourse.<\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to multiple requests from Stateline for comment on discrepancies between official accounts and publicly available evidence.<\/p>\n Since last July, there have been at least 17 open-fire incidents involving federal immigration agents \u2014 including fatal shootings, shootings with injuries and cases in which shots were fired \u2014 according to data<\/a> compiled by The Trace, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news outlet investigating gun violence. A recent Wall Street Journal investigation<\/a> also found 13 incidents since July in which immigration agents fired at or into civilian vehicles.<\/p>\n One of the most prominent examples unfolded in Minneapolis this month: Good\u2019s fatal shooting<\/a> by a masked ICE agent. The Department of Homeland Security initially said the agent, Jonathan Ross, fired in self-defense after Good, 37, allegedly tried to run over officers. Videos taken by bystanders show Good\u2019s vehicle reversed, shifted and began to turn away from officers after one yelled and pulled on her car handle. Ross positioned himself near the hood of her car, and he began firing.<\/p>\n Minnesota officials<\/a> later stated the footage did not support DHS\u2019 description of an imminent threat, prompting renewed scrutiny of how the Trump administration is characterizing use-of-force encounters.<\/p>\n Similar discrepancies have surfaced in other cases. The Department of Homeland Security recently revised its account of a December shooting in Glen Burnie, Maryland, after local police contradicted<\/a> its initial version. DHS first claimed both men injured in the incident were inside a van that ICE officers fired at in self-defense, but later said<\/a> that one of the injured men had already been arrested and was in custody inside an ICE vehicle when he was hurt. The other man was shot twice and is facing two federal criminal charges<\/a>.<\/p>\n In August, federal immigration agents fired at a family\u2019s vehicle three times in San Bernardino, California. DHS maintained<\/a> the shooting was justified after at least two agents were struck by the vehicle, but available footage<\/a> shows an agent breaking the driver-side window moments before gunfire erupted. Surveillance footage from the street does not show agents being struck by the vehicle.<\/p>\n Official sources in the Trump administration are really tying themselves quite strongly to a particular narrative.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2013 C\u00e9sar Cuauht\u00e9moc Garc\u00eda Hern\u00e1ndez, immigration policy expert<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI can\u2019t think of another time in my lifetime \u2014 I\u2019m 50 years old \u2014 where we\u2019ve seen this sort of force in the streets in the United States,\u201d said Mark Fleming, the associate director of federal litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center. Fleming has been an immigration and civil rights attorney for the past 20 years.<\/p>\n Garc\u00eda Hern\u00e1ndez, the law professor at Ohio State University, echoed Fleming\u2019s point, saying that what also stands out is how often agents are deploying less\u2011lethal weapons in ways that would generally be prohibited \u2014 including firing rubber pellets and similar projectiles at people\u2019s faces or heads.<\/p>\n In its use-of-force policy<\/a>, DHS agents may use force only when no \u201creasonably effective, safe, and feasible\u201d alternative exists and only at a level that is \u201cobjectively reasonable.\u201d DHS policy emphasizes \u201crespect for human life\u201d and directs officers to be proficient in de-escalation tactics \u2014 using communication or other techniques to stabilize or reduce the intensity of a potentially violent situation without, or with reduced, physical force. The policy also states that deadly force should not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.<\/p>\n ICE, as an agency under DHS, is bound by this guidance, but the policy on shooting at moving vehicles differs from what many law enforcement agencies nationwide now consider best practices<\/a>. While DHS prohibits officers from firing at the operator of a moving vehicle unless it is necessary to stop a serious threat, its rules do not explicitly instruct officers to get out of the way of moving vehicles when possible.<\/p>\n A growing pattern of aggressive tactics and conflicting evidence has raised serious questions about how federal immigration agents use lethal and less-lethal force, and how DHS officials describe the incidents to the public.<\/p>\n In September, 38-year-old Silverio Villegas Gonz\u00e1lez was fatally shot during a traffic stop in Franklin Park, a suburb near Chicago. DHS claimed that one agent was \u201cseriously injured\u201d after being dragged by Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s car as he tried to flee. But body-camera footage<\/a> shows the agent telling a Franklin Park police officer that his injury was \u201cnothing major.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement<\/a>, DHS said the agent responded with lethal force because he was \u201cfearing for his own life\u201d \u2014 a narrative very similar to the department\u2019s description of the fatal shooting of Good in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n In recent months, DHS officials have claimed that immigration agents have been repeatedly attacked with vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen vehicles weaponized over 100 times in the last several months against our law enforcement officers,\u201d Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said during an interview<\/a> with CNN this month.<\/p>\n In court filings related to a civil lawsuit about Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, the department provided body-camera footage and other internal records to bolster their claims of self-defense.<\/p>\n But U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis found the evidence \u201cdifficult, if not impossible to believe.\u201d In her lengthy opinion<\/a> issued in late November, Ellis acknowledged that agents sometimes encountered aggressive drivers but also found that agents treated cars that were merely following them as potential threats.<\/p>\n In October, an ICE agent shot a community observer, Marimar Martinez, five times during a confrontation in Chicago. DHS claimed that she rammed the ICE vehicle with her car and boxed it in, but surveillance footage<\/a> does not show the agents were trapped.<\/p>\n Martinez survived, but the Trump administration quickly labeled her a \u201cdomestic terrorist\u201d \u2014 the same label used to describe Good. Martinez\u2019s criminal charges were dropped in November after the federal Department of Justice abruptly moved to dismiss the case.<\/p>\n In Ellis\u2019 ruling on the civil lawsuit, she wrote that federal officials \u201ccannot simply create their own narrative of what happened, misrepresenting the evidence to justify their actions,\u201d and that the violence used by federal agents \u201cshocks the conscience,\u201d a legal standard meaning a situation that seems grossly unjust to an observer.<\/p>\n Ellis also explicitly questioned the conduct and leadership of Greg Bovino of U.S. Border Patrol during the Chicago immigration operation. Bovino, who has led the administration\u2019s big-city campaign, was deposed under oath, and in her November ruling, Ellis described him as \u201cnot credible,\u201d writing that he \u201cappeared evasive over the three days of his deposition, either providing \u2018cute\u2019 responses \u2026 or outright lying.\u201d<\/p>\n In a footnote, Ellis also noted an instance in which an agent asked ChatGPT to draft a use-of-force report from a single sentence and a few images \u2014 further undermining the credibility of official DHS accounts.<\/p>\n Holding federal immigration agents accountable for misconduct is difficult, even as video evidence and police or court records increasingly contradict official government accounts.<\/p>\n With more evidence surfacing and legal claims already underway, some experts say it\u2019s likely that even more lawsuits will emerge this year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should expect to see more examples, more instances in which cellphone video is used to bolster legal claims against DHS, ICE, Border Patrol and specific officers as well,\u201d said Garc\u00eda Hern\u00e1ndez, of Ohio State University.<\/p>\n Federal officers are shielded by legal doctrines such as qualified immunity and U.S. Supreme Court rulings that restrict when people can sue federal officials for constitutional violations. In recent years, the courts have narrowed the circumstances under which individuals can bring claims for excessive force or wrongful death.<\/p>\n Suing individual federal immigration agents is nearly impossible.<\/p>\n People can, however, pursue claims against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act if a government employee causes financial or bodily harm. These cases, which can include claims for wrongful death, face significant hurdles: no punitive damages, no jury trials, state-specific caps on compensation and protections for discretionary government decisions.<\/p>\n Internal DHS investigations can lead to discipline or policy changes, but their findings may not be made public.<\/p>\n Several state lawmakers in California<\/a>, Colorado<\/a>, Georgia<\/a>, New York<\/a> and Oregon<\/a> are pursuing measures that would allow residents to sue federal immigration agents for constitutional violations. Illinois has a similar law<\/a> already in place, but this pathway remains largely untested, and experts say it faces significant legal and logistical hurdles.<\/p>\n Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\nUse of force<\/h4>\n
A narrow path to accountability<\/h4>\n