Incidents in which federal immigration agents injured or killed people were ricocheting across the internet – and emerging in legal filings – well before an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
In more than a dozen legal claims reviewed for this article, dated June through December of 2025, people said immigration personnel from ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol assaulted or detained them without cause. Claimants left these encounters with bruises, lacerations, and head injuries, the filings said. Almost a dozen people alleged that they were tackled or thrown to the ground. Multiple claimants said that federal personnel pushed their knees into detainees’ faces, necks, or backs; one man said agents pepper sprayed him before repeatedly punching him in the face and head. Most of these claimants are U.S. citizens or in the country legally.
Firm numbers aren’t available from the Department of Homeland Security, but in interviews with six immigration lawyers and civil rights groups, from Massachusetts to Virginia to California, all agreed they’ve seen an increase in people accusing immigration agents of using excessive force in the past year.
Why We Wrote This
In cases that haven’t gotten a national spotlight, U.S. citizens and legal residents say they’ve been injured by federal immigration enforcement personnel. Their lawyers say these cases are part of a rise in the use of excessive force, tied to the administration’s efforts to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants.
Many of those complaints have been filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a 1946 statute that provides the only pathway for individuals to sue the federal government for personal injury.
Although few of the cases have won wide public attention, or been adjudicated yet, the lawyers say this increase in claims suggests that excessive use of force is a problem that extends far beyond Minnesota, where the recent fatal shootings of Ms. Good and protester Alex Pretti drew a national spotlight.
The incidents raise complex legal questions about who is liable when federal immigration agents injure members of the public. The federal government and its employees are generally shielded by sovereign immunity from being sued for official acts. That stands in contrast to local and state law enforcement.
“All of this really highlights the lack of federal accountability,” says Patrick Jaicomo, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. “That’s a huge problem for a country that holds itself up as one that has a powerful Constitution that is supposed to rein in the worst government abuses.”
ICE has historically fielded hundreds of FTCA claims each year, and people can file them for things other than physical harm. Yet the surge in immigration operations in major cities has made encounters between civilians and federal law enforcement more common, says Michael Fuller, a civil rights lawyer based in Portland, Oregon. He says his office has seen “a huge wave of people reaching out with excessive force claims.”
“It’s not typical that you have federal agents using excessive force, because it’s not typical to have federal agents conducting operations” at such a large scale, Mr. Fuller says.
Since Ms. Good’s killing, immigration agents have shot at least four people – including Mr. Pretti. That shooting has sparked nationwide protests and calls for the resignation of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Since then, President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has said immigration officials are working on a “drawdown” plan to reduce the number of agents in Minnesota.
A recent report from NBC News found that immigration personnel have shot at least 13 people since September, including Mr. Pretti and Ms. Good. At least four of those shootings were fatal, NBC said, and six involved people who were charged with crimes. (Charges were dismissed in two of those six cases.) It’s not clear how many of the shootings have been investigated by authorities. In fiscal year 2023, ICE agents were involved in five shootings; Border Patrol was involved in 18, according to a 2024 DHS report.
The Trump administration has consistently defended its tactics. Top officials have argued that immigration officers use only the amount of force necessary to conduct their duties. The administration has also criticized Democrats for rhetoric that, in its view, unfairly demonizes federal law enforcement. Administration officials point to figures such as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has compared the United States today to early Nazi Germany. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently called ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.”
“[ICE agents] are great, patriotic, men and women, who have families, and who put on the uniform every day, and are following the nation’s immigration laws,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Jan. 15. DHS has also maintained that its agents face frequent attacks, citing a 1,300% increase in assaults last year compared with 2024. Some news reports have disputed those figures, finding the increase to be closer to 25%. Two separate shootings at ICE facilities in Texas last year highlight the risks federal officers face, says Tony Pham, a senior fellow on homeland security at the America First Policy Institute.
“There are times when peace officers have to apply force in order to apply and enforce the law,” says Mr. Pham, a former acting director of ICE. “For the most part, our officers go out there day in and day out, and they place their lives on the line to enforce the law that Congress passed.”
Mr. Pham also argues that federal agents’ immunity is necessary for officers to do their jobs without fear of prosecution.
“If individual men and women in uniform feel that they’re going to be subject to multimillion dollar lawsuits, or potential civil rights criminal prosecution without protections,” he says, “how many of them are really going to want to enforce the laws?”
What we know about legal filings
Exact statistics on the number of FTCA claims filed since President Trump took office are difficult to come by. No central database tracks them. The FTCA also requires that claimants first file a complaint with the accused agency, which then has six months to act on the claim before a case can proceed to federal court. Because many cases may still be in the administrative complaint phase, court records are likely incomplete.
ICE often details the number of FTCA claims it has handled in a given year in its annual reports and congressional budget justifications. But its most recent justification, from last year, does not contain the figures, and the agency has not released an annual report for 2025.
One man in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, alleged in a lawsuit that an ICE agent used a carotid chokehold – a potentially fatal technique that blocks breathing – to subdue him while he was sitting in his car. The Department of Homeland Security’s policy on use of force prohibits carotid chokeholds unless “deadly force is authorized.” Lethal force is allowed only if the officer believes “the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of serious bodily injury” to another person. In a social media post, DHS did not cite a deadly threat and said the man was “faking” distress. An investigation by ProPublica found at least 40 instances of agents using similar chokeholds.
ICE and DHS did not respond to requests for comment for this article. In a statement, the Department of Justice said it would “vigorously defend” the president’s immigration crackdown from “any number of meritless lawsuits.”
Many instances where officers use force hinge on split-second, high-stress decisions in which agents seek to protect themselves or others, says Mr. Pham. He points out that the vast majority of law enforcement encounters end peacefully.
Yet those decrying ICE’s tactics have also criticized incidents of force that don’t appear to require quick decision-making.
In December, Hilda Ramirez Sanan, a permanent resident, filed an FTCA complaint against ICE after officers pulled her and her family from their car in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Officers surrounded her vehicle in unmarked cars, the complaint alleges, and failed to identify themselves before forcing her and her family, including her 13-year-old son, from the vehicle. ICE told local news that they were targeting Ms. Ramirez’s brother-in-law, who was in the car and who the agency says is in the country illegally.
Immigration personnel “slammed” Ms. Ramirez to the ground, her claim says, twisting her arms behind her back and kicking one of her legs. The incident left her with bruising and a concussion, according to her claim.
“These complaints we’re filing are not isolated, but they are instead part of a well-documented pattern,” says Jillian Lenson, an attorney with Lawyers for Civil Rights in Boston. She represents Ms. Ramirez. ICE agents are “surrounding vehicles in unmarked cars, smashing car windows before asking any questions, [and] dragging people from their own vehicles to arrest them without cause or the diligence required by ICE’s own standards.”
Questions of accountability
The FTCA may well play a central role in future litigation against immigration agencies, says Mr. Jaicomo, the lawyer from the Institute for Justice. Yet he also says that highlights a lack of accountability that’s baked into the legal system, regarding federal agencies.
While the FTCA sometimes allows lawsuits to move forward despite the sovereign immunity that’s typically afforded to the federal government, the scope is narrow. The law cannot, for example, be used to sue the government for broad policy decisions.
“[The FTCA] was built to give people compensation when the postman drives the postal truck through their garage,” Mr. Jaicomo says. “It wasn’t meant for this kind of thing. And so at best, we’ve cobbled together a sort of abstruse way of dealing with this that’s just full of exceptions and folds.”
Democratic leaders throughout the country are attempting to institute state-level safeguards. Leaders in New York, California, and Maryland have suggested passing legislation allowing for civil rights suits against federal law enforcement. And in Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey recently signed an executive order to prohibit immigration arrests in “sensitive places” such as courts, schools, and hospitals.
Anya Bidwell, another attorney with the Institute for Justice, says these efforts will likely face legal challenges from the federal government. Yet she praises states for seeking to address what she sees as a longstanding lack of accountability for federal law enforcement.
“It’s not like we can blame Trump for all of our problems. This has been a problem for a long time,” she says. “That’s why it is so important that everybody on both sides of the political aisle fix these cracks, and make sure that the next time we have an administration that is challenging the barriers to this extent, we are prepared for it.”
