In the aftermath of two killings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in just over a week, a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union documents widespread use of force by the federal agency.
The report, released Thursday, looks at more than 1,200 immigration enforcement operations involving ICE officers or law enforcement working with ICE across eight states, beginning when President Trump took office in January 2025 until the end of last year.
The findings underscore the concerns many immigrant advocates have raised repeatedly as the Trump administration continues its aggressive deportation campaign: Forceful, and even violent, immigration encounters are not rare. In fact, nearly a third of the incidents included in the research involved the use of force or the threat of force.
"You're seeing the threat of using force and actually using it become the default tool for immigration enforcement agents," says Naureen Shah, director of policy and government affairs for immigration at the ACLU and one of the authors of the report.
The analysis included encounters that appeared in news coverage, press releases from schools and hospitals and other locations, and reports from community groups, among others. The nonprofit civil rights organization gathered those accounts and recorded the details of how the enforcement occurred, who was involved and where it happened.
"My first thought is it's a little embarrassing for this information to be gathered, aggregated, analyzed and shared by the ACLU instead of the Department of Homeland Security," says Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.
"Living in a democracy means that the government is doing a good job when and only when we the people say it's doing a good job. And that requires a certain degree of transparency about the nature of governmental operations," he added.
How immigration officers use force
The ways officers deployed force varied widely. Researchers documented immigration agents pushing, tackling or pinning people to the ground more than 400 times. They documented officers using weapons – including chemical irritants, rubber bullets and tasers – about as often.
They also found dozens of instances where officers used potentially deadly tactics that many local police agencies restrict or prohibit, including pressing a knee into a person's neck and using chokeholds.
ICE and DHS did not respond to questions about the findings of the report.
Many of the interactions between ICE and the public detailed in the report happened in everyday locations, such as bus stops, grocery stores, and along roads. The ACLU documented hundreds of incidents that involved children, U.S. citizens, protesters, bystanders and journalists.
In the report, researchers stressed that their review included a range of publicly identified federal immigration enforcement activity and was not limited to incidents already alleged to have been unlawful. Conversely, their data is only a snapshot in time across a handful of states. Many immigration operations go unrecorded.
In the year and a half since Trump retook office, ICE has escalated its enforcement efforts with the help of an influx of federal funding, which experts say invites more chances for violent encounters to occur.
"I'm really worried there's going to be even more of these killings," Shah says. "They've got a culture of abuse and impunity where people are under tremendous pressure to fulfill unprecedented arrest quotas, and now they have a practice of using force and intimidation … and then you multiply that by tens of billions of dollars."
An increase in traffic stops
In addition to an uptick in encounters, law enforcement experts also point out that ICE has shifted how its officers are conducting immigration enforcement.
In the past, ICE officers were not out in communities as frequently, and operations were more targeted, says Jillian Snider, a retired New York City police officer and lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
"When they do their targeted enforcement operations, they generally identify locations that they know there's a wanted person," Snider says. "Now we've seen an increase in doing car stops, which is a big concern if you're not afforded the proper car stop training."
In the case of the two men ICE officers killed this month in Texas and Maine, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Durán Guerrero, both were shot in their cars. Neither had been the subject of an ICE targeted operation.
In an earlier statement, DHS said Durán Guerrero had attempted to flee and that the officer, who has not been identified, shot him because he was "fearing for public safety."
In a statement regarding the Texas death, ICE said Salgado Araujo "weaponized his vehicle," though witnesses dispute that account. In both shootings, officers were not wearing body cameras.
"In a situation where you have a car stopped, but there's no imminent threat of deadly physical force or serious physical injury, most agencies will not authorize [the officer] to shoot," says Snider.
In the ACLU report, researchers documented dozens of instances where immigration officers rammed other people's cars, boxed them in and smashed vehicle windows.
"When we see a broad pattern of what appear to be very consistent mistakes – like the way officers are conducting traffic stops or the really poor way they're trying to engage in boxing-in maneuvers, or the way they're rushing up to cars and taking or maintaining positions in a vehicle's path of travel or the way they're very quickly breaking out windows in a way that's likely to encourage someone to flee rather than to comply – that may or may not be a training issue, but it is definitely also a supervision issue," says Stoughton, who is a former police officer. "Why aren't supervisors identifying problematic and counterproductive behaviors and doing something about it?"
This week in Florida, a third person died after being hit by a semi-truck as he fled from ICE officers during a traffic stop.
During a traffic stop, law enforcement experts say officers have to navigate a slew of complex considerations: Is the police car unmarked? Is the driver boxed in? Can the car be put in drive when the door is open? Is anyone else in the vehicle? Has the driver received conflicting instructions? Every choice can factor into how the situation unfolds.
"From what I've seen and what I've seen them do, it doesn't seem like they're familiar with or they really understand how to operate in that type of environment," says Marc Brown, who leads the University of South Carolina's Excellence in Policing and Public Safety Program.
Brown, a former police officer who served as an instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center from 2019 until 2024, says during that time, ICE officers received an "abbreviated version" of defensive tactics, which include the techniques officers can use to de-escalate situations and help them navigate situations like traffic stops.
"You cannot ask your officers to do a different mission and not adjust both your policies and training. You're going to have some significant gaps," Brown says.
After the two shootings, ICE will pause non-urgent traffic stops, though it is unclear how that shift will play out. In a statement, ICE told NPR the agency will not discuss law enforcement tactics, but said it is always evaluating its procedures to keep its officers safe.
In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, President Trump called for ICE traffic stops to continue.
NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán contributed to this report.
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